How to Score Culture Fit in M&A with Sharon Van Zeeland

24:19And they're just as flat of an organization that can be, which reminds me of one of the vendors I'm working with right now. They operate so different. I actually went to their office and it just blew my mind how flat the organization was. You had zero sense of hierarchy at all. I was curious. I just like, how do you operate? And they're just like, we all kind of know each other. We just go to the person when you need it. And using that as example, are there areas that it would impact? You hit on a really solid point there. On the cultural side, we used to see big differences between software companies and industrial companies.

24:49But today, almost every company has a software component. We're all using software tools or agile processes or best practices in that space. The biggest challenges culturally are coming in terms of company size. Exactly what you said, small companies versus big companies. That's where we're working really hard to have separate playbooks depending on the size of the company. And the other thing about Rockwell is over the last couple of years, when you think about things like the shock of COVID, or you think supply chain challenges, or you think about even the tariff shocks, we've become more resilient.

25:24And we're actually much more aligned with kind of that fast and adaptability as well. We're all getting a little closer together, but eyes wide open around the differences is helpful up front in a deal. So you adapt to having a playbook for the smaller organizations. That was what I was trying to get at. How do you not destroy the little companies? Yeah. Which is the cliche thing that happens. Everybody probably had a favorite product. That was a startup. Then the company bought it. Not to name names here, but I can think of a few off the top of my head. And then all of a sudden, boom, product is gone and they never did anything with it.

25:56That's part of our secret sauce. We really think about, do you leave them alone? Do you partially integrate or do you fully integrate? And it depends on all these factors that we're talking about. The cultural factors, the financial factors, the strategic factors. But we have playbooks depending on that. And we get sign-off early on in the deal before closing that says, everybody across the organization understands this is the type of company. Here's its really positive things. And here's how we think we can drive value together faster. So it sounds like the key is just being adaptive at the end of the day.

26:28It's almost like you're building frameworks to specifically be adaptive and not just have one way of doing things. You mentioned the importance of the business unit, it's a large organization. How do they come in play? How do you work with them between your department that you run that's helping to execute M &A and this business unit that ultimately has to absorb these companies? They are the driver and owner of the P &L. Our job, as I see it, is to support and give them frameworks, best practices, and help them avoid pitfalls and also go faster with processes and tools that we've implemented.

27:01So we're a support and a framework to help them. What would happen if you weren't there? A lot of the lessons that we've learned would be lost in terms of the repeatability and the efficiencies to go forward. It's almost like you're bringing the maturity of an M &A model because otherwise it's almost like they're doing it over, but you're like harnessing it across all the different business units, centralizing what the M &A muscle is as an organization. Increasing efficiency and effectiveness, I hope. My new book, Fire Lead M &A, The Framework, is officially out. Over 400 episodes of M &A Science, I've talked to the best corporate development leaders in the world.

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28:22Again, that's dealroom.net slash book. You have like an engineering perspective. Like if you think about the function of M &A, it's an odd one because everybody thinks of IT, HR, finance. But M &A is a function. Is it fair to say M &A is a function or do you think of it as a muscle within all these different functions? How do you think about where M &A actually sits? I think it's both. There's a very specialized skill set for M &A professionals, just like finance or HRIT. We have the privilege, at least at Rockwell, to look across the company and help bring that out and help our business leaders accelerate inorganic growth faster.

29:04So we're both a function and kind of support across. So if you're giving me like a visual picture of what that looks like, it's almost like a function, but then it's cross-functional nature because it integrates with every other department. Yeah, we have a functional lineup, and then we are somewhat dotted line support to our business leaders. That makes sense. A lot of dotted lines. Yes. But again, from an engineering mindset, I love the view of the whole solution and the complexity of all of those variables and all of those pieces fitting together. Now in this deal thesis, what's included? For our deal thesis, we have generally what is the strategic reason for doing this?

