Roughly two years before we sold NOVOS to an EOT, we pulled out of a deal at term sheet stage with a larger group.
Everything was lined up. Buyer, lawyers, the works… Sam and I were away at an event together talking about it and thought we were meant to feel something e.g relief, excitement, the early shape of a different life. Instead what I felt was small.
We were selling because we were scared, not necessarily of failure, but of the next chapter. Of what scaling actually meant, of the operational weight of the years ahead, of whether we had it in us. Selling was the dressed-up version of us flinching, so we walked.
That was quite a hard decision because the number on that term sheet was real, it wasn’t life changing but I was 22 at the time, it was still amazing. The buyer was real. And we said no, not because we had a better offer, but because we knew we were optimising for the wrong thing.
A few months later a legal team introduced us to the Employee Ownership Trust model. And it was one of those rare moments where a structure clicks into the exact shape of what you'd been trying to articulate but couldn't.
We weren't trying to escape NOVOS. We were trying to build it for longer, with less personal risk, without handing it to someone whose first move would be to gut the thing we'd spent years protecting. EOT did that, it let us sell and keep building. It gave the team genuine ownership & it aligned everyone.
So we did it.
But here's the part nobody tells you about an EOT exit and the part I wish someone had told me.
It is not a lump sum. It is not a yacht moment. The money is paid over years, tied to how the business performs, contingent on profit, governed by structures designed to protect the trust. You don't sell and walk into a different life, you sell and stay tethered to the thing you just sold, with skin in a game that now has different rules.
And the rules are the second thing nobody warns you about.
When you've been a founder for years with no board, no investors, no one to report to, the EOT structure is a culture shock you can't really prepare for. Trustee meetings, committees, sign-offs on decisions you used to make in a Slack thread. The reporting cadence of a company three times your size, mapped onto a business that built its identity on speed.
For months I'd catch myself thinking I own this thing why am I asking for permission? And the answer is: because you don't, anymore, not in the way you did. You traded sole control for a model you believe in more, and that trade is real both ways.
I'd still make the same decision, just I'd make it faster.
But I tell people now when they ask about the exit, when they want the trendy founder version where the wire transfer hits and the world tilts… that the version of wealth I walked into wasn't the one I'd imagined.
It’s longer, quieter, unpredictable, more tied to performance than I expected.
It was also the right one at the time.
The takeaway:
The exits that look best on socials aren't always the ones that build the longest game. We pulled out of a deal because we were selling out of fear, and we structured the next one around what we actually wanted: continuity, alignment, optionality, and the right to keep playing.
The cake on the kitchen counter the night we closed had a number on it that didn't match anything in my bank account, and that gap between the number and the felt reality turned out to be the whole point.
You don't sell to feel rich.
You sell to buy the right to keep building, on terms you actually chose.
See you next week.
— Antonio.