Most founders think about selling their business as a single moment somewhere in the future, a deal, a handshake, a life-changing cheque. Alex Fenton, CEO of FBX Capital Partners and a serial founder with three exits behind him, sees it differently. In a recent conversation, he set out why building a business to sell is less about preparing for one big event and more about a discipline practised every day, and why the founders who do it well end up with more choices, not just a bigger payday.
Watch the full conversation on the Pure Effect podcast: "Building A Business To Sell With Alex Fenton".
Fenton's perspective is grounded in experience rather than theory. His first business, GapCap, was an invoice finance company built to free up the cash tied up between a business doing the work and getting paid for it, done in a more fintech-driven way than the market was used to. He later sold it into a larger lending business.
"The joke is that the mandate was to make factoring sexy and lend lots of money," Fenton said of those early days. Two further acquisitions and exits followed, businesses he bought, improved operationally, and moved on. The lessons from all three now shape how he builds.
The single idea Fenton returns to most is optionality. In much of the market, he points out, there is no neat, guaranteed multiple that determines what a business is worth. Value is simply what someone will pay for it, which makes the number of potential buyers the thing worth protecting.
"How do I keep as many doors open as I possibly can? Who will buy me, and then what will they buy me for?" Fenton said, describing the questions he asks constantly. "The only way to do that is to make sure that you think about it all the time."
In practice, that means weighing everyday strategic decisions not only on their own merits but on whether they widen or narrow the field of future buyers. Building a piece of technology, launching an enterprise sales division, entering a new market: each is worth asking whether it opens more doors or closes them, and whether it adds to the eventual value or simply adds effort.
Perhaps the most useful reframe in the conversation is Fenton's insistence that "exit" is shorthand rather than a literal sale. What he is really building towards is a position of choice.
"Where we talk about an exit is just the easiest way of saying I would like to be in a position where we can start making decisions," he explained. Reaching that position, getting the business to a certain size and building a leadership team of real value, is what creates agency: the ability to sell, to step back, to promote someone internally, to refinance, or simply to carry on from a position of strength.
Two further ideas stand out for founders thinking about their own teams. The first is a shift in hiring as a business matures. In the early days, Fenton says, budget forces you to "plant seeds", taking on high-potential people and growing them into their roles. Closer to a defined goal, there is less time for that, and the emphasis moves to hiring experienced leaders who can make an impact quickly, planting saplings rather than seeds.
The second is the value of stability. Asked what a leader can most usefully give a team, Fenton's answer was certainty. "The biggest gift you can give your team is three-month certainty," he said, arguing that people do their best work when priorities are not being reset every Monday morning by a founder with a new idea. Clarity, he adds, is the thread running through all of it: "Be clear about where you want to go, what does success look like, why does success look like that, and what's the timeframe around that."
Alex Fenton's account of building a business to sell is, at heart, an argument for clarity and optionality. Set a clear destination and a realistic timeframe, make sure the mission and the commercial goal are aligned, build a team that does not depend on you, and make every significant decision with one eye on whether it widens your future options or narrows them. Do that, and a sale becomes one choice among several rather than the only way out.
This article reflects views shared by Alex Fenton on the Pure Effect podcast and is general information rather than financial, legal or investment advice.