Selling to Private Equity: What They Don't Tell You

Sorcha Lorimer built Trace, a boutique data privacy consultancy, from scratch. She bootstrapped it, landed enterprise clients across the UK, Europe and North America, and sold it to a private equity backed business. In this episode, she talks openly about what that journey actually looked like, from leaving a comfortable corporate role to navigating COVID, scaling as a lean team, and going through the opaque process of selling a business. She also introduces Onyxio, her new venture helping health tech and life sciences companies build confidence in how they use sensitive data.

What We Cover

- Sorcha's background in the NHS, digital agencies and financial services, and how that mix shaped Trace - The emotional reality of leaving corporate life and building from zero as a solo founder - Why she started with the end in mind and set an eight-year timeline to exit - How Trace pivoted from SaaS-led to consulting-led and what that taught her about business models - Navigating COVID as a small business reliant on enterprise relationships - How her corporate background helped her win enterprise clients and anticipate procurement blockers - The sale process: kissing frogs, dummy runs, knowing your numbers and being ready when the right buyer appears - Why selling to an experienced acquirer matters - Gotchas in deal structures: clawbacks, lock-in periods, IP clauses and leaving money on the table - What Onyxio does: a "passport office" for sensitive data, bringing legal, security and technical lenses together - Why data confidence matters more than ever in the age of AI - Her advice to her younger self: start earlier and stay curious

Key Takeaways

If you plan to sell, keep your house in order from day one, not just when a buyer appears The zero-to-one phase strips away your corporate identity and you need to be prepared for that Enterprise sales cycles are long, so diversify your client base with well-funded startups too Around 30-38% of deals succeed; many fail on compliance debt and poor documentation Stubbornness is an asset, but you have to be able to read the data and know when to pivot Selling a business is opaque and there is no standard playbook, so treat early conversations as dummy runs

Links

Sorcha Lorimer on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sorchalorimer Onyxio: onyxio.co