Acquisition

“There's no such thing as a small acquisition. Ironically, like, some of the smaller companies have consumed vastly amounts more time than some of the bigger companies.”

“Things I buy, either they're going to help me 10 X or a hundred X, or they're going to fail spectacularly. It doesn't matter if I paid one or two X at that point in time.”

“I think Apple's gonna make some big acquisitions in Ternus' first year for him to set the tone that it's gonna be different, and I think that's good.”

“And in fact, I think the math, if I remember correctly now, is like, only about seven percent of actual acquisitions get any kind of, like, even tech, mainstream tech press mentions.”

“I think that's the biggest opportunity in acquisitions today. 100% is where you buy just a great product and service. And then someone like you steps in with go to market experience.”

“I actually think that there are far more companies that want to do tuck in 30 to fifty million dollar acquisitions that want to do, than want to do, you know, half a billion. Like, it's probably a hundred X easier to get that type of deal done.”

“And there's no hard and fast rule, but I do know generally the smaller the acquisition, the more likely it is to be an asset purchase.”

“It's important to remember what you're selling and what the buyer is acquiring, and it's really the brand and the customers and the profitability and the distribution. You can't copy those things overnight.”

“The acquisitions were key because they created a platform, a geographical platform for us. To go into a new geography and create a team of people is very expensive.”

“We will do maybe five acquisitions a year. Could be one, could be 10 max. I mean, if it's really a stretch.”

“If making acquisitions is part of my business model, there are no longer one-time costs.”

“Cause you know, in sales, if you let a lead sit for a few hours, it goes colder. The same exact thing applies to acquisitions.”

“In most acquisitions, what happens when an acquisition happens is that the revenue actually tanks because new people are coming in, processes are changing. There is uncertainty culture is changing.”

“If I was a regulator in America, I would like, even though I'm a free market person, I think it's become so extreme where you need, this is one area where I would say that almost that acquisitions need to be banned.”

“I think that is a crucial part of how everybody should think about acquisitions, which is the buyer should accelerate the target company. It's almost like a venture capitalist investing into a startup, right? You invest money to accelerate the company you're i…”

“I'll make the bold predictions that you will not see a wave of digital media acquisitions.”

“What I've observed is it's that identity shift is a prerequisite for most of the other things. It's not simply your ability to handle the politics and bureaucracy of a bigger company or to navigate a new structure. I actually think most founders don't make tha…”

“If things were growing and going well, I guarantee you that founder is not willing to sell. And so there's probably going to be some things that need to get fixed.”

“I think they've made 30 acquisitions since the nineties, and they've only sold two things since 2015.”

“Companies that usually, like, usually mergers that fall apart or acquisitions that fall apart end up with in a really bad place because companies just typically have checked out by the time the acquisition happens. Figma is thriving. And I think they're thrivi…”

“Don't expect your business to join and keep running at exactly the same pace, because there's going to be a big slowdown before it accelerates again.”

“Some of these companies grew by acquisitions, right? That, that drives immediate growth, but then whatever you buy also has to grow in 20%, right? If they don't, then if you buy a company that's kind of slowed down, that actually, the weighted averages slows y…”

“People usually, when it comes to acquisitions, mergers, anything, they try to focus on substance, which is, like, amount, or, like, dollars, or, like, how, how can I get the highest bid from buyer? But I think, The process is more important. So the author is t…”

“My teams that I've led have done about 500 acquisitions. I've been involved in those acquisitions. So I get into the details of what are we buying? And to buy those 500 companies, we looked at thousands and thousands of other companies that we didn't buy”

“Had to build, you know, there's like the iceberg, which is 10% above the water and you can see it. And then there's 90% below the water for a data company. The platform is the below the water part. And then the functionality that you build on that platform is …”

“What I've seen happen in a lot of acquisitions is you have sort of an idea of what you're getting acquired for and you get excited and really attached to that vision. And then when that vision doesn't end up fitting into the, you know, the company strategy, th…”

“Most of the richest people in the world Are there through acquisitions? Some version of buying and selling small companies or private equity deals.”

“Seasonality when it comes to acquisitions is terrible. It literally is. If a buyer looks at that, unless the product, you know, is, is typically at scale, but I mean, if you're selling like an e-commerce store with fireworks or something like that, they do tha…”

“Like, 98% of acquisitions are below eighty million dollars.”

“If companies sense that you are desperate or you're actually very for an acquisition, the urgency is, is less there.”

“The main risk is that it's not that you waste the money with the acquisition, It's that you demoralize every, everybody else in the company because they see these new companies being acquired and they don't understand the value or they wonder, you know, why yo…”

“We gather data on what they're spending time on, and we basically found that you know, there's way more impact on spending a bit more time on monetization, a bit more time on retention, compared to spending time on acquisition.”

“So if you don't come in and change anything, you should probably expect the company to perform kind of how it's performed in the past. the more you start changing systems and changing out people it increases the upside opportunity, but it also increases the d…”

“It just often means the folks who are thinking about it in startup land tend to be thinking about it too early. This is like another example of like taking later stage advice too early. When like the advice you should be taking is make your core business work.”

“When you know, I've started and sold companies before, and I know that when you get acquired, You lose control. Like that's a part of why, why the whole point of it, why someone's buying you is you have a boss, even if they're telling you you're going to be in…”

“The thing that's been broadly true is that there's always stuff that you find out after the fact with an acquisition. And if you don't have access to that team or kind of the institutional knowledge for that product, it can become really difficult to find a so…”

“The old school method of holds co is basically lots of acquisitions done on fast growing companies to bolster the fact that their old school stuff Isn't growing that rapidly unless they throw a ton of spend at it.”

“Like that's not going to be my superpower. I'm probably not going to come up with a bunch of product ideas is what they can do differently. I'm going to come up with a marketing and distribution idea. Or how we're going to like wrap this in something that can …”

“An acquisition is a mix of every emotion, and then the question is, I mean, like literally, like you feel relief, you feel excitement, you feel sadness, you feel loss, like significant loss because you are losing control. Like every emotion under the sun I fel…”

“Most entrepreneurs lives are shaped by multiple small events and multiple smaller milestones than few large ones. We tend to associate, you may have noticed that I didn't point to any fundraise or any acquisition or any of those things as a milestone, because …”

“I do think the reason that a number of acquisitions fail with other acquirers is taking a one size fits all type of approach.”

“What happens if our activation rate goes up by five percent? Usually that's really powerful, much more powerful than a 20% increase in acquisition.”

“If you want to be able to make acquisitions, it's still much easier to make acquisitions as a public company. And the reason for that is because you at least get a report card every day about what the price of your company is worth.”

“Most acquisitions, Well, the ones that work, either work because you kind of leave them alone entirely, or you sort of fully absorb them”

“Transition from being your own game master to being a player in somebody else's game.”

“The most important thing that I have seen is an agreement before the acquisition is finalized about autonomy of the target company.”

“I would give it like a good six to nine months before making a decision that it's not going to work.”

“My belief on acquisitions and IPOs for that matter, exits of any kind is that they are not about exiting. The entire point is to become more successful at your mission.”