The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Private equity acquisition multiples are at all-time highs
“The multiples that PEs are paying are around all-time highs.”
Successful M&A deals never look expensive in hindsight
“I completely agree with Peter. If you do a good M&A deal, no one's ever looked back and said, how much do we pay? It's just smiles and congratulations.”
Google paid $1.1 billion for pre-revenue Waze and succeeded
“For example, if you look at a ways where we spent 1.1 billion dollars to buy them, that's been a tremendously successful deal for us. But at the time they had almost no revenue.”
Founders should sell if acquirers pay expected future value today
“The general rule of thumb is that if someone is going to pay you today what you think you're reasonably going to be worth well into the future, then sell now.”
YouTube faced a $1 billion copyright lawsuit when Google acquired it
“YouTube was facing a billion dollar copyright lawsuit. I mean, it had growing infrastructure costs, and it had very little revenue, all three of which Google was able to help out with quite a bit.”
Active internal sponsors are crucial for post-merger integration success
“The single most important element we found for a successful integration is that we have an engaged deal sponsor from the Google side stay intimately involved with the company after closing until it's fully integrated.”
Waze signed an LOI with another acquirer before Google bought them
“Waze had actually signed a letter of intent with another acquirer when we got involved. One of our main competitors was a Waze stockholder and wasn't too keen on us buying them.”
Acqui-hires are declining except for elite machine learning talent
“No, but they are less frequent, and prices are coming down, with, I'd say, one exception, which is rarefied machine learning talent can still fetch a premium price on the aqua hire market.”
Tech M&A market remains healthy with no signs of slowing
“Yeah, overall, we're seeing a healthy M&A market with no real signs of it slowing down.”
Founders should disclose deal gotchas early in M&A diligence
“And then likewise, we encourage founders to let us know in advance of any potential gotchas early in the process. We're likely going to find out about them anyway. It's always better to address them upfront earlier rather than later as surprises.”
Google almost always requires acquired founders to remain post-acquisition
“We almost always want the founders to stick around and work for Google after the closing.”
Google M&A deals require approval from the CEO and executive sponsor
“Every M&A deal at Google needs to be approved ultimately by our CEO, and it needs an executive sponsor, and an executive sponsor is one of the CEO's direct reports that runs a product area at Google.”
Post-acquisition operating alignment matters more than closing the deal
“Although it's important to focus on getting the deal done, it's equally or even more important to jointly agree on how your company's going to operate within Google after closing. So in other words, the wedding itself is important, but more so is the marriage …”