Exit Strategy BS

Several pre-product, pre-revenue, and pre-everything founders have asked investors, mentors, and advisors about their exit strategy. What are we doing here, people?

Founders shouldn’t think about an exit until they’ve got something of substance. Wasting cycles pontificating about exiting something that isn’t yet anything is a waste. Only naive and inexperienced people would ask an early-stage founder about an exit strategy or expect it to be in a pitch deck. Too many people are in the ears of founders, giving terrible advice or asking irrelevant questions without considering the stage of the company.

Questions like, “What’s your exit strategy?” often involve someone relying on questions they’ve heard other people ask or that seem obvious to ask to seem like an experienced investor or advisor. Instead of seeming smart and experienced, these questions make people sound dumb. Parroting something to seem wise almost always has the opposite effect. Asking silly questions or giving lame advice not grounded in experience or sensibilities wastes time and energy that are treasures to all of us, especially founders.

Early-stage founders aren’t, and should they be, concerned about selling the company when they are trying to acquire their first customers, build and align the product to customer pain and value, recruit team members, and face many other challenges. Investors and advisors would like to think that a meeting with them is a founder’s most important meeting for some time. It isn’t; get over yourself.

People interacting with founders should at least make their questions or advice stage-appropriate, and asking an early-stage company what its exit strategy will be isn’t that. Too many people with direct access to or through an accelerator or other means need more respect for founders and their journey. Most investors and advisors haven’t ever started a company, which shows in their questions and advice. Asking founders silly questions to seem smart or giving irrelevant, if not harmful, advice disrespects founders and treats them as if they are easily influenced and manipulated. They aren’t. Even inexperienced, early-stage founders know more than their track record would indicate. Investors and advisors must stop treating founders like children to be scolded or taught. At a minimum, stop asking dumb questions and spewing nonsense.

We’ve all heard the refrain, “There are no dumb questions.” It is appropriate if you are a student and learning something new, but it is inappropriate for so-called experienced people to be asking of founders. Asking about potential exit strategies when a company has product market fit and some level of sustainability is appropriate, but to an early-stage company, please.

If you engage with founders as investors, advisors, or mentors, don’t ask dumb questions and spew bad advice to talk and seem smart. If you need to get stuff out of your head or off your chest, write some blog posts, start a podcast, or start an online course and see if anyone wants to consume it of their own volition before unloading it on founders because you can. Just as founders have to earn the right to get customers, raise money, and have their company succeed, so should those advising founders.

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