Every founder should answer these three questions before exiting – according to an M&A consultant

Saxenhammer

Christian Saxenhammer is the founder of the M&A boutique Saxenhammer. He has successfully advised on over 400 transactions. Here he writes about founder buy-ins.

Those looking to sell their company often search within their own network. Within the industry. Among competitors. People know each other, speak the same language, and know what's involved.

But that's precisely the mistake. The perfect buyer for a company is rarely someone who knows it well. Rather, it's someone who can do something with it that you yourself aren't yet doing. The best buyer thinks bigger than you. And differently.

Many founders underestimate what their company can be worth outside of the established playing field. This isn't due to a lack of ambition, but rather to narrow-minded thinking. M&A doesn't just mean "growing bigger," it means "combining things differently." Finding the right buyer doesn't simply sell their company; it opens a new chapter for themselves, their product, and often the market as well.

Why Dr. Oetker preferred to buy bottle messages rather than brew more beer

In 2020, the Radeberger Group, a subsidiary of Dr. Oetker, acquired the beverage delivery service Flaschenpost. The price: over one billion euros. For a company that, at the time, didn't manufacture its own products but only delivered them. Why this deal?

Because Flaschenpost had something the company lacked: a direct customer interface. Its own digital infrastructure. Real-time data on consumer behavior. Radeberger didn't need any more breweries. It needed access to the future of the beverage market. And Flaschenpost was the vehicle for that.

The best buyer here wasn't a beverage wholesaler. It was a corporation that understood that the true value lies not in the product, but in the platform. From an industry perspective, the acquisition was unusual; from a market perspective, it was brilliant.

Buyers from their own industry primarily see synergies. They integrate, shorten, and optimize. For founders, this often means less autonomy, short earn-out periods, and little cultural fit. In many cases, these buyers also pay less. Because they're not paying for vision, but for synergies.