Rob Scott
Founder & Chief Growth Architect
Most founders believe that if they build a great business, buyers will eventually find it.
In reality, many strong businesses never achieve great exits, not because they lacked growth, but because they were built without the systems, predictability, and optionality buyers look for when valuing a company.
I have sat in countless conversations where revenue was growing, margins looked healthy, and the business was objectively successful, yet buyer interest was muted or valuations came in below expectations. The founder was doing everything "right," reinvesting in growth, working relentlessly, and pushing the business forward. And still, something was missing.
If building your company feels heavier instead of easier, or if growth requires more effort without delivering proportional value, you are not imagining it. Most founders do not hit a ceiling because they stop trying. They hit it because the business outgrows the way it was designed to scale and compound value.
This is where exit thinking and investment banking enter the picture, usually much earlier than founders expect.
For many entrepreneurs, investment banking feels distant, something you only deal with at the very end of the journey, once the business is already great and buyers are lining up. Many business owners do not have a clear understanding of what an investment banker actually does.
At its core, an investment banker represents companies that are ready to sell or helps buyers identify and acquire businesses that fit a specific strategic profile. Because this work happens close to a transaction, founders often assume it has little relevance until they are actively planning an exit.
In practice, this assumption quietly destroys enterprise value.
I came to understand this not because I made mistakes as an owner, but because of the vantage point I was fortunate to have. Leading Spark Growth Strategies and later building the M&A Advisory practice inside Class VI Partners after Spark was acquired in 2022 put me in a rare position to see behind the curtain. I saw how buyers evaluate businesses, how valuation is really determined, where value gets created or discounted, and why some companies attract premium outcomes while others struggle despite strong performance.
Over the last seven years, I worked with more than 100 founders across growth stages, capital raises, and exits. I also spent significant time with entrepreneurs who had already exited and were navigating life after liquidity. Clear patterns emerged long before deal documents ever appeared.
What follows are not theories. They are lessons from real transactions and real outcomes.
Owner dependency is one of the first things buyers assess when evaluating a business for acquisition.
If revenue, customer relationships, decision-making, or growth depend heavily on the founder, buyers see risk. That risk directly impacts valuation, deal structure, and often whether a deal happens at all.
Buyers are not buying past performance. They are buying a future growth engine that can operate without heroic effort.
The highest-value companies had leadership teams that owned functions end to end, operated with clear accountability, and ran the business without the founder being involved in every decision. In those companies, growth was repeatable, not personality-driven.
This does not make the founder less important. It means the founder's role evolves from primary operator to system designer.
Founders who delay this transition often believe they are protecting quality or culture. In reality, they are creating a constraint that limits both scalability and enterprise value.
Many founders assume exit preparation happens after the business is built.
The strongest exits prove the opposite.
The best outcomes were the result of intentional exit readiness, often started three to five years before a transaction. Exit readiness is not about preparing documents. It is about building a business that buyers can confidently underwrite.
That work includes:
None of these can be meaningfully addressed in the final six months before a sale.
By the time a founder feels "ready" to exit, the fundamentals are largely set. At that point, the process is about packaging, not transformation. Founders who treat exit readiness as a parallel growth strategy preserve optionality and dramatically improve outcomes.
This lesson is especially hard for founders who built their companies through hustle and instinct.
Buyers care far less about how fast you have grown than how predictable and repeatable that growth is.
This is why businesses with recurring revenue, strong retention, and reliable forecasting command higher multiples. Predictability reduces risk, and lower risk increases valuation.
Across transactions, premium valuations consistently correlated with:
Unpredictable growth, even when impressive, creates hesitation. Buyers underwrite confidence, not momentum.
Many founders wait too long to think about how their business is explained to an external buyer.
Inside the business, everything feels obvious. Outside the business, very little is.
Buyers are evaluating dozens of opportunities. If they cannot quickly understand who you serve, why you win, and how growth compounds, they move on.
The strongest outcomes occurred when founders could clearly articulate:
This is not marketing language. It is strategic clarity. A clear exit story is simply a clear growth story viewed from the outside.
One of the most overlooked aspects of exits is what happens after liquidity.
Financial freedom does not automatically create fulfillment. Many founders underestimate how disruptive the transition can be when the business has been their primary source of identity, structure, and purpose.
Across conversations with entrepreneurs who had already exited, the same patterns appeared repeatedly:
Founders who navigated this transition well did not wait until after the exit to think about what was next. They applied the same intentionality to designing the next chapter that they used to build the business.
An exit is not an ending. It is a transition.
You do not need to be planning to sell your business to benefit from exit-ready thinking.
Companies built with predictable growth engines, reduced founder dependency, and clear operating systems are easier to run, less stressful to grow, and more resilient in changing markets. They are also more valuable whether a transaction ever happens or not.
Designing for optionality creates freedom long before a deal process begins.
And freedom, operational, financial, and personal, is ultimately what most founders are building toward.
Most founders never get an outside view of their business until they are already in a deal process.
If you want a clear, honest assessment of how your growth engine, leadership structure, and revenue predictability would be viewed by buyers today, we are happy to walk through it with you.
Connect with Us for an Introductory Call