Kumar: Startup M&A works like closing a long-term enterprise deal
Poojan Kumar · How Poojan Kumar Used “Discontinuity” to Sell Two Startups | Nutanix ($12B) & Commvault ($4B) · May 10, 2026 · at 30:28
Poojan Kumar, who sold PernixData to Nutanix and Clumio to Commvault, advises founders on approaching M&A as a long-term relationship-building process.
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“When somebody is you know, is looking to buy a company at the end of the day, you know, they're buying, you know a platform, a company, to essentially make it part of the bigger entity and really grow it, right? And so I think it's a large deal at some level, right? It's similar to a large deal. So I think that it takes time. It takes time, whether you're working with you know the product owner or the CEO on the other side, if you're a founder, CEO yourself, if that's your goal, I think you need to take the time to make the relationship to make sure that there is a good fit from both sides and there's alignment”
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