What an exit teaches you about building
Selling a company is the closest thing you get to an audit of your own judgement. Every decision you made lands in a spreadsheet, and the market tells you, without much kindness, which ones mattered.
What surprised me was how few of them did. A small number of quiet, boring choices compounded for years. Most of the rest, including the ones I was proudest of at the time, turned out to be noise.
These are the notes I wish I had before the first time, written for the founder who is building the thing they might one day sell, or keep.