I have a boot strapped SAAS company with 1.5 years in operations. ARR is approx ~ 600K. I hold more than 90% and the rest is held by my team. I would like to sell about 10% of my equity.
Good Morning,
Your question may appear to be a simple one. As a CPA, CGMA, and business performance expert for over 25 years now, I get questions like this from my clients often.
Your options are not clear from your question, however, I will steer to you to where you need to look to determine what options are available to you:
1) Your company structure will determine some of your options. This means are you a Corp (C corp or S corp), LLC, partnership/multi-member LLC. Due to the 10% held by others, I'm sure your not a sole proprietor.
2) Any operating agreement you may have will also define more of your options. Operating agreements can hold many terms of how you operate your company, including ownership changes, so I cannot give you any advice here without knowing if you have one and what's in it, but the contents will flush out more options.
3) In the absence of an operating agreement (this is always possible) you may need to take "politically and legally prudent" steps. That means you'll need to work out any sale of your stake with your fellow partners.
4) Once you've flushed out your options available to you, you can then set the steps you need to take.
5) Your steps will need resources to help you. Business resources such as guidance on the sound business steps to take, and negotiations to conduct, while keeping your business rolling, as well as legal resources to put any agreements on paper.
Because this is complex, by legal and business measures, I encourage you to call me for more accurate information to help you.
I hope this helps!
Answered 9 years ago
You own 90% of what? We don't know what the value of your company is, so first, you would need to put a valuation on it. There are many ways to value it, but you need to come up with something reasonable.
Then you have to find a person who is wiling to buy the 10% that you would like to sell. After that, it is merely negotiations.
I would approach this as you would pitching the company to any investor. You need to show how your company plans to grow, projected growth numbers, and your exit strategy.
If you don't have an exit strategy, then you won't be able to find an investor, and you will have to raise the cash through other means, such as a loan.
In short, we need more information about your company to make a short list of options and which are the most likely ways of accomplishing your goal.
Answered 9 years ago
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