There's got to be a business in here somewhere. A company that acts as a middleman that sorts through all your financials for you, does all the communicating, drafts all legal paperwork and just gives you quick regular updates through the process. That way you can keep running your company during all of this madness.
I wish I knew more about selling and acquiring companies since it seems like a business well worth launching if it's feasible, which I don't even know if it is.
It can't really work that way. There are diligence firms that provide quality of earnings analysis, compliance analysis, intellectual property audits, etc. But potential buyers always have questions that require input from staff.
The executive team has to be very involved in the process. Their involvement naturally drags management/staff into it.
The world of business brokers is 75% charlatans and 24% outright frauds. Good ones do exist, but bad ones are abundant. If you need a broker, find one via a referral from someone that has sold their business via a broker.
The lesson I'm taking away from this is that if you're going to go through the steps of a M&A process, make sure there's something in it for you besides just the check at the end of the process.
Off the top of my head, having a very detailed understanding of your burn rate and assets should be useful information for any business. Maybe you have some unprofitable projects, or maybe just for applying for a business loan.
When we take risks we try to account for Murphy's law. If you've looked at things like unpaid bills and back taxes, maybe the confidence intervals get a little better?
If you have internal accounting and general counsel, they usually do a shitload of the heavy lifting (they outsource it to paralegals and associates most of the time). I've been through it before. It's still very painful, but this type of thing does exist... kinda.
Yes - this is a major function of private equity in general. They even have investment banks and firms that specialize in "buy side" versus "sell side" of the transaction.
I work for a relatively small company.It is simple as well,it sells training. If we'd have to supply all the necessary info to a company that'd take care of it, that alone would probably take months and months and they'd still have to query back and fort every day.
I wish I knew more about selling and acquiring companies since it seems like a business well worth launching if it's feasible, which I don't even know if it is.