10KC co-founder talk engineering an exit and spotting fake term sheets

Landing an exit was a winding, eight-year journey for Toronto-based enterprise mentorship software startup 10KC (Ten Thousand Coffees) that featured plenty of bumps in the road. Two years before securing a $75-million CAD majority growth equity investment from US-based Five Elms Capital in late 2022, 10KC was less than two weeks away from selling to an unnamed and publicly traded strategic acquirer when the deal suddenly collapsed, 10KC co-founder and former CEO David Wilkin told attendees at Te