28A Your Exit Strategy

As far as my exit strategy goes, I think it will be longer in the future than five years. I think in five years I would still have the business, because I would still be very young and still be relatable with my market segment which gives me a competitive advantage. In five years, I will be 25, and I will be recently out of graduate school assuming I do not change my plans. The business will still have a lot of growing to do, and I think that would be something I should be responsible for as opposed to selling it quite yet. However, in the long term I do think it is something I would sell, probably in more like 10 years. This is because when I am 30 years old, I will likely be in a different career altogether, and may not live in Gainesville anymore. Unless I was planning to follow this business venture around, I probably would not be able to execute it to its fullest potential. This is when I would sell it to someone who could, such as a larger company that could use the technology and ideas in their own ventures. As far as growth intentions, when I was considering growth in previous exercises, I did not really consider my exit strategy at all. I was writing under the assumption that I would be with the business venture forever, which is obviously not practical. Considering the exit strategy I just claimed, my growth strategy would be a little revised. I do not think I would personally be able to grow the business outside of Gainesville because I would not be following the business around so to speak, since my main career would be something different.