What determines the success of your exit? It certainly isn’t luck

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Kim Väisänen from Takeoff Partners is currently co-authoring a book about exits and everything you should consider if you want to sell your company. Everything being the key word here – the book is a comprehensive how-to guide.

March 2020

“A successful exit is not based on luck but Excels,” says Kim Väisänen from Takeoff Partners.

“It doesn’t just happen by accident. You build towards an exit by working on your company consistently.”

This consistent work amounts to many details and operations as featured in the book called Exit-opas yrittäjälle – näin trimmaat firmasi myyntikuntoon”. Translated into English, the title would read along the lines of the entrepreneur’s guide to exits – how to get your company in shape for sale.

Kim Väisänen’s co-authors for the book are Janne K. Jääskeläinen and Katleena Kortesuo. All three of them are not only seasoned entrepreneurs and board professionals but also established authors of non-fiction.

Katleena Kortesuo highlights that instead of being just a collection of inspirational exit stories, the book is, in fact, a comprehensive guide.

“It’s one heavy brick of a book, because exits are a topic that cannot be covered in a few pages. We are diving into every aspect of preparing your company for an exit from sales and marketing to HR, financials, government, and more.”

Preparing for an exit makes sense even if you are not planning one


Although the book is built around the theme of preparing for an exit, Katleena Kortesuo says it makes a good read for any entrepreneur or board member.

“Compare it to selling your house. Getting your house into a good shape and ready for sale never goes to waste. Even if you never sold it, the process would still have brought value to you.”

The upcoming book stands out from all the other exit books out there in two important ways.

The first one is that it is a Finnish book. The sections that handle governance and legalities are based on the Finnish law, meaning they are directly applicable to Finnish companies.

The second is that the book contains a tremendous amount of concrete instructions in the form of guidelines, bullet points, tables and graphics, for example. The book tells you in great detail, how, exactly, a successful exit is done.

“Exit stories are inspiring to read and best suited to motivate towards making that exit. Our book is meant for the phase that comes after: how to actually get it done,” Katleena Kortesuo concludes.

The book is published by Alma Talent and scheduled to come out in the fall.