Build to Sell

Most business books teach you how to build a company that lasts. This one teaches you how to build one that sells.

Scott Geyer has sat across the table from buyers who wanted his product, his customers, even his patents - and walked away anyway. Not because the business was bad. Because of the baggage: the employees nobody wanted to inherit, the inventory rotting in a warehouse, the tangled cap table full of co-founders, spouses, and egos who all needed to agree before a good offer could become a closed deal.

Build to Sell is the system born from those failed negotiations - a radically lean blueprint for building a company that's irresistible to buyers from day one, because there's nothing attached to it that they don't want.

Four people, not forty. Off-the-shelf tools instead of custom code nobody else can maintain. A "decide and report" culture where each leader owns their call - no committees, no consensus, no drama. Equal exit bonuses instead of a cap table built for a fight. A three-year roadmap that turns "build a company" into "build an asset" from the very first whiteboard session.

Through the story of Theo - a founder who does it right - and the cautionary tale of Maya, who doesn't, this fast, funny, no-bullet-points business book hands you the entire playbook: picking the right idea, hiring a team built to disband, pricing for traction instead of profit, branding in seven days, and walking away from the closing table with nothing left unresolved.

If you've ever built something a buyer loved - and lost the deal anyway - this book is the fix.

Build it lean. Build it clean. Build it to be sold.