Ep 03 - Jan Heybroek - From Startup to Successful Exit - Lessons from a Healthcare Entrepreneur
Episode Summary
Jan Heybroek, partner at TechCXO's exec ops practice, shares his 17-year journey building and selling a medical market research company to a medical education firm in 2021. He discusses M&A negotiation tactics, the importance of transparency during due diligence, post-acquisition integration challenges, and healthcare industry trends including AI's role in diagnostics and the shift toward personalized medicine.
Key Quotes
"Set your walkaway point before negotiations begin. You can probably negotiate two to three times on major issues, but after that you risk the deal falling apart."
"The M&A process took 40-50% extra time on top of normal CEO responsibilities—think 110-120 hours per week. Until the money is wired, the deal isn't done."
"Only about 7% of startups reach 10 years profitably, and of those, maybe a quarter achieve an exit—so single digits of all companies started actually sell."
"Transparency during due diligence was key: I gave buyers guest access to our systems and said 'come look, warts and all.' That built confidence and accelerated the process."
Transcript
Hi welcome to Tales From The Sky Lounge, a podcast about consulting, management and venture investing. We get out there in the world and we talk to people who are making it happen, traveling, seeing the customers and having experience in the market. So today we have Yan Heybrook in the Sky Lounge. Welcome Yan.
Hey Todd, good to see you again.
Good to see you. So Yan, you are in the exec ops practice at TechCXO. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background?
Sure, thank you for having me. It's good to do this, not in the Sky Lounge but in the comfort of our own home offices. I'm a partner with exec ops for TechCXO and help scaling companies do a better job at scaling up than what I experienced myself being an entrepreneur, working as a CEO or chief revenue officer, to really bring best practices to these companies and help them accelerate more quickly.
So one of the really significant things that formed your experience in your career is you had a company that you started and ran. You want to tell us a little bit about that?
Want to go deeper?
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