Considering an Ownership Transition? Why You Need Interim Leadership When Considering ESOPs, PE, or Sale

Ownership transitions can feel overwhelming, but they don’t have to derail your business. This post breaks down how smart planning, employee ownership, and the right interim leadership can keep operations steady, protect your company’s value, and set the stage for a successful handoff.

Selling your business, or even partially transitioning ownership, is uncharted territory. As a founder or owner, you’re looking at a range of possibilities:

  • ESOPs to share ownership with your employees
  • Private equity to bring in capital and growth expertise
  • Employee ownership trusts to preserve culture
  • Strategic buyers
  • Family transitions
  • Going public

“The right strategy exists for you; the challenge is matching it to your aspirations,” says Mary Josephs, a nationally recognized expert in Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP).

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How To Do a Reverse Merger Into a Public Shell Company in 9 Not So Easy Steps. Or SPAC in 10!

A reverse merger into a public shell company or completing a SPAC merger can provide a path for companies going public without an IPO. While these strategies can happen faster than a traditional IPO, they are complex transactions involving regulatory compliance, financial restructuring, governance changes, and investor scrutiny. That means they need seasoned C-suite leadership to execute properly.

During the market surge of 2021, SPAC mergers became one of the most talked-about alternatives to the traditional IPO. In a zero-interest-rate environment, special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) brought many private companies to public markets with fewer barriers than the standard IPO process.

When market conditions tightened and stocks declined, SPAC activity slowed significantly. However, the SPAC market has begun to rebound.

A Fascinating Q&A with Shu Li, Scientist, Entrepreneur, and InterimExecs Client

Shu Li is a scientist, professor, Fortune 50 senior executive, serial entrepreneur, and InterimExecs client. He has founded or co-founded multiple enterprises in the healthcare, biomedical, and semiconductor sectors such as Jazz Semiconductor, Huohong, NEC, Cellular BioMedicine Group, WA Health Centers, Helio Genomics, and Laboratory for Advanced Medicine & Health, and has served in key positions in Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies, including Intel, Motorola, AlliedSignal/Honeywell, and Conexant Systems. He also holds numerous patents, is published in top scientific journals, and co-authored four books on human longevity.

He sits down with InterimExecs to share his journey.

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The Growing Strain in Private Credit and How Private Equity Can Survive and Thrive

A quiet but significant shift is underway in private capital markets. The private credit boom that fueled rapid dealmaking over the past decade is now colliding with higher interest rates, slower exits, and investor liquidity pressure. For private equity firms already holding portfolio companies longer than planned, the implications are real: improving operational performance is no longer optional; it is the primary path to preserving value.

What once felt like a reliable financial engine is becoming more complicated. And the firms that adapt fastest will likely come out ahead.

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Our Top 5 Movie Picks for CFOs. Do You Agree?

It’s Academy Awards season. Let’s look at the best movies for CFOs…none of which are current nominees, but hey, great excuse for our community to talk about the most badass movie for finance and accounting folks, ever:

#5. The Bridge on the River Kwai, starring Alec Guinness

No, this is not the badass movie – you gotta read down to #1. We’re starting with a classic Hollywood movie. You ask why? Because, my lovely financial and accounting and audit experts, you would never let meticulous get in the way of accountability, of what’s right. Just because you can build something – in this case, planning, designing and constructing a bridge for the enemy – doesn’t mean you should. Or then defend it. When meticulous is not paired with integrity, you just get obsession.

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Why Interim and Fractional CIOs and CTOs Are Essential in this Age of AI Transformation

AI transformation is not just a technology initiative; it is an organizational shift that requires experienced leadership. Interim and fractional CIOs and CTOs bring the expertise needed to help companies align people, processes, and architecture as agentic AI reshapes how work gets done.

Artificial intelligence has moved beyond experimentation. Boards and leadership teams are no longer asking whether to adopt AI, they are asking how quickly they can execute without destabilizing their organization.

What many companies discover is that the biggest obstacle is not technology. It is leadership.

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From SaaS to Agentic BPO: How AI Is Reshaping Business Models

Agentic AI is pushing companies to rethink traditional SaaS economics. As agents begin executing workflows, organizations are exploring outcome-driven models that resemble AI-powered BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) services rather than seat-based software platforms.

For decades, SaaS growth relied on expanding users and licenses. The more seats a company sold, the higher its perceived value.

Agentic AI introduces a different possibility, one where software doesn’t just support work, but performs it.

That shift has led to a “SaaSpocolypse.” Software as a Service companies have shed market value in the face of the rapid emergence of agentic AI. In response, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block, laid off 40 percent of his workforce and was rewarded with a 24 percent jump in the company’s stock price.

Is that the only way forward? No, says one of our InterimExecs RED Team CIOs.

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The Workforce Crisis Driving AI Adoption (That No One Wants to Admit)

The most successful organizations adopt AI not to replace workers, but to solve talent shortages and scale expertise through AI agents.

AI is often framed as a productivity story. But, according to one of our RED Team Interim CIOs whose expertise involves transforming organizations using AI and technology, the problem is something very different.

“They don’t have the workforce.”

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What Is Agentic AI? An Interim CIO’s Guide to Real Transformation Beyond AI Hype

Agentic AI shifts work from humans navigating software to AI agents executing workflows directly under expert supervision.

“Agentic AI” is one of the hottest terms out there. But what does agentic AI really mean? It’s not chatbots, copilots, or incremental automation. That is so last week in our AI-fueled world.

In our interview with an Interim CIO who has led multiple deployments, the distinction was clear: agentic AI isn’t about assisting users, it’s about artificial intelligence agents actually doing the work.

And it’s big. Really big. In fact, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in his keynote address at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show that enterprise AI agents would create a “multi-trillion-dollar opportunity” for many industries, from medicine to software engineering.

So how do you get a piece of that?

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The Agentic AI Shift: Why SaaS Companies Must Rethink Growth, Valuation, and Leadership

Agentic AI changes how software works by executing workflows instead of supporting users. This shift challenges seat-based SaaS economics and requires experienced executive leadership to guide transformation.

For years, SaaS valuations were built on a familiar model: growth, recurring revenue, and expanding user seats. Companies scaled by adding customers and increasing adoption inside organizations.

No more.

Agentic AI is changing not just how software is built, but how work itself gets done. And for many SaaS companies, especially those in the broad middle of the market, that shift has immediate implications for valuation, growth narratives, exit strategies, and executive leadership needs.

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