I want to sell my company but my co-founder is against it. What should I do?

Question

We have an offer by a larger software company to buy our business, but my co-founder thinks we shouldn't sell and keep running the company ourselves. We have only three more guys on payroll. We are breaking even with steady revenue growth and good prospects for products still in the pipeline -- but I don't think that we will be able to scale the operation as much as we need to before a larger competitor pushes us out. What would be my best strategy to deal with my co-founder?

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Answers: 1 public & 1 private

Cc0b7b8049
Lawyer

Consult your corporate bylaws and hope you have some sort of dispute resolution clause in the event of a stalemate between the two of you. If you are 50/50 owners and the sale would require a majority of shareholders to agree to sell then each of you effectively has a veto. (If anyone else owns any shares and all you need is a simple majority then perhaps you don't need approval of your co-founder, but that all depends on the specifics of your corporate documents.) If that's the case then you probably can't force the sale, so you'd need to persuade your co-founder that this is the right move.

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