Every entrepreneur has dreamed of striking it rich by selling their company for millions or even billions of dollars. From Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp for a mind-blowing $19 billion, to Microsoft’s $7.5 billion buy of GitHub, the tech industry is full of startup success stories.

In reality, however, achieving your startup goals will require a great deal of forethought and strategic planning. Just as buildings need to have well-built, clearly defined exits, startup founders need to establish a well-built, clearly defined exit strategy for their company—whether that means going public in an IPO, or selling the company in an M&A deal.

Along the way, you’ll need to bust some of the common misconceptions surrounding M&A opportunities. In this article, we’ll discuss the realities behind 6 of the most common exit strategy myths.

In March of this year, we hosted the webinar “Start with the Exit in Mind: Building M&A Value from Startup to Exit,” helping small businesses make the most of their opportunities in mergers and acquisitions. During the webinar, it was mentioned that knowing how you want to exit is almost as important as knowing how you want your business to operate.

Preparing for your exit early doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily make an early exit—it means that you’ll be ready for an M&A deal whenever it arrives. In this article, we’ll discuss 3 reasons why you should get a jump on the M&A planning process as soon as possible.

At SecureDocs, our employees come from a variety of experiences and backgrounds, each with a unique set of skills and talents that align with our overall mission of providing simple, smart document management solutions.

We’re proud of the team we’ve assembled, and we think it’s about time you get to know the people that are innovative, agile, and committed to fulfilling the needs of our customers.

This month we’re catching up with Kristen Johansen, VP Product Development at SecureDocs. Kristen plays a critical role at SecureDocs, working to ensure that the products and services offered align with what customers need to be successful.

Virtual Data Room (VDR) security is critical, especially given the sensitive nature of the documents that VDRs were designed to protect. Just about every company has confidential data that needs to be kept out of the wrong hands, whether it’s customer data, financial records, trade secrets, or other private company information. That's why SecureDocs has developed a range of security features that ensure your documents stay safe.

SecureDocs recently hosted a webinar entitled An Overview of SecureDocs Security Features, providing a step-by-step demo of how to take advantage of features like customizable NDAs, audit logs, permission-based user roles, Q&A, and other safeguards designed to keep confidential information secure within your virtual data room.

Below is the full list of the security features discussed during the webinar:

Startup founders know that they have to work hard and do their research in order to stand a chance at success. We know you’re busy growing your company—that’s why we’ve compiled this list of valuable information for you to peruse.

In this article, we’ll go over some of the best books, blogs, and other resources (in no particular order) that we’ve found to be highly useful for startups. Whether you’ve just made your first sale or you’re about to be acquired, the insights you find in the materials below are sure to be of use for startups big and small.

At SecureDocs, our employees come from a variety of experiences and backgrounds, each with a unique set of skills and talents that align with our overall mission of providing simple, smart document management solutions.

We’re proud of the team we’ve assembled, and we think it’s about time you get to know the people that are innovative, agile, and committed to fulfilling the needs of our customers.

This month we’re catching up with Brendan Shanny, Software Engineer at SecureDocs. Brendan plays an important role working to improve the SecureDocs software by listening to customer feedback and incorporating new technologies.

In the past 20 years, outmoded paper-based processes have been digitized and brought online, significantly improving business workflows. To facilitate the sharing of sensitive business documents, many companies are making use of a virtual data room: an online database for storing confidential and sensitive information and sharing it with third parties. 

In 2012, following an $11.1 billion takeover of Autonomy a year earlier, HP recorded a record of around $8.8 billion. Following an internal investigation, HP alleged that Autonomy had “accounting irregularities” that had contributed to overpricing their business (which Autonomy strenuously denied). At around the same time, shareholders sued HP for the losses they incurred, eventually settling for $100 million.

What a mess!

It begs the question: if a giant like HP can’t get their due diligence right, what hope is there for other businesses? In this case, as in many other disastrous M&A actions, it’s the things you don’t know that cause the most significant problems.

Virtual data rooms are used for a variety of reasons in a range of industries. Whether you’re preparing for fundraising, considering taking your company public, or looking to take control of corporate documents scattered across multiple desks, hard drives, and shared folders, there are many reasons to use a virtual data room. Here are a few of the most common VDR use cases.

Virtual data rooms have become one of the most popular options for sharing documents within an enterprise environment. The most common use of virtual data rooms is to facilitate short-term financial transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, making documents available during the due diligence process. However, virtual data rooms are equally well suited for corporate document management, thanks to a variety of features that make storing, organizing, and sharing important documents simple and secure.

Here are five ways the long term use of corporate document management software such as virtual data rooms can benefit your business.