Kim and Todd Saxton: The art of the exit: Our goodbye as next chapter calls

The venture community has many kinds of exits. Some involve folding your company or shutting it down. Some involve selling your company to another organization or taking it public. And some are individual exits.

Folding your company is a painful decision. Letting something go that you have invested a considerable amount of time and energy in can be a major disappointment to you and other stakeholders. But it is far better to recognize insurmountable odds and move to the next thing than to continue wasting energy as a zombie company. It can be helpful to designate someone to make the decision to pull the plug for you. Even better, develop milestones and be willing to fold if you cannot consistently meet them. But having closure and taking the lessons to your next thing can be a healthy decision in the long run.

Of course, we all love the story of the positive exit and the potential for significant returns. But successful exits include a range of outcomes. They can include getting investors back only part of their investment, and in some cases, only certain classes of investors get any money back. Of course, the exits with significant returns are the most fun and can bear fruit for generations. Indianapolis has been fortunate to have a number of these successful exits—from Software Artistry to ExactTarget, Interactive Intelligence, Marcadia, Lessonly and many others too numerous to name.

Indianapolis is fortunate that, in most of these cases, the founders behind any type of exit have stayed here to contribute to the venture community in numerous ways. While it’s great that they will speak and share their story, advise others, and even share their bounty by investing in other startups, who is supporting them in the next phase of their journey?

The grind to build a startup that achieves any kind of exit is exhausting. The founders do need time to recover, rediscover themselves and then figure out what to do next. It would be great to see initiatives to both support them and help facilitate the sharing of their ideas.

Post-exit, some founders take a sabbatical. We are immensely supportive of this approach for many professionals. Traditionally, sabbaticals were a six-month or one-year period of paid time off for academics and researchers. The idea was to take a break, refresh and regain your creativity while building new experiences and research momentum.

More recently, sabbaticals have taken on a broader meaning. More than 75 large employers now offer sabbaticals, typically four weeks off after five years of work. The intent is to give employees a chance to recharge from burnout and feel motivated to contribute more. Over the last year or two, and especially post-COVID, we have had numerous alumni, including exiting founders and leaders ready for a change, reach out to us because they feel unfulfilled. We have encouraged them to take a formal sabbatical, do something different and rediscover the activities that bring them joy. Who knows what you will discover when you do something new and different?

We have other types of individual exits. Sometimes, people are forced out of the companies they founded. Other times, people choose to exit on their own, which brings us to our own journey.

Roughly 27 years ago, about this time of year, we arrived in Indianapolis with our elementary-school-age daughters. We were excited to meet our new community, the place where we intended to raise our family and contribute to a vibrant and growing business and venture community. Indiana University, the Kelley School of Business and the Indianapolis community welcomed us with open arms, and we have thrived. In return, we have tried to give back through our university engagement with students and alumni, and by advising founders, investing in startups, and sharing our knowledge as broadly as we can within and beyond the university. Thank you, IBJ, for giving us another voice for our ideas.

But now, it is time for us to engineer our own exit. This summer, we are retiring from the Kelley School of Business Indianapolis and moving to Buffalo, New York. Family and different career opportunities beckon. Buffalo reminds us of the Indianapolis of 27 years ago. It has begun its renaissance, and we are ready for the challenge of helping to create a resilient venture community there.

To all of you who have supported us, taken the time to share your ideas with us, listened to (tolerated) us, lifted us up, and even read this column, we thank you from the bottom of our collective hearts. This has been an investment on our part that has realized immeasurable returns. We view this as a hugely successful exit from our perspective.

Live long and prosper, and happy trails! If your sabbatical or journey brings you to Buffalo or Niagara Falls, please look us up. Goodbye, Indianapolis—it has been a great run.•

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Kim Saxton is a clinical professor of marketing at IU Kelley School of Business Indianapolis. Todd Saxton is an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at IU Kelley School of Business Indianapolis. They are co-authors of “The Titanic Effect: Successfully Navigating the Uncertainties that Sink Most Startups.”