How To Get A Buyer's Attention Before You Sell Your Business

Your Future Buyer Wants a Slack Invite, Not a Banker Deck

When I spoke with Brady Nolan, co-founder of Till, for the podcast last year, he told me the story of how his company ended up getting acquired by Best Egg. It didn’t start with bankers. It didn’t start with a “we’re for sale” process. It started with a cold LinkedIn message.

Brady and his co-founder were in a tough spot. They were evolving their go-to-market, Series A conversations weren’t breaking their way, and capital markets felt like quicksand. So instead of grinding harder on the raise, they did something most founders only consider once the board starts whispering “exit”: they ran their own outreach to potential acquirers. Forty of them, to be exact.

Best Egg was row 27 on the spreadsheet. One message later, Brady said he “immediately knew it was the right home.”

Eighteen months later, Best Egg bought Till.

That timeline isn’t a one-off. When I look across the deals I’ve been involved in, and the ones Thunder has tracked, the average from first handshake to signed LOI is up to 21 months. Not eight weeks. Not a quarter. Two years (although we are helping to cut that down).

That’s the part founders miss. If you wait to start building relationships until you’re “ready to sell,” you’re already too late.

It’s not just anecdotal. KPMG’s latest M&A pulse report showed 77% of corporate dealmakers expect more activity in 2025 than 2024, and two-thirds say their next deal is already teed up this year. Translation: the shopping lists are being written now. If your name isn’t penciled in, you’re not getting the call.

And those deals aren’t structured like they were ten years ago. Bain’s midyear report showed strategic M&A values up 11% YoY despite tariffs and high rates. Buyers are still buying, but they’re being smarter. Instead of overpaying, they’re closing the gap with minority stakes, joint ventures, and pilots. That’s the “date before you marry” trend we’re seeing everywhere.

Microsoft’s $19.7 billion Nuance acquisition is a textbook case. The partnership started in late 2019. The deal was announced in April 2021, closed in 2022. Roughly a 30-month courtship. That’s how it works now.

So what does this look like IRL?

It usually starts with a spreadsheet and a bit of imagination. Brady’s 40-name list wasn’t just logos. He and his team scored each potential acquirer by adjacency — product overlap, distribution reach, and the practical question: “Could we actually ship a feature together next quarter?”
That last one is a hack worth stealing. If you can’t picture a joint launch, they’re not a real acquirer.

The next stage is light-touch partnerships. The best ones don’t look like PR stunts. They solve a bleeding metric. Dan Reich from Spinback told me how his analytics tool clicked with Buddy Media’s distribution. Instead of chasing another VC term sheet, they merged. Thirteen months later, Salesforce paid $725 million for the combined company.

Notice the sequencing there: lightweight partnership → embedded value → acquisition. No auction required.

By the one-year mark, the founders who play this right have budget owners on both sides talking to each other. That’s the part people underestimate: corp-dev doesn’t drive deals, the business units do. If your sponsor inside the acquirer owns a P&L, the rest is mechanics.

And then in the last six months, the options open up. Sometimes it’s a JV. Sometimes it’s a minority check. Sometimes it’s simply a convertible note that buys you time while you keep competitors at bay. Meta’s small stake in EssilorLuxottica this year is exactly that move. A structured way to lock in alignment without forcing a full acquisition.

The quiet truth: these steps aren’t flashy. They don’t hit TechCrunch. But they’re what gets you bought.

Of course, I’ve seen the other side too; the mistakes that stall or sink a deal.

Alon Talmor from Ask-AI had a COO candidate back out mid-fundraise after he’d already paraded him to investors (more on that convo here). The round nearly collapsed. Mustafa Al-Adhami from Astek Diagnostics spent weeks educating VCs who were never going to invest; they were just fishing for intel (more on this here) . 

And in one of my own exits, we nearly lost the deal because of an unresolved partner issue we hadn’t cleaned up pre-sale. I’ll tell you, nothing focuses your mind like watching a buyer hesitate over something you could have fixed months earlier.

That’s why I tell founders: lock down your talent, don’t waste cycles with tourists, and keep your house clean before diligence ever starts. Buyers forgive a lot of things, but not chaos.

Here’s the part that sticks with me: the founders who win these outcomes don’t look like they’re “for sale.” They look like partners. They’re already inside the acquirer’s Slack, running pilots, solving KPIs. By the time corp-dev shows up, the decision is half-made.

This is where founders underestimate the compounding effect of early moves. One cold LinkedIn message turns into a pilot. One pilot turns into a weekly working session. One working session turns into trust. And trust is the currency of M&A.

So here’s my advice if you’re thinking about your next chapter:

• Start before you think you’re ready.
• Map the buyers.
• Run the pilots.
• Keep three conversations warm.

Because the founders who wait for the “for sale” sign never get the price or the partner they want.

This is the playbook we’re running with founders every week. It works if you start early. Hit me up

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