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Van Gaal: Strategic acquirers sometimes pay premiums for customer concentration

Jason Van Gaal · He exited for hundreds of millions—then invested in 20+ founders. Here's what he looks for. | Jas... · PMF Show · Feb 3, 2025 · at 19:20

Serial entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Van Gaal argues against standard advice regarding customer concentration risk in early-stage startups.

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“And there's advantages to you know, customer concentration as well, like, you can create synergies, some, sometimes an acquirer will pay a premium to have Revenue from one specific customer because they want that individual as a customer and it blends well into their portfolio. Maybe they have the other four customers in the market and they are missing that one customer. And so they want to kind of merge them together and then an acquirer can take that risk off the table. And so they actually will pay a premium for that.”

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