Eric Grafstrom

About Eric Grafstrom

It was 1995 when I strolled into a small loft in the Deep Ellum section of Dallas to meet with Todd Wagner, the co-founder of AudioNet (later the name changed to broadcast.com). At the time, the company had a 10,000 stream license for RealAudio 2.0 they were using to stream a handful or radion stations and CDs. Todd wanted to leverage the network to have businesses broadcast events over the internet. I was young, ambitious and undiagnosed ADHD and it sounded perfect.

Making 50+ cold calls a day I learned that most computers did not have a sound card much less speakers. Would have been an important question to ask during the interview.My big break was signing World Championship Wrestling, a Turner property and pre-cursor to WWE and the first broadcast broke records for most listeners.

Yahoo bought the company, I went to London with a young family and spent two years working for Yahoo in Europe. WE landed in Silicon Valley and left the purple palace to get back to early stage startups. I have too many stories to tell and some I cannot and evolved from a sales guy to a business development exec to operator and eventually a few turns as a COO and CEO. Crazy for a journalism major.

In late 2020 my wife and I moved to Austin to be closer to family in Texas and Florida and I launched ExitGuide. Did you know that 85% of small businesses in the U.S. are owned by GenX and Baby Boomers? Over the next 15 years they will transition TRILLIONS of dollars in value. However, most are too small for a business broker, lawyers are expensive and over 40% will sell to someone they know (employee, family etc.) My goal is to bring M&A to Main Street and help enable millions of owners exit their business successfully and affordably I also coach startups, leveraging my decades of experience to navigate anything from raising money, hiring (and sometimes firing) employees, dealing with crazy investors, getting a product into market and more.