29:43In our strategic framework, does it accelerate customer revenue? Are there opportunities to do new product introductions faster? Does it give us the opportunity to expand market share? All those types of things. So we really think about it strategically and we think about profit as well. I would also say on the strategic side, we think about our geographic footprint. So all of those things come into play. There's clearly for the deal thesis, a financial model as well. So those are the things we think about. What about the integration part? Is there anything that talks about like how the execution or the, how it's going to get done?

30:19As I mentioned earlier, we think about, is this one that we're going to stand alone? Are we going to partially integrate? Are we going to fully absorb? So we do think about that early as well. Is that in the deal thesis or that completely separate? There's a draft of it, but obviously as we get through due diligence, it could change. It materializes. Okay. Okay. That's actually helpful. I want to shift gears now that we're talking about the deal thesis. Let's talk about getting deals actionable. Before we talked, you shared a really good example about a land deal that you worked on. Yeah, that land deal is the perfect example.

30:48The mining company who I worked for at the time really was looking for land with mineral rights. They were trying to get the ability to mine some minerals. And when the time got close to closing, the landowner just would not sell. He was backing away and we really could not understand why. And we took him out to dinner, which in Texas, by the way, steak dinners are always part of transactions. And over dinner, it just came to light that, look, he had hunted on that land. His grandfather had hunted on that land. He wanted to hunt on that land with his sons, and it just was not feeling right to him to give up the land for any price.

31:26But what we did as a deal team is we took that back and we said, look, it's never been done, but let's extend an exclusive right to hunt on the land for a couple of weeks, a year in the fall. In an area that we weren't mining, there were no mineral rights anyways. So we executed a hunting land right, which is never before done that I was aware of, but he was very happy and it had high value to the seller. So this is an example where creativity, again, that problem solving mindset and thinking about all the variables, can utilize things outside price or terms. And I've had other ones as well. There was an owner who had a company truck that he just loved that company truck.

32:06And even though it was an asset and part of the transaction, he just didn't want to give up the truck. So we found a swap for that truck. He bought another truck and put it in the deal and got to keep his company truck. Or there was an owner one time that just really gave back to the community. He sponsored the 4th of July parade every year in the community and he wanted to guarantee that was going to continue on. So maybe there's some cost to that, but in general, it's not a key price or deal term. So those are the types of things when I think creatively how to get the deal across the finish line.

32:39These examples, the hunting land rye, the truck, the 4th of July sponsorship, they're all very sentimental. Yes. That's interesting because you never think about looking for your deal blocker as some sentimental things. You just have to use a wide angle and look at all the variables. Sometimes just personal relationships help with understanding what's really going on in terms of the mind of the seller as well, beyond just the numbers. Teach this to me. Teach me how to get deals actionable because I'm still a rookie at this stuff. And I've advised on like 35-ish deals and as an advisor. Now I'm working as a principal, still executive chairman for Deal Room and still working on some of the M &A deal.

33:16Now I'm starting to rethink some of these things because you automatically default to price or terms and you just automatically are like, okay, I'm going to win deal right now, right? I think it's a price. The terms, maybe the price is almost a symbolic thing because it's not the best scenario, but it's almost like, hey, we want to know like we didn't totally lose face on this deal. I feel like the price is almost like symbolic, which I think is making it sentimental. Yeah. I just think there's a lot of different ways and it comes down to emotional intelligence, which I know sometimes is a buzzword around that.

33:51But I do think there's an aspect to deal-making beyond just the financial intelligence and it takes a good listening and a wider angle to think about those things. Give me a playbook. Teach me how to rethink approaching deals because I'm like the typical finance person that's like, what's the price? This is how I would negotiate with you. I'm like, hey, I know you haven't thought about selling your business, Sharon. What would be the price to get a deal done? There's various approaches that you can use. One is where would you see the business five years from now? So sometimes you can get a sense of what their dreams and hopes are.

34:21And then I would also say just what are you most proud of in terms of this business? What do you really like? And just try to learn what drives them. Okay. So instead of like, how much do you want for this business? It's like, hey, I love to hear about where do you see the business five years from now? Where would you like to see this business in five years? And that could be X amount of revenues. Maybe you have a daughter that you want to see working in the business. and it's like, oh. Or you want to see the 4th of July parade float with your company name on it. Yeah, absolutely. That's like a big thing that's meaningful for you because you and the family go see the 4th of July parade every summer.

