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1. What is the biggest myth that founders believe about how an exit actually happens?
2. You talked about being exit-ready maybe 18 to 24 months out. What’s the first thing that a founder should be thinking about as they prepare?
3. Are we supposed to be thinking through each one of these valuation models as we move along, or do we identify one or two? What’s the method for doing that?
4. What do we do if we’re looking to step into this and we don’t want to do it alone?
5. What are some of the things that you think we should be doing when we talk with private equity to increase value? Give me the top two levers we can pull on.
6. What do you recommend as far as putting the right type of support around yourself? What you just described sounds painful, like a really painful decision that you have to work through.
7. What does it mean to move from operating mode to transaction mode?
8. AI is shaking up all the industries out there right now. How is it impacting valuations? Is it compressing them? Is it increasing them? What are the opportunities?
9. We can go create something ourselves, but then we’re also guessing, right? So you have already created these skill sets?
10. What is the most expensive lesson that you’ve learned over the last 20 plus years, 30 years? And if you were to restart as a founder again, what would you be thinking about?
11. How do founders maintain their business while also stepping through this process?
12. How do patents fit into exits and valuations?
13. Is there a correlation between the exit amount and how difficult it is to sell a company? For example, if you’re selling for $5 million versus $15 million or anything in the lower range, does that add more time or difficulty versus the higher amounts?
14. You mentioned running the private equity playbook before private equity actually buys it. Can you expand on that?
15. Can you touch on acqui-hires also?
16. You’ve mentioned teams quite a bit, and I’m curious about solo founders and whether they’re at a disadvantage when it comes to exiting.
17. You mentioned the idea of going up the stack, raising your EBITDA to get a better valuation. Could you talk through the pros and cons of trying to do that yourself, either merging with other companies or buying companies to get yourself ready to sell to private equity, because it sounds like that could be great or that could backfire real quick?
18. Have you ever been in a scenario where you’re growing and you’re wondering what you’re going to support, so you’re feeling the waters of, hey, what could my exit be, but why are we growing?
19. Early on you talked about the difference between a service company and a product company. I was curious in terms of exit strategy and results, what’s the difference between, say, a service business and a product business?
20. Your thoughts on carve-outs, spin-outs, and royalties?
21. Is there a possibility that other people or myself could actually reach out to you? How do we consult with you or talk with you?

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Launching Minim Zero: Our Journey into the Starburst Aerospace Accelerator

I wanted to share with the Thinkspace community that I’ve launched a new startup called Minim Zero. In April we applied and got accepted into to the Starburst Aerospace Accelerator located in Los Angeles. Starburst is unique because it’s a aerospace accelerator that combines the best aspects of traditional startup accelerators and MBA programs with their unique industry knowledge and deep expertise. We are one of seven companies in the 2023 Cohort.

In Week 1 of the 13 week program. The first workshop was called Startup 101, led by Matthew Savary, UCLA Technology Development Group. I was quite surprised that we immediately started with “Commercialization” and on the fly had to define our <data package> and have a clear concise value proposition for the funds that we needed to raise. It was a great feeling that we jumped right into the deep end.

We also learned a framework called the Diamond Square Framework by Tom Eisenmann, Harvard Business School. What I appreciated most is that this framework and the way it was described was specifically focusing on the aerospace industry and not a generic tech startup framework. While it’s great to have diversity in learning butI’m appreciating that this is an accelerator for aerospace companies and recognizing that what everyone in the room is doing hasn’t been done before.

I will keep posting updates about the program, what I’m learning, and try to hold some conversations at Thinkspace over the next couple months to talk about it too.

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