4 Business Acquisition Lessons from Jason Nazar, Founder of Docstoc

Over the last 7 years, Docstoc, an electronic document repository for financial and legal documents, has become a top resource for people looking to start small businesses.

Jason Nazar, Docstoc’s founder, grew the team to 50 people and led the company through a sale to Intuit in December 2013.

The sale generated buzz from virtually every tech journal – TechCrunch, Pando Daily, All Things D, and Forbes all covered the deal from Intuit’s perspective – that it was smart strategic planning for the Silicon Valley software giant to invest in such a valuable asset for small business owners.

What we wanted to see, however, was Nazar’s personal side to the story – what he learned from the business acquisition experience and what advice he would provide to other entrepreneurs.

So we interviewed him on Clarity Live and asked him one simple question: “What did you learn from the business acquisition?” Watch his answer below.

Lesson 1: Be transparent. Don’t play games. You build a reputation for your company and yourself. Why represent yourself as someone who is selling your company when you’re actually not interested?

Lesson 2: Don’t get caught up in the process. You still have an obligation to invest your time with your business. Unless your company is falling apart, and you have to sell, you shouldn’t be 100% in the sale. You still have a team to run.

Lesson 3: Seek advice when necessary. After Nazar received an offer, he worked with CODE Advisors, a Silicon Valley-based team of investment bankers, to navigate the process.

Lesson 4: Don’t get attached to any outcome. Nazar explains that a ‘check’ is likely to spark the following question —”How would this sale affect me personally?” You get caught up with a process and become attached to an outcome that won’t necessarily happen. In many cases, you’ll get a worse deal for your company.