Does it matter if the buyer is a competitor when deciding what to share early on?

Yes, significantly. A buyer who's also a competitor, or could become one, has a different set of incentives than a purely financial buyer — even a well-intentioned competitor benefits simply from learning about your pricing, customers, or operations, regardless of whether a deal ever closes, in a way that a private equity buyer or first-time owner-operator generally doesn't. That doesn't mean you should refuse to talk to competitors, since they're often genuinely well-positioned buyers, but it does mean applying extra caution to what you share and when.

Practically, this means being more deliberate about staging disclosure with a competitor buyer, insisting on a confidentiality agreement with explicit non-use language (not just non-disclosure) before sharing anything specific, and holding back your most sensitive customer and pricing details until later in the process than you might with a non-competitor. It's also worth thinking about how long the confidentiality obligations should last, since competitive information can remain valuable to a competitor well after a deal falls through. A Treadstone business lawyer can help tailor the confidentiality terms specifically for a competitor buyer rather than using the same approach for everyone.