34:55Exactly. And then the other example is, what are you most proud of in the business? Which I think is a really good question to ask. Often it's people that they've employed, the growth and development of their team. So it also helps you understand who do they think is valuable, who do they think has grown and who can grow more. I had the same with Dealroom. I built the company up from scratch and then I let myself basically get fired. So it was like learning to step away. They kind of had that inclination that we're going to flatline at 3 million if I just keep running the things that way to do.

35:23We're on a leader. Whoa, this is great. I bought another good leader and then I go find something else to do. Good for you. You're a wise leader. Well, we'll see. If I get to keep playing and I'm happy, I'm sure that's good. Have you ever seen other things when you ask this stuff, you know, five years from now where maybe that could be pretty unique in terms of vision, but what do you think? you most proud of? The people always comes first. Is there anything else that you typically hear or may hear instead? Oh, for sure. The products. Products. Okay. The technology or the patents and the solution that they offer customers.

35:55That's the driving force behind most business leaders and entrepreneurs. The future and what they're most proud of. That helps and gives you some unique insights so you can start speaking with them instead of at them. Is that it? There's nothing else. I can't give you all the secret sauce. Okay. But this is like a great starting place. I can get my reps in and do this and see what else. When it comes to building trust with people, what's your approach there? I feel like there's just getting the first conversation. And then I have a sense that meeting face-to-face is a good one. The steak dinner is, I think is another one.

36:31Do you almost get a read of the person? Oh, we're really clicking right away. Let me go invite them for the steak dinner and just try to get more time commitment faster. What's the logic, I guess, or how do you engineer that? Yeah, you're exactly on the right track. Face-to-face meetings help outside of negotiation discussions help. I would also say for us, the big thing is, can we validate the information that you're sharing with us? That's a real trust builder for the Rockwell team is the data that you're providing. Factual and true, are there audited financial statements is what we're hearing in the marketplace about your product.

37:05True. Those types of things. So it builds from that. And the exchange of data, again, back to engineering. Show me the data to support the statements that you're making. Early in the process, we get to a point where we sign an NDA. We're exchanging information. There's trust on both sides. You want trust that you can trust them as an organization, as a leadership, that they're giving you the right information and just answer truthfully and I think you get a sense of them working with. And then there's the questions you ask to get their perspective on what's really important to them. And that's where the vision and what are you proud of perspectives are helpful.

37:39That gives me a good sense how to get deals actionable. When you take these things and they correlate into an offer on the business, how do you approach that? Is it based on the data, we have a pretty systematic way of presenting an offer? or do some of these variables, like the sentiment part, give you some kind of influence in how you would structure the deal? And there's obviously cases that you brought up, which is more of overcoming the blockers, but even just trying to structure the initial offer. Our offers are generally structured in a similar way. We have general terms and conditions and things when we think about liabilities and we think about market sizing and ongoing retention of employees.

38:25So those things are pretty traditional, but we leave some flexibility or unusual circumstances and other ways to structure pieces and parts of that. So pretty straightforward in terms of your approaches general, in terms of how you would bucket the company in one of those whatever matrix. And then you have a way to present the offer to them. When it comes to digging into some of those areas, like you gave an example, is that when you get the pushback and it's like, hey, whatever response that you get that I changed my mind or I'm not really ready for this. Is that when you start digging in more to try to figure out what those blockers are?

39:02We're always eyes wide open for challenges to getting a deal across the finish line. So when it happens, varies. Sometimes it happens early. Just the request from Rockwell in terms of our diligence list can be long. So sometimes that's a little bit of a challenge. And then I I would say, again, as you get closer to the end, sometimes other things come to front. But our eyes are always wide open of when there might be a challenge. I feel like the default answer or response to initial LOI is the price is too low. And I feel like it's like a default response, even though some of those other sentimental examples are the actual issues at hand.

