Selling the Business Without Selling Out

Pritul Khagram is an Exited Founder, having sold his boutique professional services business, People Force, to PwC UK in 2023. After leaving PwC in December 2024, Pritul embarked on a Portfolio Career serving on boards as NED, Board Advisor, Strategic Advisor and some Fractional Leadership roles. Alongside his Portfolio Career, Pritul is an Angel Investor in 13 UK based start-ups and early stage businesses.

Jason Butcher is a multi-exit founder, ecosystem builder, adviser and mentor who supports startups, including WattNext AI, across fintech, payments, artificial intelligence, sports tech, mental health, marketing and community initiatives. Through Orbit Capital and his wider portfolio, he helps founders and organisations create meaningful, lasting impact by connecting them with the people, resources and opportunities needed to grow. Over the past two decades, Jason has built businesses, supported entrepreneurs and developed networks spanning founders, operators, industry leaders and strategic partners. His work centres on founder-first ecosystems, strategic partnerships, venture development and community building, with a strong belief that successful ventures are built through relationships, trust, access and collaboration as much as capital. He is also committed to environmental stewardship, social impact, education, entrepreneurship and community development.

D. Earl "Doug" Johnston is the author of Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart. A lexicographer, investigative business researcher and litigation support expert in commercial banking and mergers & acquisitions, Doug has more than 30 years of executive management experience leading banks and private equity firms. Throughout his career, he has worked across lending, borrowing, due diligence, management, and operations, supervising over $5 billion in total transactions and authoring numerous published articles. While spending nine years researching the language and phenomenology of emotions, Doug developed a highly accessible ‘emotionary’ framework that identifies and defines 272 distinct emotional states as the ‘Gears of Life.’ It draws on insights from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, and the arts to help people communicate more effectively. Utilizing contributions and everyday quotes from 19 academic disciplines and all walks of life, his work makes it easier to express emotions, and to enhance emotional intelligence through easily accessible but deeply clarifying vocabulary and phrases. Choosing Emotions has been cited as the most comprehensive reference book on emotions in the English language, and as a modern-day ‘Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations’ in the specific field of emotions.

Patrick O'Brien is an entrepreneur and financial adviser whose career has included multiple start-ups, banking and a combined CFO and general management role in private manufacturing. He describes his core expertise as decision-making: finding creative ways to solve big problems, communicating choices clearly and helping people act on them. As a licensed fiduciary, he also brings a practical understanding of the regulatory, documentation and trust issues that shape major financial decisions, including business transitions and sales.

James Hailey is a fractional CFO and founder of Financial Leader, helping organisations turn financial complexity into clear, confident decisions. His work combines strategic planning, cash-flow management, budgeting, reporting, financial modelling and process improvement with a practical understanding of people and leadership. James has supported organisations through difficult periods, including helping a transportation company navigate COVID, and works with leaders on the financial and strategic choices that shape what happens next. Having moved from traditional executive finance into fractional work, he brings a grounded perspective on how owners can understand their options, strengthen the business and plan its future without reducing the conversation to numbers alone.