The Team: Your Most Overlooked Asset
When founders think about selling their e-commerce brand, the focus usually goes to product, revenue, margins, and brand positioning. What often gets far less attention is the one element that quietly holds everything together: the team.
If you step away after the exit, who is actually left to run the business? For buyers, this is not a side question. It is central. They know you are leaving at some point. What they want to understand is whether the people behind you are capable of keeping the brand performing.
Why Your Team Matters in an Exit
In an exit process, buyers are not just assessing your numbers, they are assessing continuity.
They look at who runs operations, who manages performance marketing, who oversees finance, how customer service is structured, and whether there are people in place who can make decisions without you. If the business depends on your daily involvement, the risk is obvious. If there is a stable, loyal team that knows the systems and understands the brand, the risk is much lower.
A strong team gives buyers confidence that the brand will keep performing after closing, while a weak or unstable team does the opposite, and that risk will be reflected in the terms, the price, or both.
What Buyers Really Want to See
Buyers don't need your team to be perfect. They need your team to be stable, capable, and committed to staying through the transition. Here's what they're actually evaluating:
Who runs day-to-day operations without you? If you're still the one approving supplier invoices, reviewing ad creative, handling customer escalations, and managing inventory forecasting, you're not running a business. You're running a job. And jobs don't sell for 5x multiples.
How long has your core team been with you? A marketing manager who's been there for three months is a question mark. One who's been there for three years is an asset. Tenure signals loyalty, competence, and institutional knowledge, all of which reduce risk in a buyer's eyes.
Are your key people actually incentivized to stay? This is the part most founders miss entirely. If your head of operations has no financial reason to stick around post-exit, why would they? Buyers know this. They'll ask point-blank: "What retention agreements are in place?" If your answer is "none," expect tougher terms or a lower multiple.
The Founder Blind Spot: "My Team Is Solid"
Most founders genuinely believe their team is stable, right up until due diligence proves otherwise. We've seen it happen in deal after deal. The founder insists their VP of Marketing is locked in and essential. Then the buyer interviews them and discovers they're a part-time contractor juggling two other brands. Or the "Head of Operations" is actually the founder's cousin who's planning to start their own business next year.
Buyers don't take your word for team stability. They verify it. They interview key people. They check LinkedIn. They ask about comp structures, equity, retention plans, employment agreements. If there's a gap between what you're telling them and what they're finding, trust erodes fast. And when trust erodes, so does your valuation.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: if you haven't formalized your team structure, documented roles, or built retention into your exit plan, your team isn't solid. It just hasn't been tested yet.
How to Build Team Stability Before You List
The good news? This is fixable. But not in the three months before you go to market. Buyers can smell last-minute retention agreements and rushed promotions from a mile away. This is something you build 6-12 months before exit conversations even start.
Step 1: Identify Your Key People
Write down the names of everyone who, if they walked out tomorrow, would create a serious operational problem. Not just the people you like. The people the business cannot function without. Usually, this is 3-5 people: operations lead, marketing lead, finance/admin lead, maybe a product or logistics specialist.
Step 2: Lock Them In with Retention Agreements
A retention plan ties key employees to the success of the exit. It gives them a financial reason to stay through the transition and support the new owner. This isn't charity. It's insurance for the buyer and a value driver for you.
Here's how it typically works:
Allocate 1-3% of the exit proceeds to a retention pool for key personnel
Structure payouts in tranches: 20-30% at closing, the remaining 70-80% paid after 6-12 months post-close
Tie the full payout to staying with the company and supporting the transition
Formalize this in writing, ideally reviewed by legal counsel
Step 3: Document Everything
Buyers want to see org charts, role descriptions, employment agreements, and comp structures. If this isn't already in place, build it now. Who reports to whom? What does each person actually do? What are they paid? How long have they been there?
This doesn't need to be corporate bureaucracy. It just needs to be clear. A simple one-page document per key role is often enough: name, tenure, responsibilities, compensation, retention terms. Clean documentation signals that you run a real business, not a lifestyle brand held together by handshake deals.
Step 4: Prepare Your Team for the Exit
You don't need to announce you're selling six months in advance. But your key people should not be blindsided during due diligence. At some point before you go to market, have direct conversations with the people who matter most. Let them know an exit is on the horizon. Explain what it means for them. Walk them through the retention structure. Give them a reason to be excited, not anxious.
Buyers will interview your team. If your team has no idea a sale is happening, or worse, if they seem worried about their future, the deal gets shaky fast. If they're informed, aligned, and incentivized to stay, the buyer's concerns evaporate.
Don't Wait Until It's Too Late
Most founders think about their team during the exit process. By then, it's too late to fix structural problems. You can't build loyalty in 60 days. You can't create institutional knowledge in 90. You can't formalize a retention plan while the buyer is already in diligence.
This is something you build early, not as an afterthought. If you're even thinking about an exit in the next 12-24 months, your team structure should be one of the first things you address. Not the last.
At Van Driel Capital, we help founders build team stability into their exit strategy long before buyer conversations begin. By the time you're in due diligence and the buyer is asking hard questions about who actually runs the business, it can be too late.
