The Exit Review

Something interesting came through in last year’s CPO research from Products That Count. When asked whether M&A would be a major part of their growth strategy over the next one to three years, over 75% of CPOs said yes. Not “maybe.” Not “we’re exploring it.” A definitive yes. That number tells you where the market is heading, and it’s worth sitting with for a moment if you’re a venture-backed founder still anchoring your company’s story around an IPO.

Because the IPO market did come back. But it came back different. And for most founders building right now, the better question isn’t “when will the IPO window reopen?” It’s “what exit path actually makes sense for what I’m building?”

The Best Product Leaders Already Moved to an M&A Mindset

The shift didn’t happen overnight, but the signal is now pretty clear. According to the 2025 CPO Insights Report, the highest-performing CPOs are the ones pursuing inorganic growth: acquiring startups, entering new product categories, and treating M&A as a way to create order-of-magnitude change rather than incremental improvement. The report draws a useful distinction between “good” CPOs who experiment with AI for efficiency gains, “great” ones who transform workflows organically, and the “best” ones who are actively acquiring to reimagine their business.

If you’re a founder, this is worth paying attention to. The companies most likely to acquire you are being told by their own product leaders that M&A is a survival strategy. That changes how you should think about building.

What Actually Happened to the IPO Market (and Why It Froze)

According to PitchBook data on VC-backed U.S. IPOs from 2015 through early 2026, the story is stark. In 2021, 327 companies completed IPOs worth over $104 billion combined. By 2022, that dropped to 59 deals worth about $4 billion. In 2023, only 50 made it through.

The IPO didn’t go away because companies got worse. The pricing environment that made it work (near-zero rates, cheap capital, tolerance for unprofitable growth) got pulled out from underneath everyone in about 18 months.

The Window Reopened, But for a Different Kind of Company

Good news: the recovery is real. According to PitchBook, completed VC-backed IPOs ticked up to 61 in 2024 with median valuations at $549 million. By 2025, median valuations hit $1.2 billion and total U.S. proceeds reached roughly $44 billion.

That last number is the one I’d encourage every founder to sit with. Eleven years. Most fund cycles run seven to ten. Most founders aren’t planning on that timeline. The IPO is back, but for a narrow slice of companies willing to stay private for over a decade and price realistically when they come out.

AI Makes M&A the Natural Outcome, Not Just a Backup Plan

This is where the M&A story goes from cyclical to structural. AI is compressing the time it takes to build, ship, and iterate on software products, and that changes exit math on both sides of the table.

For founders, the takeaway is exciting, not limiting. Faster build times mean you reach product-market fit sooner, which means you become interesting to acquirers sooner. The companies commanding premium multiples are the ones whose products integrate cleanly and whose teams adapt fast.

Building with Exit Optionality from the Start

None of this means building to flip. It means building so every path stays open, with the most statistically likely one (M&A) treated as a first-class outcome.

The IPO market is recovering and will produce meaningful outcomes in 2026. But for most venture-backed founders, the exit is going to look different. The founders who do well here are the ones who stop treating M&A as Plan B and start treating it as the plan the data has been pointing to all along.