Acquisitions, IPOs and how UK founders and investors cash out.
Due diligence is the buyer's structured investigation of a target company's legal, financial and operational position before a deal completes, and what it turns up routinely changes the final price, not just whether a sale goes ahead.
The AIM-listed group is paying £50,000 in cash plus 4% of revenues for five years, capped at £350,000, and taking on payroll of about £38,000 a month.
An earn-out splits the purchase price so part is paid on completion and the rest only if the business hits agreed targets afterwards, which means how those targets are defined often matters as much as the headline price.
A secondary sale lets an existing shareholder, an early investor or an employee holding shares, sell some of their stake to a new or existing buyer without the company itself raising any new money, and a new FCA-backed private market called PISCES is making this more structured in the UK.
Most UK startup exits happen through a trade sale or acquisition rather than a stock market listing, and how much founders and investors actually take home depends heavily on the terms agreed years earlier.
