A veteran Silicon Valley insider provides the first comprehensive guide to developing and executing a startup exit strategy-the secret to ultimate entrepreneurial success

You're facing tough odds as an entrepreneur today. Up to 65 percent of small businesses in the U.S. don't survive more than five years, and the majority of venture-backed startups fail to fully return the money invested in them. The time is now for a new approach to startups, and this first-of-its-kind guide provides it.

If you're ready to embrace the reality that acquisition is the end goal for startups, Exit Path is for you. In these pages, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and M&A expert Touraj Parang argues that starting at the end-i.e., creating and executing an exit strategy as you launch and build your business-is the surest path to ultimate success. You'll learn everything you need to know about the process, including:

• Making a strategic plan
• Developing relationships
• Cultivating champions
• Building capabilities
• Creating leverage
• Negotiating term sheets
• Closing the deal

The methods in Exit Path are based on Parang's real-life experience of having no exit plan when he sold his first startup for pennies on the dollar-then embracing exit planning as soon as he joined his next startup, which was acquired for more than $100 million dollars.

Exit Path answers the most important questions you'll face in the life of your startup: How do you maximize your chance of survival in the startup world? When is the right time to start planning for an exit? How do you make that exit successful? And whose advice should you seek in such matters?

Parang both demystifies and de-stigmatizes the exit process, while providing invaluable lessons on making sure you do it right.