Show HN: It took 4 years to sell my startup. I wrote a book about it
Founder Derek Z. H. Yan shares his grueling four-year journey to sell his startup, culminating in an acquisition by a $50 billion company, in his new book, "The Toughest Sell: A Founder's Guide to Startup Exits." The book offers candid insights into the mistakes, anti-patterns, and dead ends encountered during the M&A process. This first-hand account of a startup exit, particularly at a significant scale, resonates deeply with HN's entrepreneurial audience, who rarely get such detailed, actionable advice from a founder's perspective.
The Lowdown
The story is a "Show HN" post introducing "The Toughest Sell: A Founder's Guide to Startup Exits," a new book by founder Derek Z. H. Yan. It chronicles his nearly four-year-long effort to successfully sell his company, ultimately acquired by a "50 billion company," and aims to provide the guidance he wished he had during the arduous process.
- The book is presented as an essential resource for founders navigating the M&A landscape, documenting every mistake, anti-pattern, and dead end.
- It highlights the personal toll and intense pressure involved, such as checking for an acquisition term sheet on his mother's birthday.
- The work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, allowing non-commercial sharing with attribution but restricting modifications or commercial use without explicit permission.
Yan positions his book as a vital companion for any founder embarking on an exit, offering a raw and invaluable perspective on what it truly takes to complete a startup acquisition.
The Gossip
Exit Expertise Exchange
Commenters expressed significant appreciation for the author's detailed and credible account of the startup M&A process from a founder's perspective. They highlighted the rarity of such in-depth insights into 9-figure deals, noting the difficulty of distilling complex experiences into digestible content and praising the author for shedding light on an often opaque area of entrepreneurship.
Banker Battleground
A lively debate emerged regarding the role and effectiveness of investment bankers in startup exits. An investment banker challenged the author's advice against hiring a banker without actionable inbound interest, arguing that effective bankers proactively source a large pool of potential acquirers. The author clarified his stance, stating that while good bankers are valuable, they primarily amplify existing market interest and cannot easily create it from scratch, noting that their eventual buyer was an unsolicited inbound lead.
Reading Resource Requests
Users inquired about the availability of the book in a downloadable PDF format, indicating a strong desire for offline access to the timely content. One commenter offered a simple command-line method to download the book as HTML.