Your Exit Strategy

1) My exit strategy could go one of two ways, depending on which way I take my company and how successful I am in that venture. If I decided to expand into a new market with a related idea as we discussed a couple weeks ago, I would stick with the company to guide it through the changes it would undertake, see my expansion come to fruition, and reap the benefits of said expansion. If I decided not to go this route, I would sell the company for a large return sometime in the next few years. Although the company itself is important to me, running a business is not something that necessarily interests me in the long term, my aspirations lie in different areas. These would be my two primary exit plans, but I recognize that if my attempts at expansion were to fail, it could affect the valuation of my company and might make selling it a little more difficult. A cost-benefit analysis of these options would be absolutely necessary to come to an educated decision.

2) I have selected these strategies because like I said, ultimately, my interests and aspirations lie outside of the realm of entrepreneurship. I would use the money I acquired from the sale of the company or from its continued success whilst at the helm to aid causes that are important both to me and to our country, such as climate change and the like. Selling the company would give me the chance to personally lobby for the causes I would champion, as opposed to going through a lobbying firm, the likes of which tend to be motivated largely by profits and returns of investment. My ultimate goal throughout this would be to aid in the removal of corporate money from politics altogether, unfortunately it is necessary to play the game according to the current rules rather than those you wish to see implemented.

3) I definitely think my exit strategy has played a significant role in many of the decisions I have made regarding my company throughout the semester. One area in which I do not think it influenced me was in deciding opportunities, I feel I would have gone the way I did regardless because the cause that my company seeks to assist in is one that is close to my heart, and first and foremost I want to help people and their pets. I do, however, think that my exit strategy influenced my expansion plans and my plans for acquiring the resources I need to make the company successful. Like I mentioned above, ultimately whether or not I expand will decide which exit strategy I go with, but because I have been thinking of these exits as potentials the whole time they have definitely influenced my consideration of expansion as an option. The exit strategies have also influenced my investigations into resources, to a certain extent. Many of my resources that I pointed out are long-term, slow burn type things, integral to the company but not something that I need to remain involved with to ensure their success. With the resources I have deemed the most important, I can set them up and then sit back and relax or leave altogether because they are almost completely self-sufficient.