Hauser: Top-line synergies drive the highest M&A valuation multiples
David Hauser · Details behind David Hauser Selling Grasshopper for $176m and how he acquires companies today · Oct 15, 2022 · at 19:42
Grasshopper co-founder David Hauser outlines how strategic acquirers prioritize and value acquisition rationale.
0:00 / 0:28exact quote · 28.2s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The least valuable from an acquisition standpoint is cost savings. Right. I buy this company. I get cost savings, least valuable. The next kind of down that line is I buy this company to speed up my market development. And then the most valuable is I increase my bottom, my top line or my bottom line together. But it's about top line. You know, can I sell more of what you have to my customers or what I have to your customers? That's the most valuable.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from David Hauser
Hauser: Citrix "way overpaid" when it acquired Grasshopper
“We built a great company, but someone way overpaid for it, Citrix.”
Hauser: Startups should only use venture debt for proven marketing channels
“My number one takeaway on that is only use it for Things you know are working. Marketing channels you know are working. It's not for testing. It's not for hiring. It's not for growing product. It's none of those things. It is, I know that if I spend a dollar h…”
Hauser: Scaling past $10M revenue requires transitioning to autonomous thinkers
“So from one to ten million dollars in revenue, you can have a lot of doers on the team, which means, hey, do this, come back, do this, come back. To get from 10 to 20, you need a lot of thinkers, which is people that come to you and say, David, Here's what I'm…”
Hauser: Market trajectory matters far more than total addressable market size
“Addressable market is really one that's interesting to me because a lot of people think about size of addressable market. And I think quite honestly, that doesn't matter for most of us in the room, right? Unless you're doing hundreds of millions of dollars, th…”
Hauser: Maximize acquisition value by leaving unoptimized growth for the buyer
“Leave some meat on the bone. If you want to get the most value for the company, you don't want to have optimized the shit out of everything, right? Because then the acquirer is like, well, I can't really do much with it. And the only acquirers that are left th…”
Hauser: Acquirers and VCs value services revenue close to zero
“You will definitely get nowhere close to the value on the services. Right. And we went through this at vanilla when we were talking to VCs. They're like, listen, like 40% of the businesses services, not SAS. We value it at zero. Right. In, in, in the fundraisi…”