Planning Your Company Exit: Five Strategies to Explore

For startup and expansion stage CEOs, it’s never too early to start thinking about your exit strategy.

Shrewd entrepreneurs understand the importance of having an anticipated payday to steer toward. With this in mind, there are a number of exit options to choose from, but which is right for your company? In a recent post, ExitJunkie.com author George Georgallides lists a few popular options to consider. For example:

• You can hope for an acquisition. This can be the most fiscally rewarding of any exit option. An acquisition is capable of netting more than the market value of a company in some scenarios, says Georgallides, simply because the purchaser believes that the company would make a sound investment.
• You can liquidate the company. While this may seem like a backward approach, you can still draw some capital out of your company by liquidating it. However, be forewarned: if you liquidate via bankruptcy, you may end up having to pay back your creditors.

Exit options can really run the gamut in terms of benefit and appropriateness for your company. Therefore, it’s important to understand what you’re getting in to before committing to any particular exit. For more information on exit strategy planning, read the full article by Georgallides.