{"id":982,"date":"2011-09-23T10:11:28","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T17:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=982"},"modified":"2011-09-23T10:11:28","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T17:11:28","slug":"a-successful-exit-is-a-great-measure-of-a-good-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=982","title":{"rendered":"A successful exit is a great measure of a good journey."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve been involved with well over a dozen successful exits and four initial public offerings over the years, some of them with monstrous gains, some more modest.\u00a0 Then in addition, there are the exits that returned some portion of capital, but nothing more. \u00a0And finally, there are the sad exits that were complete write-offs for the investors, regaining some portion of note-holder or creditor money in the process.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I can tell you with great enthusiasm that the high gain exits are by far the most enjoyable in every way.\u00a0 There\u2019s almost always a closing party where the board, prime investors, attorneys and investment banker all get together to celebrate the victory.\u00a0 It is an exhilarating ending to a great journey.\u00a0 The entrepreneur, whether remaining to the end as CEO or not, is celebrated for his or her prescient timing, great vision and excellent execution of the plan. One such celebration was even characterized as \u201cWe stuck the pig!\u201d – the overly enthusiastic celebration of an outcome larger than expected.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But I cannot recall ever attending a closing dinner for a sale in which we returned only a portion of the investor group\u2019s money. In fact, I don\u2019t recall any formal post-sale meeting at all; even to digest the lessons learned from the entire experience, a missed opportunity for all.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[Email readers continue here…]\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em>\u00a0 And there is the sad truth of the large percentage of early stage investments that die an unceremonious death, often with the entrepreneur-founder left with a bitter feeling that \u201cif only\u201d there had been more cash invested, more co-operation from board members, more time to get to market, more of something, then the outcome would have been much better for all. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of course the successful outcome is preferable for all.\u00a0 But more importantly, it marks a passing of a successful journey by a team first formed by a visionary entrepreneur, usually attracting smart money from good investors, who together effectively planned growth and finally a great exit.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whenever those forces come together, celebrate them and the team that brought them all together.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve been involved with well over a dozen successful exits and four initial public offerings over the years, some of them with monstrous gains, some more modest.\u00a0 Then in addition, there are the exits that returned some portion of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-liquidity-event-and-beyond"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}