Nick Long
Exit advisor to founder-led businesses between $3M and $30M in revenue, and the author of Exit Elements, the book behind the FNDRS Elements®.
Meet Nick
Nick, in his own words
Who Nick is, the setbacks he rebuilt from, and why he and Troy Hoffman built a firm that puts the founder first.
01 · TRUST
Trust runs both ways
You have to trust the advice and the advisors, and they have to know you. That is why Nick starts by telling you about himself.
02 · GROWTH
Invest in the owner
Nick found that the more he put into himself as a leader, through coaches, mentors, and advisors, the further the business could go.
03 · MISSION
Founders first
With Troy, the mission is to start from what you want, show you what stands in the way, and give you the roadmap and the team to close the gap.
About Nick
Founder to founder, from your first valuation to the years after the sale
Nick Long is the CEO and co-founder of FNDRS, the founder-to-founder advisory firm behind the FNDRS Elements®. He works with owners of $3M to $30M businesses on building, scaling, and selling, as an exit advisor rather than a broker. The goal is a company a buyer will pay for, sold on the owner's terms and on the owner's clock.
Nick came to this work the hard way. He grew his own solar company from $3M to $30M in three years without knowing what a buyer would pay, or why. He wrote Exit Elements to close that gap for other owners. The book names the 36 elements a buyer sees in a business, groups them into seven families, and shows you how to score each one, today and at target. Everything FNDRS does with you, from your valuation to the sale to the plan for your proceeds, works from that framework.
Nick leads FNDRS workshops and cohorts and speaks at the founder summit, often alongside co-founder Troy Hoffman and the partners who run the sale. Owners hear from the team, and from other founders who have been through it.
The advice is founder to founder. Nick has sat where you are sitting, and he built FNDRS so that one team stays with you the whole way: an advisor to build the value, a dealmaker to take it to market with you, and a wealth planner to protect what you keep.
What he believes
Five things Nick tells every owner
Each one comes straight from the elements. They are the reasons the firm scores before it advises.
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The book
Exit Elements
Fix the Formula & Get the Most Money for Your Business
The book behind the FNDRS Elements®
Your business is worth what a buyer will pay, and this book shows you how to change that number. Every factor that moves what a company is worth, how easily it transfers, and how much of the proceeds an owner keeps is one of 36 elements, arranged in a periodic table across seven families. The elements combine into the compounds buyers underwrite, and each one is scored from 0 to 100 in the assay, today and at target, so the gap between the two scores tells you what to fix first.
Inside the book
- 01InputsWhat you start with · 4 elements
- 02EarningsEarnings · 6 elements
- 03MultipleThe multiple · 8 elements
- 04RiskThe discount · 6 elements
- 05TransferTransferability · 4 elements
- 06WealthWhat you keep · 4 elements
- 07OutcomesWhat you get · 4 elements
The seven families read as chapters. The real table of contents is not known yet; replace these items when it is.
From the pages
A business is not a mystery. It is made of thirty-six elements, each one measurable, and the ones you have never measured are the ones costing you.
Score every element twice: where the business is today, and where it has to be for a buyer to pay your number. The gap between the two scores is the work, and the order of the work is the plan.
Enterprise value is what the market pays. After-tax proceeds are what the family keeps, and the structure that decides the difference has to be in place before the letter of intent, because after it nothing can be changed.
Free PDF
Scale, Exit, and Thrive
Your Blueprint to a Profitable Business Exit
You built your business to be free, and somewhere along the way it became the thing holding you in place. Scale, Exit, and Thrive is Nick's playbook for getting out of that trap. It walks through the three things every owner needs before a sale: the emotional readiness to let go, a business that runs and earns without you, and a clear understanding of how the deal itself works.
Speaking
In the room with FNDRS
Nick leads FNDRS workshops through the year and speaks at the founder summit. Once a quarter, you can join him in a new city to work on your own business, alongside the FNDRS team and other founders on the same path.
- Q1 2026Planning the peaksPark City, UTPast
- Q2 2026From inside outTulum, MXPast
- Q3 2026Finding financial freedomHuntington Beach, CAPast
- Q4 2026Life by designPalm Springs, CANext stop
- Q1 2027Sedona, AZUpcoming
- Q2 2027Nashville, TNUpcoming
- Q3 2027Big Sky, MTUpcoming
- Q4 2027New Orleans, LAUpcoming
Talk to Nick about your exit
Whether the sale is next year or next decade, the conversation starts with what your business is made of.