
Rick Smith
Five-time CFO and founder of Bonfire Advisory, author of "Six Months to the Sale" and "Demystifying the Role of the CFO in Venture and Growth Stage Companies"
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Sep 17, 2026
How to Sell Your Company: A Multi-Time CFO's Full Playbook | Rick Smith
23:40
23:49
23:54
24:07

CJ GustafsonHOST
Can you break down the differences of selling to strategics versus PE firms and running a sales process with both of those parties involved?

Rick SmithGUEST
And I'm going to go in so many directions here that you're going to see the chaos of trying to get this to work.

Rick SmithGUEST
The nuances are not small nuances and I am going to generalize here, but let's just start off with the fact that PE firms have plenty of deal focused staff who can move quickly.

Rick SmithGUEST
If they are a serial acquirer, which there are plenty of strategic serial acquirers out there, they might have a corp dev team.
31 MINS LATER
F
55:09Fat JoeSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I don't know how they do it.
Inside the "Triangle of Doom”: How Great CFOs Navigate CEO and Board Dynamics
13:42
13:54
13:58
62:55

Rick SmithGUEST
And if you ask many VC firms or CEOs to describe that rockstar CFO that they want to hire, they'll gravitate towards the same generic description over and over again.

Rick SmithGUEST
Number two, somebody who scaled multiple businesses and grew their valuations by 10x.

Rick SmithGUEST
Number three, somebody who's super polished in board meetings and can answer 100% of the detailed questions that are thrown at them on the fly.
49 MINS LATER

CJ GustafsonHOST
Out of all the leases that you've undertaken, how many of them do you actually get to move in on time?