I believe it is our moral obligation to make an impact that is proportionate to our potential.

I have always had a passion for reading books and credit a lot to this habit inculcated into me during my early childhood. Reading enables you to shape your life from the wisdom and experiences of others. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

Growing up, I was a quintessential nerd—with a penchant for math and physics and a natural affinity for writing code from the age of 10. I was fortunate to find my passion early on and spent every spare moment in the computer room, when PCs were monochrome terminals with MS-DOS and 5¼-inch floppy drives. I devoured biographies with fervor and learnt much from the success and failures of Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and countless others. It was clear to me then—I wanted to start my own company in this revolutionary new world.

Seven years later, I was raring to go, and along with my younger brother Div and $300 of borrowed capital from Dad, we started our first company—Directi—a web presence provider and domain name registrar.

Fourteen years later, we were number four worldwide, with 10 million domain names, a network of over 50,000 global resellers, and $70 million in revenues. Hari, then CEO of Endurance International and now a close family friend, approached us with an offer to buy Directi and I still remember to this day being very conflicted about it. However after six months of them courting us, and several deep strategic discussions, it made sense and we sold the company for $160 million—our first exit.

Div, my brother, had already independently started Media.net, which he then grew into a $900 million exit. And I had turned my attention to Radix (currently the number one new gTLD registry) and Flock (now Nova—competing with G Suite and Office and providing collaboration and productivity software to global users). Finally in 2015, I cofounded Zeta with Ramki Gaddipati—with a mission to make payments invisible and reimagine banking

I have never started any company with the goal of selling it. My startups were born out of my passions. I believe “frustration is the genesis of entrepreneurship”—and when entrepreneurs see something they would like to change, they go ahead and effectuate that change. If you are reading this book, perhaps you have already launched and built your own company or are in the process of starting up. As a successful business, however, most founders will receive one or more (bittersweet) opportunities to sell their company.

There are a countless number of books on starting up, running, and growing successful businesses. However, most of the material available on M&A comprises glorified media stories, and not much quality content has been published on this critical milestone of a startup's exit (pardon the oxymoron). There certainly wasn't anything like this when I was deliberating over my exit option.

I have bootstrapped or self-funded my entrepreneurial pursuits, and I have been in the fortuitous position of not having to raise capital for most of my past companies. If I had, however—Alejandro's book The Art of Startup Fundraising would have been my trusted guide.

With this new book, Selling Your Startup, Alejandro makes a great contribution to the startup community by addressing the less commonly covered subject of navigating the other end of the startup lifecycle intelligently. Understanding this process can enable you to meaningfully harvest years of hard work.

Whether you are a later stage startup receiving inbound offers or are encountering tough times and contemplating a distress sale, this book will help you build your business with the end in mind. It will help you master the art of the exit. If you foresee one in the near term, then this book will serve as your field guide.

It will walk you through strategies, preparation, paperwork, and processes. It will help you with a decision framework for your next chapter after. After monumental sacrifices, it is a travesty to see founders and teams end up with unfair outcomes during M&A processes. If you want your mission, team, and consumers to continue to flourish beyond an exit, and maximize the outcome for everyone in a win-win manner, then it's time to turn to the next page …

—Bhavin Turakhia

Founder
Zeta, Flock, Radix, CodeChef, Directi