It should be mainstream and portable
The startup you are creating as a founder, on one level, is nothing more than a stack of interlocking software applications manipulated by a human team. These applications manage data across project management, sales, file storage, documents, design and many, many others slices of your operations.
This stack plus the team to run it is what a buyer wants to own, even if they seek to integrate and migrate it to their own over time. So as you make choices in constructing that stack, keep in mind your company’s eventual exit, which means two things:
Keep it mainstream. Unless there are very important features you can’t get from one of the top players, resist the urge to go with a niche player that will be unfamiliar to your potential buyer or expose you to any shutdown risk. For CRM, this means Salesforce or HubSpot, and not the seed-stage company founded by your college roommate.
Keep it portable. More than anything else, a buyer is going to want to be able to pull data from your systems without a giant data migration process. When you’re picking software, don’t forget to confirm if and in what form you can get data out of their system.
Thee are some of the factors we focus on when we evaluate your stack at BestExit. It’s part of a methodical approach to maximizing your exit. If that’s important to you, apply now.