Most owners think a sale means handing over the keys. There is a middle path: real money off the table today, a meaningful stake kept, and a second sale later.
A partial exit means selling a majority of the business at a fair valuation while keeping between 25% and 50%. The money lands now: mortgage cleared, family secure. The stake stays: you still own a piece of what the business becomes.
The first payday is the day the deal completes: cash for the majority you sell. The second comes three to five years later, when the business, now bigger, better organised and more valuable per pound of profit, sells again to a larger buyer. Your retained stake is paid out then, and because both the business and its multiple have grown, that second cheque is built to compete with the first.
Smaller businesses sell on lower multiples than bigger ones. That simple fact is the engine of the whole model: grow the profit and the multiple re-rates on top of it. An owner who keeps 30% of a business that doubles its profit and improves its multiple can make more from the stake than from the original majority sale. That is the arithmetic behind the phrase you will find on the rest of this site: paid once for what you have built, paid again for what it becomes.
In a Tatu deal the owner’s retained stake sits in the same shares our investors hold. Same shares, same exit, same terms. Nobody rolls a quarter to a half of their life’s work into a business they secretly doubt, which is why serious buyers read a confident rollover as the strongest diligence signal there is. It also means nobody can win at your expense: when the second sale happens, everyone is paid together.
A partial exit suits an owner who wants to de-risk without retiring: someone who would love the security today but is not finished building. It does not suit an owner who wants to be gone by Friday; a buyer backing the existing team needs the team to exist. If a full and immediate exit is what you want, a trade sale is probably your route, and an honest buyer will tell you so in the first meeting.
Tatu partners with the owners of UK service businesses making £500k to £3m a year in profit: money out today, a meaningful stake kept, and a bigger sale built together. See how it works, try the free valuation estimate, or write to nico@tatu-capital.com.