Why the Best Exit Outcomes Don’t Come From a Process, But From a Plan

Molten recently hosted an intimate Portfolio CEO Session with Victor Basta, one of Europe’s most experienced M&A advisors, to explore how meaningful exits actually happen, and how companies can position themselves early to maximise their chances at generating life-changing outcomes.

The biggest takeaway? Exits aren’t events. They are the product of long-range thinking, not just performance metrics or market timing. In fact, the most successful companies don’t 'get bought', they set the conditions that make a deal inevitable, compelling, and competitive.

Here are four insights we think every CEO should be thinking about well before they are in market.

Many founders/CEOs assume that the best time to exit is when revenue, growth, or market share hit their peak. But buyers aren’t always looking for peak performance, they’re looking for strategic timing.

Your moment often arrives when your company is uniquely positioned to solve a critical problem or unlock a strategic opportunity for someone else. That might be when your product becomes a dependency in a new ecosystem, when your tech edges out a competitor’s roadmap, or when your brand starts owning a category narrative.

If you're waiting for a perfect set of numbers, you may miss the window when your strategic relevance is highest. And once that passes, the same factors may no longer carry the same weight.

The most successful exits don’t start with a teaser deck or a banker’s outreach. They are the product of long, steady groundwork, sometimes over two years or more, where trust, familiarity, and opportunity value are carefully nurtured.

This might mean showing up in the right thought leadership spaces, developing informal dialogues with senior executives at potential acquirers, or finding ways to make your growth story resonate in their internal strategy conversations.

It’s not about being transactional. It’s about shaping perception over time, so that when the moment is right, there’s already a strong foundation of interest and belief. These are the companies that enter a formal process with leverage, not hope.

Revenue growth will get you in the room, but it won’t close a strategic deal. What buyers really want to understand is why you matter to their future. What are you enabling that they can’t build fast enough themselves? What defensive or offensive advantage do you unlock?

Adding $50m of revenue doesn’t move the needle for a $50Bn revenue acquirer, so it is what happens after that counts, and what future opportunity gets unlocked or accelerated by the transaction? 

This is where founders need to speak the buyer’s language. The conversation isn’t just about TAM and pipeline, it’s about how your platform fits into their growth ambitions, where you reduce risk, and how quickly you integrate into their roadmap.

When you reframe your business through that lens, you’re no longer selling a set of KPIs. You’re offering acceleration, positioning, and long-term value.

One of the most powerful levers founders have is staying “not for sale,” while still being strategically visible.

By engaging with potential buyers early and informally, you build awareness without triggering a transactional dynamic. Over time, that creates a sense of pull, buyers come to you because they’re curious, not because you're on the market.

This might look like regular check-ins with business unit leaders, sharing product updates that map to their priorities, or having quiet conversations about where your categories overlap. Done consistently, it turns warm relationships into high-conviction buyers, ones who have already been sold on your potential long before a deal discussion begins.

Having worked with Artis for several years, we ran our first CEO ‘exit prep’ event 12 months ago and by the end of the year, Molten portfolio companies accounted for 4 of the top 20 EU VC backed exits in 2024 (source: Artis Partners, exits $150m+ based on publicly available information – including PitchBook as at Feb 2025). 

This reflects a deliberate approach to exit readiness and a clear sense of what drives strong results in the exit market. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before - between 2010 and our 2016 IPO Molten’s portfolio produced over 30 exits, which were a very a substantial share of all of the European VC backed exits in that period.

And 2025 is off to a flying start. Already, three of Molten’s portfolio companies have secured exits that will place them in the same group cohort of ‘meaningful’ $150m+ exits for the year.

An exit isn't just about building a great company, it’s about telling the right story to the right people, at the right time. That takes preparation, perspective, and patience.

If you can build those conditions over time, you won’t be looking for a buyer, they’ll already be looking for you.