Divestopedia is a resource for entrepreneurs who want to sell their business for the best price and at the best terms. Whether you’re thinking of selling, have started a sales process, or are post-deal, we aim to arm you with the knowledge required to maximize value and limit your downside risk.
No business-school textbook can prepare you for the roller-coaster that is selling a business. We believe the best way to learn is to learn from the experience of those who have been there before - the entrepreneurs, investment bankers, serial buyers and other service providers who have gone through the process.
Divestopedia was a dream of several professionals working in the business of valuing, selling and buying companies. You get to hear about the hard-learned lessons and experiences, both good and bad, we have had in our field. We see the process happening on a regular basis and we want to tell you all about it.
Divestopedia is part of the Janalta family of brands.
Who We Are
Divestopedia was co-founded by John Carvalho with Dale and Cory Janssen in 2012.
Working as an M&A advisor, John recognized the challenges that business owners faced when selling a business. He knew education was the key to arm business owners with the tools needed to navigate a successful exit. John approached Cory and Dale, who were acquaintances in the business community and leaders in the online educational publication industry, with the idea. Cory, an entrepreneur with a very successful exit under his belt, immediately recognized these challenges from his experience with selling Investopedia. Dale, a serial entrepreneur, also knew that transparency and information would be empowering for his entrepreneurial peers. With this understanding of the difficulties in selling a mid-market business and the desire to provide the highest quality education on the topic, Divestopedia was born.
Divestopedia has since become home to a dictionary of more than 500 M&A related terms and a destination for live presentations with M&A professionals the world over.
Divestopedia's Founders
John Carvalho
John Carvalho is a co-founder of Divestopedia and the president and founder of Stone Oak Capital Inc., a mergers and acquisitions advisory firm. For over two decades, John has served his clients on numerous valuation, acquisition and divestiture assignments in a wide variety of industries. Through his transactional experience, John has studied how buyers perceive value and has been able to apply these concepts to help his mid-market clients maximize value when selling. John holds the Corporate Finance designation, is a Chartered Business Valuator, and a Chartered Accountant. His life's mission is to help entrepreneurs monetize the value that they have built in their businesses.
Cory Janssen
Cory Janssen is a co-founder of Divestopedia as well as the co-founder and CEO of AltaML, a developer of machine learning applications. Previously, Cory was co-founder of Investopedia.com, a financial education site that provides content and tools to help educate individual investors. From its founding in 1999, Investopedia became one of the most popular financial sites on the web and was sold to Forbes Media in 2007.
Dale Janssen
Dale Janssen (1953-2019) is a co-founder of Divestopedia. He was a serial entrepreneur who ran a number of businesses in the tech space. Dale owned and operated a national Microsoft, Novell, IBM and Cisco training company with offices across Canada. He also started and developed one of the first Gold Novell Authorized companies in Canada and branched out in technical training. This training company expanded across Canada and was eventually sold to Executrain of Canada, which in turn was absorbed by CDI College in Canada. Dale also purchased and developed one of the largest certification websites on the Internet, Cramsession.com, which he eventually sold to BrainBuzz of Tampa, Florida. He also started, developed, managed and flipped several popular web properties.
Featured In
Editorial Standards
Divestopedia is committed to delivering impartial content that is easy to understand, specific to selling a mid-market business and free. Our content covers everything and anything to do with the process of determining whether to sell your business, how to go about doing so and what “gotchas” you should be aware of along the way. This doesn't mean we don't cover peripheral concepts like retirement and employee retention, but it does mean that we look at those topics as they relate to you, the company owner, transactional advisors or the curious reader.
This site is advertiser supported, but we aim to make those relationships as clear as possible by clearly labeling advertiser-sponsored content and highlighting affiliate relationships according to FTC guidelines.
Although our content is evergreen, our editorial team evaluates older content on an ongoing basis to ensure that it is up to date and continues to provide value.
If you find an error or something you think could be improved, please let us know.
Contact Us
Whether you have a comment or suggestion to share, we look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to reach out by visiting our Contact Us page.
Location
Divestopedia's offices are located in downtown Edmonton, Alberta.
Address:
2200 10130 103 St. NW Edmonton, AB T5J 3N9
Write for Us
Want to write for us? Get information about becoming a contributor here.
About Janalta Interactive
Divestopedia is part of the Janalta Interactive publishing family, which focuses on creating smart and trusted web properties in niche industry verticals.
Over 4.5 million viewers each month find answers or are inspired by our education-driven content.
