Early Exits are a Natural Consequence of the Internet

Basil Peters is a Techvibes Guest Contributor.

Whenever I hear an entrepreneur, or angel investor, say “early exit” they have a huge smile on their face. Even my VC friends beam when they talk about getting lucky with early exits. Almost everyone wins in an early exit – the entrepreneurs, the employees and the angel investors certainly do. I do acknowledge there might be times when an early exit might not good for the venture capital investors.

When I did my first post on early exits last week – all of the comments were negative. Google produces surprisingly few hits on the keywords “early exits”. More common are the keywords “built to flip” – and most of that writing is also negative. So what’s going on here? In my opinion, it’s just a byproduct of our human resistance to change – to progress. The internet has accelerated everything – product and company development cycles, investor time horizons and employee attention spans.

In this article, I develop the idea that early exits are a natural consequence of the internet. And that the trend is still accelerating. The internet has given entrepreneurs an unprecedented opportunity to rapidly launch and exit their startups. The most successful entrepreneurs, directors and investors will find ever better ways to design and execute early exits.