How to Get in Front of Buyers Before You're for Sale

Brady Nolan, co-founder of Till, didn't start an M&A process. He started a spreadsheet. He and his co-founder were in a tough spot — Series A conversations weren't breaking their way, capital markets felt like quicksand — so instead of grinding harder on the raise, they ran their own outreach to potential acquirers. Forty of them.

Best Egg was row 27. One LinkedIn message later, Brady said he "immediately knew it was the right home." Eighteen months after that, Best Egg bought Till.

The Timeline Founders Always Underestimate

That 18-month window isn't an outlier. The average from first handshake to signed LOI runs up to 21 months. Not eight weeks. Not a quarter. Nearly two years.

If you wait to start building relationships until you're "ready to sell," you're already too late.

The data backs this up. KPMG's M&A pulse report showed 77% of corporate dealmakers expect more activity than the prior year, and two-thirds say their next deal is already teed up. The shopping lists are being written now. If your name isn't penciled in, you're not getting the call.

Those deals are also structured differently than they were a decade ago. Bain's midyear M&A report showed strategic M&A values up 11% year-over-year despite tariffs and high rates. Buyers are still buying — they're just closing the gap with minority stakes, joint ventures, and pilots before committing to full acquisitions. Date before you marry.

Microsoft's $19.7 billion Nuance acquisition is the textbook case. The partnership started in late 2019. The deal was announced in April 2021 and closed in 2022. A roughly 30-month courtship. That's how it works now.

The Three-Stage Playbook

Stage 1: Map the buyers before you need them

Brady's 40-name list wasn't just logos. He and his team scored each potential acquirer by adjacency — product overlap, distribution reach, and one practical question: Could we actually ship a feature together next quarter?

That last one is a hack worth stealing. If you can't picture a joint launch, they're not a real acquirer.

How to build the list:

• Start with at least 40 names — breadth beats depth at this stage
• Score each by product overlap, distribution reach, and strategic fit
• Ask honestly: could we ship something together next quarter?
• Work every row, not just the obvious logos — Best Egg was row 27

Stage 2: Run lightweight partnerships that solve a real problem

The best early partnerships don't look like PR stunts. They solve a bleeding metric.

Dan Reich from Spinback built an analytics tool that clicked with Buddy Media's distribution. Instead of chasing another VC term sheet, they merged. Thirteen months later, Salesforce paid $725 million for the combined company.

The sequencing is straightforward: lightweight partnership → embedded value → acquisition. No auction required.

Stage 3: Use structured instruments to lock in alignment

In the final six months before a deal crystallizes, options open up.

• A joint venture can formalize what's already working
• A minority check buys time while keeping competitors at bay
• A convertible note preserves optionality without forcing a full sale

Meta's small stake in EssilorLuxottica is exactly that move — a structured way to lock in alignment without forcing a full acquisition prematurely. None of these steps are flashy. They don't hit TechCrunch. But they're what gets you bought.

The Mistakes That Stall Deals

The other side of this is worth naming.

Alon Talmor from Ask-AI had a COO candidate back out mid-fundraise after he'd already introduced him to investors. The round nearly collapsed. Mustafa Al-Adhami from Astek Diagnostics spent weeks educating VCs who were never going to invest — they were just fishing for competitive intel.

And in M&A processes more broadly, deals die over things founders could have fixed months earlier: unresolved partner disputes, cap table tangles, key-person dependencies that surface in diligence.

Buyers forgive a lot of things, but not chaos.

How to fix it:

• Lock down your leadership team before you start conversations
• Don't burn cycles on tourists who want information but have no intent to transact
• Clean up unresolved legal, partner, and cap table issues before diligence starts
• Keep three warm conversations active at all times so you're never negotiating from zero

What Winning Founders Actually Look Like

The founders who win these outcomes don't look like they're "for sale." They look like partners. They're already inside the acquirer's Slack, running pilots, solving KPIs. By the time corp-dev shows up, the decision is half-made.

This is the compounding effect of early moves that most founders underestimate.

• One cold LinkedIn message turns into a pilot
• One pilot turns into a weekly working session
• One working session turns into trust
• Trust is the currency of M&A

The founders who wait for the "for sale" sign never get the price or the partner they want.