39:39But I feel like you're not going to get that. Nobody's going to come out and tell you that I really wanted to have my company logo on this float in the fourth day parade. And there's a reason I'm not doing the deal. I honestly feel like someone like me, and I don't know if this is more of a cultural thing, but to the price, I would just like, give me like 2x more. We're not even close. Price is the biggest factor. One of the things that Rockwell also does very well is we're very thoughtful about our LOI price. We have done a significant amount of diligence if we get to LOI. So we understand the value of the business pretty well.

40:09We know what the market comparables are. We know what our peers are doing. So I would say our prices are fair. We also offer more than just financial incentives. So it's a different perspective. Do you ever have those situations where the counterparty wants to negotiate on price, but then you sort of find ways to change the terms instead and bridge the gap that way? Sure. That's the win. Do you have examples of that? Like that's the thing. Teach me that. That's the biggest thing, especially doing software deals. I feel like valuation gap, if you could teach that as a course, by all means, I'll sign up.

40:44I agree. The valuation gaps in software can be super challenging. Particularly, we're looking for profitable software companies who are in an interesting time in that space, for sure. But I do think, again, I'll go back to it. What are comparable companies obtaining? What are the funding rounds looking even for early stage startup companies in similar positions? And the market adjustments will drive more of that. Where do you get that data from? Many sources. A lot of different tools. Yeah, many sources. I know. We can Google. I think our deal room has a market map of all these private company data tools out there.

41:15It's hard to get really good valuation data though. Actually, you get public company comps are pretty easy. Right. And then there's some I've seen where they pull the comps from private company, but I just don't trust it. We've done some ourselves, some private company transactions. So that helps your own internal. But yeah, we go at it from many different ways. There's a certain valuation company I'm trying to convince to prioritize all their data that they have. That would be great. We would appreciate it. Yeah. I'll let you know if I convince them to do that. That would be an awesome product.

41:47Agreed. From a buyer-led M &A perspective, how early in the process do you start thinking about integration? This is the area that's been the biggest learning for me. And I would say the team at Rockwell. We've proven the earlier the integration team starts, the higher the likelihood of success on the other side in terms of value creation. The prior thoughts or when we first started were, let's not bother the integration functional leaders because we don't know if this deal is going to close. Let's just wait till closing. That's very common. That's so common. And then we'll deal with it. But we have spent a lot of time re-explaining the deal, the thesis, and the functional leaders.

42:23There were things that we missed. Now we start even before the LOI. We marry our diligence leaders with our integration leaders. And sometimes they're even the same person on a function, which is great. And that's really right after strategic fit's been validated. and we pull ahead all that real world operations, systems, experience from the integration team up to the diligence process. As I mentioned, we won't have a full integration plan at the time of LOI, but we'll have a view and we'll have a close to complete integration plan at the end of due diligence and certainly before signing. Okay.

42:56So the problems, if you don't think about integration early, you end up having to re-explain this with the business unit? With more the integrational functional leaders. And the business unit leaders to some extent, but usually the business leaders are with us at the early stages. They're with us the whole way. You don't ever happen to re-explain it to the folks in charge of integration. Yes. Things will end up getting missed. Yes. And this is the phrase I heard, the knowledge chasm. That's a good one. And then this is where you counter this by marrying the diligence integration leaders. And in cases, they could be the same person, which is even better.

43:29And that gives you that continuity of all this incoming data that you get. Diligence can be valuable in planning integration. And their goal is by LOI, you at least have a thesis of how this company is going to get integrated. Then as you get to sign, you ideally want to have a pretty comprehensive integration plan. This is like the Bayer Lit M &A framework. It's all about synchronizing diligence and integration. So this is a great practice. When do you socialize this with the target company and try to get alignment there to like, hey, this is what the plan is on integrating it. So that way you hit the ground running from day one.

