Decide how to respond to an offer to acquire my company
A clear-headed framework for evaluating inbound acquisition interest, your alternatives, and how to reply without losing leverage.
The prompt
Help me think through an approach to buy my company.
Who approached and how: [ACQUIRER, who reached out, what they said]
Offer or signals so far: [price, structure, cash vs. stock, earn-out, or "just interest"]
Our situation: [revenue, growth, runway, recent valuation, momentum]
Stakeholders: [co-founders, investors and their preferences, key employees]
What I personally want: [e.g. "keep building", "liquidity", "the mission to survive", "time with family"]
Alternatives: [raise again, keep growing, other potential buyers]
Do this:
1. Clarify what the offer actually means: headline vs. what founders, employees, and investors would each receive, given liquidation preferences [CAP TABLE DETAILS] and any earn-out or retention conditions.
2. Compare against my realistic alternatives over 2-4 years, including the risk that growth stalls.
3. Surface what I'd be giving up: control, team, product direction, what happens to employees and customers.
4. List the questions to ask the acquirer to judge seriousness (strategic rationale, who's sponsoring, timing, prior deals).
5. Explain how to keep leverage: running a process, not sharing sensitive data too early, NDAs, and when to bring in a banker or advisor.
6. Draft a reply that keeps the door open without committing.
7. Identify who I must tell and when (board, co-founders), given my duties to shareholders.
General information only: speak with a corporate lawyer and financial advisor before responding substantively or sharing confidential information.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Thinking & Decisions prompts
What to fill in
- ACQUIRER, who reached out, what they said
- revenue, growth, runway, recent valuation, momentum
- co-founders, investors and their preferences, key employees
- raise again, keep growing, other potential buyers
- CAP TABLE DETAILS
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Chain-of-Thought structure (Chain-of-thought prompting). A chain-of-thought prompt asks the model to work through a problem step by step before giving its answer, which tends to help on reasoning, planning and multi-part questions.
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