Your Exit Slide Needs Real Comps, Not Dream Buyers

Every real estate listing includes "comps" — a handful of similar homes nearby that sold recently, used to justify the asking price.

Nobody puts up a two-bedroom bungalow and compares it to a penthouse three states away. The agent finds homes like yours, sold close to you, sold recently. That's what makes the number believable.

If a listing showed up with no comps at all, you'd assume the price was invented. Made up on the spot. A number with nothing underneath it.

Buyers don't trust prices without comparables. They trust patterns.

Investors work the same way when they look at your exit slide.

They're not asking whether your company could theoretically be worth something someday. They're asking whether there's a pattern — other companies like yours, in markets like yours, that got bought by someone. Real transactions. Recent ones, ideally. If you can't find the dollar amount, that's fine, just show the acquisition happened. Activity in the space is the signal.

What doesn't work is naming three enormous companies as your likely buyers when none of them have any reason to know you exist. It reads the same as a house with no comps — a number pulled from nowhere, dressed up to sound impressive.

Investors aren't looking for a fantasy buyer. They're looking for evidence that an exit is a normal thing that happens to companies like yours, not a miracle that happens to be yours.

One slide. Fifteen seconds. Real comps, not dream logos.

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More on this in The Pitch Deck Book: https://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Deck-Book-Business-Investors/dp/B098PKPL73

Composite characters, invented companies. The mistakes are real; the people aren't.