Recently, I was approached with an offer to buy my company. A relatively small (but larger than us) company is hoping to make some strategic moves into the same market we play in. They see us as one way to get there.

Now, my attitude has generally been that we could be bought, but we're not for sale. That is, given the right buyer, the right price, and the right structure, I'm open to being acquired. But we're not actively looking to be acquired, nor do we have any urgent need to be bought.

Leaving aside questions of whether this is the right buyer (we haven't even started talking about price or deal structure), this raises a whole host of questions for me and for us as a company:

Is this the right time to sell? Our order book is up dramatically from a year ago, though most of this hasn't turned into dollars yet. Will we be worth a lot more in six months, or is it better to take the bird in the hand?

What do we want out of a buyer? With five people in the company, this is a pretty tight-knit group. How important is it that we continue to control our own destiny?

Everyone in the company has made significant sacrifices. How important is it to see some immediate reward, as opposed to taking additional risk for a potentially bigger payoff down the road?

We've always sold our services as a neutral third-party (i.e. not beholden to any major vendor). Would being acquired hurt our prospects?

What's the appropriate reward for the employees (who took a lot of personal risk) vs. myself (who took the financial risk)?

Given that we're such a small company, how much to I involve everyone else in the process? I'm not a believer in keeping secrets from my employees, and I haven't been, but is there a point where I'm giving people too much information?

Then there's the question of making sure the buyer gets what it's looking for, too. One thing I don't want to do is have the other company realize post-acquisition that they didn't understand what they were buying. Sure, I could get away with it, but it would reflect badly on me as an ethical businessperson. That has to be balanced against a desire to not give away too much proprietary information before a deal is struck.

The good news is that we're not in a position right now where we must sell. That gives us flexibility and the ability to say no to a bad deal.