Your valuation is set years before a banker is hired. It's set by whether the companies who might buy you already know who you are.
Book a Strategy CallMost founders start thinking about an exit when somebody approaches them.
By then the number is largely decided. Not by the revenue multiple, and not by how well your banker runs the process. It's decided by how many companies want you, and that got settled in the years when nobody was watching.
Here's the difference in practice. A company that starts this work at the point of sale negotiates with one bidder. A company that started three years earlier negotiates with three. That gap isn't a rounding error on the multiple. It's usually the whole difference between a decent outcome and a life-changing one.
Not your device. A strategic can build a device.
They're buying a position in a market they already want to own, and the shortest route to owning it. So the question they're answering is whether your category is one they need, and whether you're the obvious name inside it.
Most medtech companies never make that case. They prove the technology works, which the acquirer mostly assumed, then leave the market question to inference.
That gap, between what you proved and what they needed to believe, is where valuations get discounted.
It's set by whether strategics have been watching you. By whether your category is one they already want. And by whether you're the first name that comes up when it is.
None of that can be built in the six months before a process. It gets built in public, over quarters, while you're busy selling.
Companies that end up with a competitive process rarely got there by hiring a better banker. They got there because three acquirers had been quietly tracking them for two years.
Exit positioning. Visibility to the specific acquirers who should want you, built years before the conversation starts, so more than one of them is in the room when it happens.
A category story an acquirer can underwrite. Investors and acquirers pay a premium for a position and a discount for a device. Most medtech companies get described as devices.
Acquirer targeting. The strategics whose stated roadmap genuinely needs what you have, narrowed down from the list of everyone who has ever bought in your space.
Board and diligence materials. The same story, in the form your board already reads, so nothing has to change when the scrutiny arrives.
If the thing in front of you is the raise rather than the exit, that work sits on our pitch deck consultant page instead.
If your process starts inside six months, we can help with the materials. But the positioning work needs longer, because what it changes is how acquirers describe you when you're not in the room.
The MedTech Exit Positioning Score tells you how ready you'd be for an acquisition conversation today. Four minutes, no call at the end of it, and it works as a general commercial diagnostic even if an exit is years away.
Plenty of founders run it, fix what it finds, and never speak to us. That's a fine outcome.
Exit positioning is a retainer, because visibility to acquirers gets built over quarters rather than weeks.
The narrative and board materials run four to six weeks inside that. Kickoff, a working session, then drafting with your review at each milestone rather than all at once at the end.
Acquirer targeting runs alongside it and can be bought on its own.
MarketCraft is a medtech market engineering agency, founded by Omar Khateeb. Omar sold surgical robots into hospitals before he built the firm, and he now speaks at the investor summits where medtech funds and strategics gather.
He also hosts State of MedTech, a podcast past 400 episodes with the founders, investors and operators in this industry. The people you're trying to be visible to already listen to him. A positioning consultant can't replicate that, and it changes what we know about how these buyers decide.
The method isn't ours alone. MarketCraft is acknowledged in Market Engineering by Bruce Cleveland, published June 2026. Cleveland ran product and marketing at Apple and Oracle, then became a founding partner at Wildcat Venture Partners.
"MarketCraft joined the board of investors meeting, they were very impressed by MarketCraft's results."
Lloyd Mencinger, CEO, Aqua Medical
There isn't really a too early. Three years out is where this pays best, because that's enough time for the tracking to happen. Six months out we're doing materials, which helps, but it can't manufacture a second bidder.
No. Bankers run a process. Our job is to make sure the company entering that process reads as a category leader rather than a device vendor, and that's decided before they're hired.
Not necessarily, and this is the most common reason founders call us. One interested buyer is only leverage if a second one exists. How much can be done depends on your timeline, and we'll be straight with you about that on the call.
Then we start there. Exit positioning built on an undefined category won't survive diligence, and we'd rather say that now than after a process has begun. That's a medtech branding problem.
A retainer for positioning, fixed scope for the narrative and board materials. You'll have both numbers on the first call rather than after three meetings.
Name the two or three companies you'd want bidding. We'll tell you honestly how visible you are to them today, and what it would take to change that.
Thirty minutes with a founder who has sold medical devices himself. No deck.
P.S. If you'd rather see where you stand before talking to anyone, take the MedTech Exit Positioning Score. Four minutes, and it names the gaps an acquirer would find. Plenty of founders take it and never book a call.