€25 million.Then €675 million.
Same company. Same bidder. Three years apart.
Ralph Pöttinger helps founder-CEOs build Exit Value systematically — so that when the offer comes, they hold the power to choose.
Every founder exits.
Illness is an exit.
Age is an exit.
A market that moves on is an exit.
A buyer who names the price is an exit.
A sale on terms you designed yourself is an exit.
Only one of those is a decision.
What separates them is a single number.
It is built, not found.
EXIT VALUE
Enterprise Value is what your company is worth to a buyer. Exit Value is what that is worth to you.
Build enough of it and you stop being an owner who has to.
You become an owner who can.
Four results from real engagements
You have spent years building the asset. You have spent almost no time designing what it is for.
Most founders optimise the business. Very few architect their own optionality. And you only find out which one mattered on the day someone puts an offer in front of you.
The error leverage.
At €5 million in revenue you absorb a mistake. At €500 million the same mistake costs nine figures and cannot be fixed on the spot.
The scaling ceiling.
You have to be at the front of everything, permanently. That works — right up until it doesn't. And it is exhausting long before it stops working.
The blind spot.
You have never seen a company larger than your own from the inside. So nobody has ever shown you what the next level looks like.
There is one number most founders never deliberately manage.
Not the one your accountant reports. Not the one a buyer opens with.
Enterprise Value is what your company is worth to a buyer. Exit Value is what that is worth to you.
The difference is structure, timing and tax — and it is routinely larger than the difference between a good and a bad negotiation.
Maximise Exit Value and you gain something more useful than money. You gain the power to choose.
- — Raise capital on your terms — or don't raise at all
- — Take liquidity off the table without giving up control
- — Sell all of it, part of it, or none of it
- — Never be forced to sell to the one competitor you don't like
- — Never chase the one half-motivated investor
- — Never be cornered into a decision you didn't want
You cannot be cornered.
That is what Exit Value actually buys.
Nobody else is trying to do this.
Even the best matchmaker in the world cannot arrange a spectacular wedding for someone with no teeth, no job and bad breath. Even the worst matchmaker can place George Clooney.
Most founders go to market before building the asset. An M&A adviser optimises the transaction. Nobody optimises the conditions under which the transaction becomes worth having.
| Auditor | Interim manager | M&A adviser | Exit Architect | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Objective | A signed set of accounts | Fill a gap in the org | A deal on the asset you hand them | Maximise Exit Value |
| Horizon | backwards | months | the transaction | years before the transaction |
| Who benefits | compliance | operations | the fee | the owner |
I work with all of them. They are the tools. None of them is the architect.
The offer
One founder. One day. One five-year plan.
You send me what you would send a banker. I come with an opinion. We spend a day on how the capital market sees your company today, what you actually want, and which transactions are achievable over the next five years to get you there.
You leave with a plan. Bound, with your name on it.
Vienna · Munich · Zurich · London · New York · Singapore
Legacy & Liquidity →The person
Why me
I spent my early career on the sell side in London, then became a licensed private equity portfolio manager on the buy side. Investment banking taught me how transactions happen. Private equity taught me what happens in the years before one becomes possible.
Then I watched my father — one of the most capable investors I have ever known — lose almost everything he had built, because he never prepared for the end of it. He wanted to pass it to me. By the time that moment came, there was almost nothing left.
I learned what happens to a family when a builder loses the power to choose.
More about me →Proof
Five founders. Five completely different problems.
AEROCOMPACT
He turned down €25m. Three years later the same bidder came back at €675m.
Read →MOUNTAIN LODGES OF THE WORLD
82 years old, 47%, on the wrong continent. Months later he controlled a chain twice the size.
Read →PGA GROUP
He came to negotiate how much he would give up. He left owning more than when he started.
Read →Four minutes
How much choice do you actually have?
Twelve questions. Four minutes. Most founders discover they can answer fewer of them than they expected — not because they built badly, but because nobody ever asked.
Take the Power to Choose Score →