44:08Or is that, do you wait till day one or? Such an insightful question for us. We involve them pretty early because look, we want our acquired company talent to stay with us and they want to be part of the success. So we start to talk with them very early in diligence and say, hey, this is what we're thinking about in terms of integration. So they're part of the integration team. Our integration leaders on our side have a corresponding rep on the target side as well. Okay. So your integration leads, they have another corresponding person in the target company. And as they're developing this integration plan, they're socializing it with them.

44:45So they get to validate it. They're like, I don't think that's going to work. Exactly. That's exactly right. Or that's a really great idea. That's a good idea. Do you ever heard of that concept like reverse integration? I did a cool interview with Cisco on their Splunk, it was a huge acquisition, but there was just parts of the business were like, we're not going to follow the traditional integration. We're going to flip it around and actually take their process. Yeah, for sure. We don't call it reverse integration, but if they have systems or tools that are better than what our current business is using, we will also do the same.

45:15I didn't know there was a fancy term, reverse integration. Maybe you could coin something else. I don't know. I'll work on that. All right, we'll stick to reverse integration for now. Works. When you do, let me know. I will. I got to update my vocabulary. So this is really good. So that's like, it sounds like a really key element. It's not only early, have a view, a thesis on how you're going to integrate, have this synchronized approach so that information coming in diligence starts feeding integration planning as soon as it comes in. That goes to this iterative process to building an integration plan, which gets socialized with the corresponding integration leads and the target side so that they can validate it.

45:55Close happens. Everyone's on the same page about priorities, what's going to get executed, how it's going to get done, and things are going to go a lot smoother. Then we should also talk about which is the cost of integration. The other reason we pulled it ahead was because there can traditionally be costs associated with integration and we wanted to capture that in the deal model. So that back to the numbers are critical as well. So there's a key piece of that. Tell me more about the cost because I look at a deal where it's going to be very cost synergy oriented. I was told that you should plan to spend a dollar for every cost savings.

46:29Saving a dollar is going to cost you a dollar. Is that true? That's an interesting analogy. I haven't looked at the data. It wasn't an engineering person. It was a finance person that told me this. I'm not sure if that's true, but I do think depending on whether you leave them alone or partially integrate or fully integrate, there are some costs associated with that. we've learned along the way that we need to think about those. And we actually put those integration costs in our deal model. So our ROI calculation includes them. So we know it's a deal cost. Also a good practice. It's like an early thing.

46:58I see organizations evolve. Like your first deals, you don't do that at all. And then, and it is, it's like a deal when we try to sell software. And if it's an earlier company, there is no integration budget. And then, so the integration team wants to use it, purchase it. It doesn't, but it's a mature company, like any of the Fortune 500, basically. they have a huge budget for integration. Massive. That's why, because then they learn. What does that ultimately do? Okay, the integration costs, making sure you have, I don't understand what the budget is, but you're also like validating that budget when you're going through the planning process.

47:30That's right. So you may have an early, we think it's gonna be this, but towards close, you may adjust that. And that's part of your integration planning. That's right. And it can go up or down. We might find some savings that we hadn't thought about early on as well. What are the net results? You look at the old way of doing things where it's a couple of weeks before close. You're like, hey, integration folks, we're about to close on this deal. You should probably get up to speed versus what you described. Like what is ultimately the net bottom line result? So for us, it's again, acceleration to value, but what we call steady state integration.

48:00They're on all Rockwell systems. They're functioning in terms of new product development processes that we use or whatever the integration plan had hoped for. we're getting there faster and we're actually closing. And we're saying we've finished on time. I would say the ones that we hadn't pulled ahead the integration team, they went on a little longer, had a little more challenges to getting to the end state. Whereas the ones that we're doing today with this approach are reaching the milestones as anticipated. So mainly you use the term accelerate to value and then getting to steady state. So essentially you're getting an integration done a lot faster.

48:36Or as planned. As planned. Which means you'll hit your investment thesis. That's the goal. You achieve your investment thesis is the ultimate goal. I feel like when we talk about the fabled high integration failure rate, I feel like that's just such a misnomer because yes, once in a while deals will totally blow up, which you go in the news probably, but it's usually the way you described. It just takes you longer to actually get that target value. It's just a delay. Now, if you do accelerate it and then you do get the target value, that's a good thing because then you'll be able to usually receive those cost synergies, improve the EBITDA margins, and improve cash flows in the business.

