So you're building a startup and happily envision a strategic investor who will buy out almost your entire stake, offer you a product advisor position, leave you with 3-5% of the company, and send you to the Maldives, from where you'll occasionally give recommendations on service development via email and explain code workarounds.

The market reality, however, is that we face two nuances that no one thinks about at the beginning, and they concern not only deep tech projects and tech startups (which I always talk about) but also IT. And since one follows from the other, we'll get acquainted in order. And under no circumstances confuse these processes with investing for 5-10 percent—there everything is much simpler, and even simpler if through a convertible note. But if you have a coveted exit in sight, get ready for:

1. Due Diligence and deal structuring—simply put, it's an audit of your company where every number will be scrutinized, every developer's temperature taken, all hard drives weighed, and they'll find out how much you lied in your pitches (you definitely lied; the question is more about the extent). This procedure is quite lengthy and costly, as the corporation will involve a huge number of office workers with high salaries who are in no hurry and never have too many meetings. After research and confirmation of the numbers, they will be confirmed again by a third-party audit. Only then will negotiators, lawyers, and financiers step in to structure the deal—i.e., transfer agreements into contracts, negotiate, and haggle. Sounds like a year of work? Wrong—it sounds like 1.5-2 years, depending on how many state and federal words are in your strategic partner's name and their overall speed. There are exceptions, but they are rare.

2. This follows from the first, because managers inside the corporation understand that the process is not fast and quite expensive, and KPIs need to be met this year. So the first question they will ask themselves is: wouldn't it be faster to copy you? Is there anything in your product that cannot be copied, or is it harder and more expensive to copy than to buy from you?

What to do? Create a product that is difficult to copy even after a full investigation. The easiest way to do this is through users—a loyal user base and community are the hardest to copy and easiest to buy from you as a whole brand.