Exit51 Guides Start-Up Sales Valued at Up to €10 Million
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Too small for investment banks, yet the biggest deal of a founder’s life: That is the segment Vienna-based Michael Jiresch is targeting with his firm, Exit51. He advises entrepreneurs on selling profitable start-ups and smaller companies with an enterprise value of up to about €10 million. He has been working in this field since 2024, and with Exit51 he is now putting small exits front and center.
Target Group: Profitable Companies With Up to €10 Million in Revenue
According to Exit51, the companies it advises typically have EBIT of roughly €250,000 to €1 million and annual revenue of up to about €10 million. The focus is on SaaS, e-commerce, edtech, digital health services, agencies and other technology-driven business models. Traditional M&A advisers usually concentrate on larger transactions, where the effort pays off more.
“For an entrepreneur, selling a company with €250,000 or €500,000 in EBIT can be one of the most important economic decisions of their life. For many traditional M&A advisers, however, such a transaction is too small,” Mr. Jiresch said.
To illustrate the market potential, Exit51 points to the Austrian Startup Monitor: According to its 2024 edition, 38 percent of Austrian start-ups are profitable, and the 2023 edition counted more than 3,400 start-ups founded since 2012.
Who Is Behind Exit51
By his own account, Mr. Jiresch brings about 15 years of buy-side M&A experience at large corporations, from searching for acquisition targets through due diligence and negotiations to running acquired companies as managing director. He also spent about five years helping scale-ups build sales operations and go-to-market strategies. In 2024, he left the corporate world and has since advised on company sales, now clearly focused on the sell side with Exit51.
His partner at Exit51 is Johannes Angerer, who has worked in the digital sector for more than 15 years, from start-ups to international corporations. Among other things, he worked in the Chinese e-commerce market and has experience in industries such as consumer goods, retail, tourism and furniture retail. At Exit51, he contributes expertise in digital strategy, e-commerce, marketing and sales.
From a Health Platform to a Digital Agency
So far, Mr. Jiresch has advised on three exits. He cannot name the companies involved because of confidentiality clauses. On its website, however, Exit51 lists anonymized references. According to these, the team advised a B2C health education platform and a B2C direct sales platform on their exits, each with an enterprise value of more than €5 million. For a digital agency of a similar size, Exit51 handled preparation, due diligence and price negotiations. For a B2C online learning platform, the team searched for buyers and drew up a longlist of about 200 companies, which were contacted digitally and by phone.
Exit51 also lists two mandates outside of exits: According to the firm, it advised a logistics start-up with an enterprise value of more than €10 million and an e-commerce SaaS start-up on Series B financing rounds.
A.I. for Research, People for Negotiations
The process follows the classic M&A playbook: an initial call and nondisclosure agreement, an exit strategy, a search for strategic buyers, investors and successors, a shortlist, first meetings, a letter of intent and due diligence, price negotiations and finally signing and closing with legal partners. To make this work for smaller transactions, Exit51 relies on a lean team and A.I. for research, market analysis, buyer matching and parts of due diligence. In negotiations and in dealings with entrepreneurs and buyers, personal support is meant to remain central. Exit51 does not publicly disclose its fee model.
Exit51 is not alone with this approach. In Austria, owners looking to sell a smaller business can turn to the business succession exchange of the Austrian Economic Chamber, and internationally, online marketplaces such as Acquire.com specialize in selling small software companies. The M&A industry itself is also increasingly turning to A.I.: The Finnish start-up Comparables.ai, for example, recently raised $6 million to identify acquisition targets with A.I. What matters in an exit is summed up in our guide to finding the right buyer.
