Startup CXO

Chapter 80M&A: Buy Side

One of the best parts of the CBDO role is when you're considering mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a growth strategy. Not every company will do that, but if you do, here are some pointers that I've found to make every deal work better. First, you'll need a robust understanding of the ecosystem and be able to provide hard data to others in the company. At the minimum, you'll have to keep track of all the players, and not just your competition but other solutions your primary personas are engaging with (share of wallet). As noted in the earlier chapters, once the entire management team is aligned on which solutions are needed to bring to market, the team must also exhaust all options (build vs. partner vs. buy) and align on an approach for each solution. Yes, you read that right. Even if you're not (at the moment) pursuing option #2 or option #3, you'll still need information, economics, pros and cons for those options, along with option #1.

All the events you've been to, all the people you've met, all the conversations that you've had in the ecosystem will come to bear on the M&A question, and you'll leverage the ongoing ecosystem findings to bring to your colleagues all potential targets for acquisition. This information should include things like relative size (revenue, # of clients, employees), solution strengths/weaknesses and solution overlap, etc. The CBDO should also bring any possible conflicts or concerns of each player along with market comparables ...