Earlier business notes
Thinking about leaving the company you built
Practical and personal questions to clarify before exploring an exit, a leadership change or a different founder role.
By Rajiv Sankarlall · Updated
You do not need to be preparing a sale to ask what leaving the company might mean. The question can reveal how much of the business depends on you, which information only you hold and what you want from the next part of your life.
This is a starting point for reflection and preparation. It is not a valuation method or a prediction that a company can be sold. Transaction, ownership and tax questions need the appropriate professional advice for your circumstances.
Make important information findable
Consider whether the people responsible for the company can locate current agreements, customer commitments, financial records and access information. Identify documents that live only in your inbox or processes that rely on your memory.
Give someone responsibility for maintaining the information, with access suited to their role. Start with what the team needs to work responsibly today. You do not have to turn an early question about your future into a full transaction project.
Understand your continuing contribution
Write down what would become difficult if you stepped away. Are customers attached to you personally? Do you make decisions nobody else has the context to make? Are you responsible for work that has never been handed over?
Discuss those dependencies with the people accountable for the business. Some may need a planned transition. Others may reflect a role you still want to hold. Be specific rather than describing yourself as either indispensable or unnecessary.
Give the personal question equal attention
What do you hope leaving would change? Do you want relief from an exhausting role, a different kind of work or time for parts of life you have postponed? Could some of that change happen before an exit?
Also consider what you would miss. The company may provide structure, relationships and a sense of purpose as well as pressure. Write down what you want to carry forward and what you are ready to stop carrying. An imagined next chapter becomes more useful when it includes ordinary days, not just the moment of departure.
Coaching here can help with values, identity and the direction you want to take. It does not replace the professional work involved in a business transaction. For the personal side, read identity beyond the business.