What Happens to My Employees After I Sell the Business?

Selling your business isn’t just a financial transaction—it’s a transition for your entire team. What happens to your employees after a sale depends on two main things: the acquirer’s goals and how well you’ve prepared your team for life after you.

The Reality: Not Everyone Stays

During due diligence, acquirers meet with key employees to assess their value. Most will be sorted into three buckets:

1. Must-keep talent: These are your strongest performers—the people who will thrive in the acquiring company and are seen as essential to future success.

2. Conditional keepers: These are solid team members, but their titles may be inflated or their roles unclear. A VP at a startup might become a manager at the acquiring company with a similar salary but a tighter scope.

3. Let-go candidates: These employees are unlikely to remain beyond six months post-sale. It may be due to performance, redundancy, or poor role fit.

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What We’re Reading

• From Chaos to Control: A Playbook for Supply Chain Success in 2025: (Pipe17)

• Exclusive | It Moved the ‘Eras’ Tour’s Equipment. Now It’s Worth Over $1 Billion: ​Providence Equity Partners has acquired Global Critical Logistics (GCL), a live-event logistics company responsible for managing logistics for major concert tours, including Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s shows, in a deal valued at over $1 billion. This acquisition underscores the growing demand and investment in the live entertainment industry, especially following the surge in live events post-pandemic. (WSJ)

• China’s Economy Feels the Sting From Trade War: ​In April 2025, China's economic activity decelerated amid escalating trade tensions with the U.S., leading to a slowdown in industrial production, retail sales, and fixed-asset investment. Despite a temporary tariff truce, underlying challenges such as a weak property sector and subdued consumer spending persist, prompting economists to suggest that more aggressive fiscal and monetary policies may be necessary to achieve Beijing’s 5% growth target. (WSJ)

• China Is Building Megaports in South America to Feed Its Need for Crops: China is investing heavily in South American infrastructure, particularly in Brazil and Peru, to secure agricultural imports and reduce dependence on U.S. food supplies. The state-owned agricultural conglomerate Cofco is constructing its largest export terminal outside of China at Brazil’s Port of Santos, aiming to triple annual capacity to 14 million tons by next year. This is part of China's broader strategy to diversify food sources amid domestic limitations like water and arable land shortages and rising geopolitical tensions with the U.S. (WSJ)

Business Worth Buying

Here are my 3 key takeaways:

• Recognize and Address Innovation Biases: Large organizations often let historical and people biases limit their innovation. Acknowledging and proactively managing these biases separates companies that consistently innovate from those that get stuck.

• Radical Empathy Drives Breakthroughs: Truly understanding consumers—beyond data points—means placing “radical empathy” at the center. It’s not just about being consumer-centric as a buzzword, but deeply seeking to understand the narratives and behaviors that drive decisions.

• Quality of Ideas Over Quantity: When it comes to being acquired, a robust pipeline of a few well-developed, feasible ideas is more valuable than a scattershot collection. Organize your innovation roadmap by viability, feasibility, and investment—not just how many unfiltered ideas you have.

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