49:15And do more deals. Then give it capacity, go do more deals. All right. That's why you should plan your integration early. Another thing that you mentioned is your team has several people in each traditional M &A, integration, and strategy. How do you structure collaboration between these different teams to have assurance that insights from integration failures feed back into your diligence process? As I mentioned, it's a privilege to have that full scope and view. The team is super collaborative. We're all in the same staff meetings. We're hearing all of the updates from all of the different phases of a deal.

49:53And we update the due diligence. We update the integration and the strategy playbooks along the way with anything that anybody's learned over the course of the transaction, we always really look for those success factors again. What went well that we can leverage on the next deal? And then I'm a huge fan of celebrating the wins. That's important too. So this is almost like a retrospective basically that you have and you bring everybody together. Hey, what can we improve? What was the good stuff that we did really well? We do it after every phase of every deal. So even after strategy, after that's complete and a deal's been validated from a strategic perspective.

50:33Six months later, we'll come back and say, was that a good process? We'll do the same thing for due diligence at the end. Maybe a year later after closing to say, did we capture everything in due diligence? And same thing on integration. And then the integration actually has check-ins every six months until steady state. So there's lots of reflection. So your retrospectives are actually pretty far out. When you first mentioned, I was thinking of like, you just closed the deal and it's like, all right, which is everybody's in pretty happy mode. You know, they're finally getting to sleep again. But no, this is actually like several months out.

51:02Our perspective, and we used to do that, but I would say on diligence, we feel like you don't really understand how well you did in diligence until a little bit further out, six months. Because closing the deal is one thing, but actually running the business post-deal gives you more insight into what you did. Did the diligence uncover everything you expected? So that's why we let it run a little bit before we do that. That makes sense. But now everybody's involved on those retrospects. You might have a retrospective focus on the strategy of a deal, but it's all those different functions of M &A involved in it.

51:34Yes. How do you keep people from forgetting everything from all the months that go by after the deal's done? It's interesting because people want to share, particularly the things that are a challenge, because they want to make sure we don't do it again kind of thing. So we don't have trouble with people remembering. And they're still generally aligned with the deal in some function. So it's front and center. That's true. I'm starting to believe this more and more, that if it's really important, you'll remember. True. You know, I'm always like scrambling, like, where's my to-do list? What happened?

52:07This and that. But it's really important, you'll remember. That's right. Some scar tissue. Yes. Now, looking at the broader industrial automation sector, how has the rise of AI and digital transformation changed the way you look at acquisition targets? I'd say AI and digital transformation hasn't really changed our strategic areas of interest. We know what those are, but what it has done is make us be more thoughtful about our due diligence processes. So when you think about access to data or cybersecurity or confirmed source code ownership, those things are really becoming front and center as we think about data management and AI and open systems.

52:50And on the cultural side, I would say the people aspects continue to be high in those areas of AI. So those are the things that we're thinking about. So you think and act more and more like a tech company? Yes. Does the market value the same way? Rockwell has had a portfolio in software, hardware, and services. So we span all of those kind of technologies. And I do think we're valued in the way that others are driving this transformation. Yeah, it's just interesting to see some larger conglomerates, how they've sort of introduced spinoffs by sector just because of the way market perception acts.

53:27We'll have to get your CFO on the podcast to talk more about that. I would think he would say he's very happy with our portfolio. If you can get him on the podcast, you know how hard it is to get CFOs on this podcast? If you can, I will have a reward. Bounty, if anybody's listening to this podcast, can help me get CFOs on M &A Science. I will put in a nice reward out there, but it's like the hardest persona to get on this podcast. They're a little busy. I get it. They're CFOs. Sometimes the CEO actually has it pretty good. And they do things beyond just M &A. Yeah. So in terms of just adopting with the industry sector, it is really fitting in with the way we evaluate technology, look at the security component and all those aspects like you would.

