Markets shift, expectations change and companies that looked perfectly positioned a few years ago now face a different set of conditions and a new set of questions around growth and value.
In a recent TechExit.io conversation, we sat down with Anush Sachdeva of RBCx to discuss valuation environments, buyer behaviour and the impact AI is beginning to have on software. One idea surfaced throughout the discussion: durable businesses rarely stand still.
Key takeaways:
- Markets shift and strong founders adjust with them
- Relationships often develop long before deals do
- Durable value comes from evolving over time
Growth has always required adaptation but customers, buyers and technology are moving quickly. Founders who recognize those shifts early often make different decisions.
Markets Change Faster Than Expectations
For a while, many founders were still operating with assumptions shaped by a very different market. Expectations from earlier years lingered even as conditions changed underneath them. According to Anush, those conversations feel different today.
“The most common phrase I’ve heard in my first or second conversations is, ‘We get where the market’s at.’”
Anush was describing a shift in how founders are approaching valuation conversations. A year or two ago, many were still anchored to expectations shaped by a different market. Today there is more recognition that conditions have changed and conversations can begin from a shared understanding of reality rather than competing assumptions.
That matters particularly for companies navigating funding histories, investor expectations and decisions made in a very different environment.
How a company is financed also shapes how easily it can respond. Venture-backed businesses often carry expectations tied to previous rounds and investor timelines, while bootstrapped companies can sometimes move with more flexibility.
“If you’re a bootstrap founder, I think you have a much more flexible way to adjust to conditions.”
Capital structure shapes more than growth. It can shape optionality too.
Relationships Start Long Before A Deal
Founders often think acquisition conversations begin once a company reaches a certain stage. In reality, many connections are formed much earlier and often through ordinary interactions across the ecosystem rather than formal deal discussions.
Anush shared that through RBCx’s work with founders and technology companies, conversations often begin early and continue as businesses grow over time.
“We are able to develop relationships with founders well before their organizations mature.”
That stood out because it reflects how context builds over time. By the time larger conversations eventually happen, there is often already a level of familiarity there shaped through years of interactions rather than a single moment.
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Strong Companies Keep Rewriting Assumptions
The conversation eventually shifted toward AI and the growing “SaaSpocalypse” debate, which assumes new technology could quickly disrupt large software incumbents. Anush saw a more balanced picture.
“There is a high degree of stickiness there that I think is going to be harder to displace than people are maybe assuming.”
Customer behaviour and enterprise workflows rarely change overnight. As David pointed out:
“They’re not standing still.”
Large software companies are already rebuilding products, experimenting with new models and using acquisitions to move faster. Building internally can take years while buying capability can reshape timelines entirely.
The companies that continue creating value often spend less time protecting old assumptions and more time understanding where things are heading next.
Customer Behaviour Changes Too
One of the more practical moments came through an example from Anush’s own life. His wife runs a consumer products company and had relied on several software tools to manage different parts of the business before rebuilding pieces of it herself.
“She worked with Claude and created what she needed herself and killed four of those things.”
The example reflected something larger. AI is not only changing products. It’s changing how customers think about value and what they actually need from the software they use.
Some categories will remain deeply defensible while others may discover customers only needed a small part of what they had been paying for all along. Questions around stickiness, value and differentiation are beginning to look different than they did even a few years ago.
Final Thought
This conversation reinforced an idea that continues surfacing across TechExit.io. Durable value rarely develops in a fixed environment. Conditions change, customer behaviour shifts and expectations move with them.
The companies that maintain leverage over time often stay close to customers and continue adjusting as the world around them changes. That process rarely happens through one large decision. More often, it happens through hundreds of smaller ones.
That thinking increasingly shapes the direction of TechExit.io. The focus is helping founders build businesses that create options over time whether that means raising capital, exploring acquisition or continuing to scale independently.
The strongest outcomes often belong to companies that kept evolving while everyone else was trying to preserve what worked yesterday.
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