Before you take that step most people never dare to take, a lot has probably already happened. Maybe you’ve been lying awake at night, too wired up to sleep because your idea feels too good to waste time sleeping. Maybe you’ve spent every waking hour over the past year thinking about your idea, every bit of free time building on it, and every conversation pitching it. It won’t let go of you—so you have to let go of something else. Your safe job, for instance. Because doing anything else would go against your brain’s synapses, your gut’s vibrations, and your cells’ very autofagy.
Maybe it’s not even the idea itself that’s as brilliant as your unbalanced behavior suggests. Maybe it’s the idea of following your idea - the freedom it promises - that keeps you absent by day and awake by night. Because we all know that the first idea will evolve, crumble, dissolve, and pivot. But the vision and ambition of having your own company - with your own rules, culture, and values - stand firm like the concrete pillar in the middle of a shifting exhibition hall.
That leap throws you into the hardest and most beautiful thing there is: bootstrapping. Every penny matters, every customer interaction counts. Soon you find yourself in the capital chase anyway. Because you think you need capital to grow. Capital to keep up. Capital to deliver on customer promises you can’t yet fulfill. Capital to create even more promises for even more customers. A spiral of cost-based scalability. Bootstrapping is hard - and slow - and in the tech world, “slow” is a dirty word.
You prepare a pitch deck filled with hockey-stick graphs, bold projections, roadmaps, team achievements, and a market slide proving it’s a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. At the investor meeting, you’re inevitably asked:
“What’s your exit strategy?”
What is your exit strategy? Really. Do you even want one?
That thing you couldn’t stop thinking about, the dream that kept you awake - you’re now supposed to have a plan to leave it? Within 5–7 years, tops. Then comes the exit. Because how else will the investors get their return? Their funds must close within ten years, and a few of those years have probably almost passed. You just stepped into the freedom you’ve been craving - the autonomy to create something with your own hands and mind. And now you’re expected to plan your departure.
It’s like standing at the altar with the love of your life and, in your wedding vows, including a detailed plan for when and how the divorce will happen.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to create a strategy for building a company you don’t want to exit? A strategy focused on freedom, creativity, and longevity. I call this antithesis to the exit strategy an exist strategy. The focus is on continuing to exist—not on having a future deadline for when it all ends.
Let’s compare these two strategies that rarely coexist.
The purpose of an exit strategy is to build fast, to sell fast. The focus is on valuation, growth, and selling the company.
The purpose of an exist strategy is to build slowly and develop resilience. The focus shifts to purpose, profitability, and sustainability.
The driving force behind an exit strategy is quick financial gain. Prestige serves as the engine.
The driving force behind an exist strategy is self-sufficiency, freedom, and the joy of creation. It’s a shift from “How much can we cash out?” to “How can we keep creating value?”. It’s a shift from an external ego to an internal one.
Culture is built differently too.
In an exit strategy, hype, pace, and reporting stress dominate - people become KPIs, and meaning is replaced by momentum. Everything is about growing fast enough to be sold, no matter the cost. Fake it ‘til you make it!
In an exist strategy, the culture revolves around creativity, purpose, and endurance - about building something that lasts. Here, both people and the company grow in line with their purpose, not their valuation.
Success in an exit strategy is measured by the size of your latest funding round or company valuation - or by your exit-valuation, if you’re lucky enough not to “exit” via bankruptcy.
An exist strategy measures success in survival, learning, and quality of life. Success is the journey, not the end of the journey.
Failure in an exit strategy is catastrophic - it means lost valuation and often triggers an unstoppable downward spiral. I’ve been here, and it’s a slippery slope.
Failure happening in an exist strategy is evolution. A slow-growing, solidly built company is easy to steer. Its ear is closer to the customer track than to the investor track, and its entire mindset is prepared to handle failure for what it truly is: inevitable and full of opportunity.
A company with an exit strategy plays to win.
But as Simon Sinek writes in The Infinite Game, true business is a game without an end - and an exist strategy is designed to keep you playing tomorrow, too. It’s a strategy that fits reality, not the hype of tomorrow’s promises.
Unless you’re planning to move to a tropical island and sip Pisco Sours after your exit - which you’re not planning because you know you’ll be itching to get back in the game - I’d argue you should ditch your exit strategy and start existing instead. It would shift your mindset and all decisions along the way.
Do you want to take this company as your partner in bull and bear - to build when no one believes, and stand firm when the market shakes?
Do you want to love the vision more than the valuation, and choose freedom over venture capital?
I do.
I hope you enjoyed this weeks piece. I know these two strategies are not mutually exclusive nor completely exhaustive. But this isn’t a BCG report, it’s a way to shed light on a different approach, and a different path. It may help you nudge your own mindset into something that makes more sense for you. To find your own path.
Maybe you think I’m arguing against venture capital. I’m not. I’m arguing against becoming addicted to it. I believe there is sober capital out there. I’m not against alcohol, I’m just against becoming an alcoholic. Next blog post might be around this topic. How do you navigate venture capital, reap the possibilities of it while staying sober and true to your values and vision. We’ll see. My week-end creativity decides.
If you have a better idea of what I should cover next week, or if you want to talk to me about anything I have or haven’t written - please feel free to reach out. Connect with me on Linkedin and fire away a DM.
A big thanks to all of you who have shared my newsletter with others. That means a lot.
Till next friday (or our conversation on Linkedin),
Jacob Kihlbaum
