MYD Capital Partners advises owners of €50M–€500M family businesses on succession, sale, and partnership decisions. We help you prepare the business, protect the family, and weigh your exit paths before any information reaches the market. Every conversation starts privately, and stays that way for as long as you need.
What weighs on an owner before a transition
A family business is rarely just a balance sheet. Before you talk to anyone about its future, you are already weighing things a generic advisor rarely asks about.
Legacy. You built something with your name, your reputation, or your family's history attached to it. Whatever happens next, you want it to reflect what the business stood for, not just what it sold for.
Employees. Many of your people have been with you for years. A transaction that ignores what happens to them afterward is not a transaction you want any part of.
Control. Bringing in a partner, an investor, or a buyer can feel like losing the ability to run things your way. Some paths preserve more control than others, and the difference matters.
The next generation. Your children may or may not want to run the business. That question — asked honestly, early — shapes every option available to you.
Family disagreement. Owners rarely agree unanimously on timing, price, or whether to sell at all. Disagreement inside the family is normal. Left unaddressed, it can stall a process that would otherwise succeed.
Fear of mis-valuation. Without a rigorous, independent view of what your business is worth, you risk underselling it — or anchoring on a number the market will not support.
Confidentiality. Employees, customers, and competitors should not learn you are exploring a sale before you are ready to tell them. A leak can damage the business you are trying to protect.
We built our process around these concerns, not around a transaction timetable.
The five exit paths
Most owners assume "selling the business" is a single decision. In practice, there are five distinct paths, each with different implications for control, timing, and what happens to your people.
- Family succession — passing ownership and leadership to the next generation.
- Management buyout — selling to the executives already running the business.
- Strategic sale — selling to another company, often one seeking your market position, customers, or capabilities.
- Private equity recapitalization — bringing in an institutional investor who takes a controlling or significant stake, often alongside continued family involvement.
- Minority partnership — raising capital by selling a minority stake, while you retain control.
Each path suits a different mix of financial goals, family circumstances, and appetite for continued involvement. We walk through the trade-offs of each in detail in The Five Exit Paths for a Family Business.
How our method supports each stage
Our method applies whether you have already chosen a path or are still deciding. Every engagement begins with Phase Zero — a short assessment of which practice fits, or an honest view that now is not the right moment.
The Goldsmith™ comes first, regardless of path. It examines your company across six dimensions — financial architecture, operational efficiency, management structure, strategic positioning, technology maturity and global benchmarking — and identifies what would concern a buyer, a partner or your own family before it becomes a problem in a negotiation. It also builds the valuation analysis, the financial model and the documentation any counterparty will ask for.
The Confluence™ takes over once direction is clearer. For a sale or a capital raise, it maps and scores the counterparties most likely to value what you have built, approaches them quietly and only with your approval, and manages the process through to signature.
The Polarity™ is the right route where the answer is a partner rather than a buyer — a joint venture, a distribution or licensing arrangement, or a cross-border alliance. No transaction is required.
The Dawn™ addresses the balance sheet where the constraint is debt rather than direction: maturities, covenants, working capital and cost of capital.
The Compass™ runs alongside any of these, or on its own, for owners who want the decision pressure-tested before it is made rather than after.
When to talk to us
There is no single "right" moment, but owners typically reach out when:
- Retirement or a life change is on the horizon, even a few years out.
- An unsolicited offer has arrived and you are not sure how to weigh it.
- Family members disagree about the business's future and need a neutral, informed perspective.
- You want an honest view of what the business is worth before you decide anything.
- You are ready to bring in capital or a partner without giving up control.
None of these require a decision on the spot. They require a conversation.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know which exit path I want before I talk to you?
No. Many owners start a conversation with us before they have decided anything. Clarifying the right path, given your goals and your family's situation, is part of the work — not a precondition for it.
Will my employees, customers, or competitors find out we are talking?
Confidentiality is central to how we work. Early conversations are private, and any broader process is staged and controlled, with disclosure only to parties who need the information and only when you decide the time is right. Read more in our Confidentiality Commitment.
What if my family does not agree on selling or on timing?
Disagreement within a family is common and does not disqualify you from exploring your options. An independent, fact-based view of the business — its value, its risks, and its realistic paths forward — often gives family members a shared basis for the conversation, even before any decision is made.