An exit strategy is the planned path to liquidity for founders and investors, typically one of four routes: IPO, acquisition, secondary sale, or wind-down. It is shaped early by fundraising choices, cap-table structure, and which investors are at the table, and reviewed periodically as the company evolves and market conditions shift. It is the part of company strategy most founders defer thinking about until they're already constrained by the choices they made years earlier.
The four primary exit paths, in rough order of frequency: acquisition (the most common exit for venture-backed startups, accounting for the majority of successful outcomes), secondary sale (existing shareholders sell to new investors or via tender offer, p...