2016 changed my life. It was the year I sold my startup, Partpic, to Amazon.
In the decade since, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that exit. What it gave me. What it took from me. And what I wish I had understood before I was in the middle of it.
A handful of companies I invested in as an angel investor have exited as well. I’ve now seen several different versions of exits up close. In my current role as Managing Partner of Collab Capital, exits are no longer an abstract exercise in a spreadsheet, they are real, approaching, and consequential.
When people ask me how it felt to sell my company, I usually describe it as bittersweet.
Screenshot from the Techcrunch article that announced the launch of “Part Finder”
The bright side was meaningful.
We delivered a market-beating return to our investors in just over a year from their investment. I fought to ensure every member of my team secured a full-time, high-paying role at Amazon, and several are still thriving there a decade later. My executive team each received a life-changing financial outcome in our late 20s, setting us up to create generational shifts for our families and communities. Unlike many acquisitions, we also saw our product through to launch.
I also achieved a deeply personal goal as well. My Papa Bill, my grandfather who spent his whole life working with his hands, farming and building things struggled to find the right parts when something broke. I built Partpic so he could take a picture of a part and instantly find a replacement. When I captured his raw reaction the first time he used Part Finder in the Amazon app, watching him light up as it actually worked, I felt like I had built something that mattered beyond the metrics, the headlines, or the cap table.
“This is amazing!” - Papa Bill
The bitter side was harder to process.
During the negotiation, I was bullied in ways I didn’t have the experience or leverage to push back against. The acquiring team made last-minute changes to terms I thought were settled. Most notably, in the final hours of the deal, Amazon added a gag order that prevented me from sharing my story publicly for more than a year. My team and I were even restricted from updating our LinkedIn profiles during that time.
These early dynamics turned out to be a preview of my three-year stint at Amazon. I had long dreamed of a billion-dollar exit, so coming up a few zeros short was a real disappointment. What should have been a celebratory and joyful season was instead marked by secrecy, doubt, and quiet disappointment.
One question has stayed with me for ten years: what would have needed to be true for me to walk away from my exit with joy?
After years of investing and many conversations with exited founders, I rarely hear anyone describe their exit experience as joyful. Successful, maybe. Financially meaningful, sometimes. But joyful? Almost never.
That’s why I’m launching this Substack.
Here, I will explore the truth behind exits. Drawing from my own experience, exits I’ve been involved with as an investor, and exits unfolding in the news, I will focus on the story behind the story. How these outcomes actually come together. How founders and stakeholders experience the process. What they wish they had known sooner. What life looks like on the other side. And what decisions can be made early to shape that outcome more intentionally.
Joy in an exit has less to do with the size of the outcome and more to do with how much clarity, agency, and alignment a founder has throughout the process.
It shows up in the questions asked early, the tradeoffs made consciously, the expectations set with partners, investors, and acquirers, and the space created to imagine what comes after.
This newsletter is for founders who want more than a “successful” exit. They want an intentional one. One grounded in clarity, alignment, and yes…joy.
An exit is not just a financial event. It is a personal one. And it deserves more honesty, context, and care than it usually gets.
Why Subscribe
Subscribe to The Joyful Exit if you want to be better prepared for the most consequential moment of your entrepreneurial journey.
This newsletter is for you if:
You are building a company and thinking ahead to how an eventual exit might actually feel, not just how it might look on paper.
You are in the middle of an exit and want more context, language, and perspective to navigate the process and come out whole and happy on the other side.
You have exited already and are still processing the experience, wondering if your mixed emotions were normal.
You want honest reflections from someone who has been through an exit as a founder and an an investor.
I will share reflections, lessons, and stories designed to help founders approach exits with more clarity, agency, and intention.
If these are questions you are already carrying, or ones you know you will face someday, I hope this space is useful as you think them through.
Excited for this!
Welcome to substack, Jewel!