The FNDRS Playbook · PB06 · Positioning
The exit readiness matrix
A business is ready to sell when it is both valuable and transferable: it runs without you, its numbers are clean, and its licenses and contracts move. A valuable business a buyer cannot take without you is a trapped asset, which buyers price with earn-outs and long transitions.
Is a valuable business always ready to sell?
Value and readiness are different things. Both decide the outcome.
A valuable business is not automatically a sellable one. And a sellable business is not always worth what the founder needs.
The two questions have to be asked together.
You sell once. They buy for a living.
Every sale of a founder-led business is a negotiation between a first-timer and a professional. Each chapter of the playbook closes part of that gap.
Read the asymmetryThe figure
What should you do if your business is not ready to sell?
It depends on the quadrant: a trapped asset de-risks before market, a platform seed pursues strategic add-on buyers or acquires to reach scale, and a job builds before selling or accepts a lifestyle-business price.
The trapped asset
Strong earnings, but the buyer cannot take them without you. Buyers will use earn-outs and long transitions.
What to do De-risk before going to market, so the earnings can move without you. Often the best return on time a founder will ever earn.
Ready
TargetValuable and transferable. Go to market with a full process.
What to do Run a competitive process; the only question is timing.
The job
Owner-dependent and thin. The likely buyer is an individual or a small competitor.
What to do Build before selling, or accept a lifestyle-business price.
The platform seed
Well run but small. Attractive as an add-on to a larger buyer, or as a base to build on.
What to do Pursue strategic add-on buyers, or acquire to reach scale.
- Value
- Adjusted EBITDA, growth, margin, and position in the range.
- Transferability
- Can it run without you? Are the numbers clean? Do the licenses and contracts move?
How to read it
Businesses are placed by how much they are worth (vertical) and how easily a buyer can take them over (horizontal). The top-right corner is ready for market. Each other quadrant has a specific move.
The three P’s
Where this chapter sits
Pull one lever and you improve the outcome. Pull all three and you change it.
Positioning
Which category. Where in the range.
Pre-emption
Find it first. Frame it first.
Process
Competition. Timing. Leverage.
Which category. Where in the range.
More in Positioning
See where your business sits
The Go-To-Market Analysis (GTMA) places your business on these frameworks with your own numbers, before a buyer does.