Most sellers want to be paid all of their money up front, and most buyers want to avoid paying anything up front. Deals usually get done somewhere in the middle, where the seller agrees to accept some cash and to be paid some of their proceeds over time. 

Eric Weiner, for example, started All Occasion Transportation in college and by the time he turned 35, his company was grossing more than $3MM a year. That’s when Weiner decided he wanted out.

Weiner found a buyer and agreed to accept half of his money in a five-year consulting contract, which sounded great in theory but ended up becoming hard to enforce. In this cautionary episode, you’ll learn:

• How to structure a vendor take back
• How to market your business for sale without competitors finding out
• How to create sticks and carrots to ensure your deal is honored
• The definition of recourse and why you need some in any non-cash offer
• How to pick a walk-away number and use it to accelerate your negotiation
• The biggest blooper in structuring a consulting contract with an acquirer

Have you ever noticed the ads that run before you watch an official online video clip from shows like Saturday Night Live or Jimmy Kimmel? You can thank Nicholas Seet for that. Seet developed the video player that hosts both the content and the ads for some of the world’s biggest media companies. His business, Auditude, was recently acquired by Adobe for more than $100 million according to UCLA's Anderson School of Management.

Although a spectacular exit, Seet had to give up a large chunk of the company—and the CEO title—to scale up, so in this episode of Built to Sell Radio we ask the age-old question: 'Is it better to own a big chunk of a small company or a small slice of a big company?' You may be surprised by Seet’s response. 

You’ll also learn:

• How to handle the customer who wants exclusivity
• The biggest mistake most engineers make when building a company
• The benefits of a “Super Angel”
• Who the “Goose Society” is and why you might want them as investors
• How to avoid the dilution of common shareholders when venture capitalists insist on preferred shares

Ian Ippolito started Rent a Coder as an online marketplace for hiring technical talent. He quickly expanded to go beyond technical professionals and re-branded as vWorker. Ippolito built vWorker up to $11.5MM in annual revenue before he received an acquisition offer from Australia’s Freelancer.com

Freelancer.com had been courting Ippolito for months but their original offer was too low in Ippolito’s view. That’s when Ippolito decided the only way for him to get any real negotiating leverage was to seek out a second bidder. In this episode, you’ll learn:

• the dangers of a proprietary deal
• what to do when you get a low-ball offer
• why a BATNA is critical to every deal
• how to time your exit
• strategic stalling and how to do it
• why 90% of earn-outs fail

Peter Shankman started Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to connect experts with journalists who needed people to quote for stories. HARO sent a simple email three times a day to subscribers and because every email had the potential to be a reporter from a media outlet like The New York Times, the email open rates were close to 80%. Most days Shankman worked from his sofa with two employees helping him remotely. 

Within three years, Shankman was generating $1.5MM from selling simple text ads on his email blasts. That’s when Shankman’s largest advertiser approached him to buy HARO. In the episode you’ll learn:

• the remarkable relationship between ADHD and entrepreneurship
• the surprising upside of selling instead of scaling your business
• the truth about who is most likely to buy your business
• the best way to find a strategic buyer for your company