The four buyer types, what each one actually pays on, and the thresholds that decide whether international buyers will even take the meeting.

We recently ran through the 10x exit math and why the valuation you ask for implies an exit someone has to pay for. This is the other half: who that someone is.

Because exits are the real constraint in SA venture, and the local buyer pool alone isn’t deep enough to carry the whole ecosystem.

We asked Hlayisani Capital co-founder and partner Brett Commaille, who has spent around 15 years in SA venture, who actually buys South African startups…

Different buyers value completely different things, so the exit you’re aiming at should shape what you build toward. A buyer chasing synergy pays for your revenue and your customers; a buyer chasing returns pays for your profitability. Building for one and pitching the other is how founders end up disappointed by an offer.

“Venture capital in Africa is early, not broken.”

These are companies in or near your space who buy you because plugging your product into their business produces an immediate uptick. They have 50 million customers, you have 500,000, and your technology across their base is worth far more than it is across yours. Because they’re buying revenue and reach, they pay on revenue multiples, which usually makes this the most profitable exit available to you.

Private equity and similar buyers aren’t looking for synergy, they’re looking for returns. That means they price you off EBITDA multiples rather than revenue, so what matters is how profitable the business actually is, not how strategically useful it might be to someone else. If this is your likely exit, profitability isn’t a nice-to-have you get to later; it’s the thing being bought.

Be honest about this one. The JSE has very few tech listings, the most recent being Optasia, a multinational, and getting there isn’t an easy road. Brett’s firm doesn’t treat a local listing as a realistic option at all, at least not yet. Putting IPO on your exit slide as though it’s a live route tells an SA investor you haven’t looked at the market you’re actually in.

Your own team buying the business out is a real exit, and it’s the one founders forget when they’re picturing an acquisition. It rarely delivers the headline number a trade buyer would, but it’s a legitimate path and worth knowing sits on the list.

If your plan depends on an overseas buyer, there are hard floors. Brett’s experience is that international buyers don’t get out of bed for under about $50m, and that you can’t get them to the table under roughly $10m in revenue. You also have to be operating in more than just South Africa, in markets they care about, which means doing one of the hardest things any founder attempts: growing a business into another country. Big SA retailers have spent billions trying and come back with their tails between their legs.

Name your likely buyer early and it changes what you optimise for: revenue and reach if you’re building toward a trade sale, margin if you’re building toward private equity, and a second market long before you need it if you want international buyers in the room at all.

Brett’s full fireside from Founder Collab Live is available to members inside the Founder Collab, where he goes further than we could cover here:

You’ll also get access to 40+ masterclasses from SA founders and operators on sales, fundraising, UX, paid media and more inside The Founder Collab.

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