54:05So you're really evolving to just mature the process for emerging technology. For the other corp dev leaders out there who want to implement more systematic cultural assessment, and maybe they're just being challenged with their own organization. And this to be the traditional way of just focusing on the financial metrics. What advice would you give to them to make that kind of change? It comes back again to the data. There are other pieces of data beyond just financial things like employee retention, promotion rates, are people sticking around and growing once they're acquired and contributing that value creation at the same rate, post-acquisition and pre-acquisition?

54:51So are they still growing at the same speed? And are there gaps that exist? And if they are, what are the indicators that might be driving that? Something from culture, maybe it could be employee morale, or it could be absenteeism, those types of things to look at. But some turnover is going to happen when you acquire something. But if you can really look at those trends over time, that helps. We also look at rate of new product introductions. We look at, again, we talked about customer complaints or customer success stories. So all those things outside the financial metrics is a good way to start to introduce some of this aspect to deals.

55:25Yeah. It's looking at the whole picture, but you get these metrics, the employee churn, promotion rate, PI, customer success, which attributes to company success in general. That's right. So that's why you dig into the cultural assessment part. What's the craziest thing you've seen in M &A? I think it's the implications of AI. And it's not so much on the companies we're acquiring. All M &A professionals are working really hard to understand how AI can help us enhance deal flow, help us get faster due diligence, shorten the time from strategic idea to value creation, and really finding what the truth is out there in some of these data sets.

56:02We want faster deal closings. We want data that's solid and that we can trust the integrity. So that's what excites me about M &A right now is the ability to use some of those tools to go faster. Is there anything that scares you about it? Yeah, I think it can give bad information sometimes. I actually have an experience where an analyst was researching a company and the AI response was that it's a private company. And the truth is it's a public company. So you have to be very careful and the human oversight will always be needed, a human in the loop. But I do think there's an opportunity for efficiency and a whole coalescing of connecting the dots, which I'm looking forward to.

56:41Yeah, likewise. I think that's probably today's time. The craziest thing is the way AI is changing the M &A process. Still a lot of things in the works. Even my own personal experience when I was working with it directly at Dealroom, I saw the same thing. You start putting large batches of data with AI, it just hallucinates. So you want to bring it down to the smallest pieces and aggregate it together. Exactly. But sometimes I worry about the, we get a little bit off of the people to people part. If we get too reliant on trying to automate the whole entire diligence process, you got to have the conversations to do our cultural assessments.

57:14Exactly. This has been a great conversation, Sharon. I appreciate taking the time from doing deals to help me become a better M &A scientist. You helped me as well. So I appreciate the opportunity. It was fantastic. Those of you still listening, my M &A science brothers and sisters, I can't thank you enough. If you've gotten this far through the interview, I'm proud of you. I love to hear from you. We got a lot. We're carving out M &A Science. You may have heard, but we're going to be doing a lot of new things. Make sure you visit mascience.com. You're going to see a bunch of changes to the website.

57:47We're going to have a new registration form for our newsletter and a lot of cool things in the work for the new year. Also reach out to me directly. I'm usually responsive on LinkedIn. Always welcome ideas for topics I haven't covered. any positive feedback. I'll take the criticism too. That's how I get better at this. Till next time, here's to the deal.

58:19Thank you for taking the time to explore the world of M &A with our podcast. We love hearing feedback. Tag us on a LinkedIn post, add a review on Apple Podcasts. We'd love to hear from you. If you need help standing up an M &A function or optimizing one that you already have, we're here to help. And if we can't help you, we probably know someone that can. You can reach out to me by email, Kisan, K-I-S-O-N, at mascience.com. Or you can text me directly at 312-857-3711. If you just want to keep learning at your own pace, visit mascience.com for a lot more content and resources. That's where you can also subscribe to our newsletter.

59:04Again, that's mascience.com. Here's to the deal.

59:17views and opinions expressed on M &A science reflect only those individuals and do not reflect the views of any company or entity mentioned or affiliated with any individual this podcast is purely educational