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Village Global Podcast - Episode Summary
Episode Title
The Secret to Startup M&A: How To Set Your Companies Up for Big Outcomes with Ezra Roizen of Advsr
Overview In this episode of the Village Global Podcast, Jacob Mullins interviews Ezra Roizen, General Manager of Advsr and author of "The Magic Box Paradigm." The discussion centers on startup mergers and acquisitions (M&A), providing insights and a framework to maximize M&A outcomes by focusing on strategic relationships and future value rather than traditional sales processes.
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Key Concepts & Frameworks
- Magic Box Paradigm
- A visual framework that emphasizes the unique value a startup can unlock for potential acquirers (referred to as "purple boxes").
- Focuses on building strategic relationships and recognizing the future-oriented value rather than the current state of the company.
- Differentiate M&A from Fundraising
- M&A is driven by potential value and future orientation, contrasting with fundraising, which often relies on existing metrics.
- M&A requires a mindset shift from a sales-driven approach to relationship and value-building.
- Strategic Relationships
- The importance of cultivating relationships with potential acquirers early in the startup's lifecycle.
- Encourages VCs and board members to proactively identify and engage strategic business partners.
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Insights on Startup M&A
- Understanding Market Cycles
- Current trends indicate a shift towards M&A as a primary exit strategy due to fewer IPO opportunities.
- The marketplace is seen as ripe for significant transactions driven by optimism and large technological shifts, particularly in AI.
- Avoiding Traditional Sales Mindset
- Founders are encouraged to break free from the notion of “selling” their companies.
- The focus should be on building impactful relationships and exploring partnership opportunities.
- Thought Leadership
- VCs and board members are advised to develop and share strategic thought leadership to enhance their companies’ visibility and credibility in the market.
- This can create opportunities for discussions without the pressure of it being an M&A conversation.
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Actionable Advice for VCs and Founders
- Start Early:
- Begin relationship-building and strategizing immediately after an investment is made.
- Maintain a list of potential strategic partners to engage with regularly.
- Mindset Shift:
- Focus on creating opportunities that appeal to strategic partners rather than solely aiming to sell the company.
- Emphasize the potential impact on the industry or market.
- Community Building:
- Leverage industry networks to learn from peers and share insights, enhancing the startup’s credibility.
- Prepare for Negotiations:
- Be cautious with written agreements early in the negotiation process, as they can hinder flexibility and creativity in deal structuring.
- Consider the future potential of any equity received, as it can significantly outweigh immediate cash offers.
- Evaluate When to Bring in Advisors:
- Advisors can help navigate complex negotiations and provide expertise, especially in high-stakes situations.
- The timing of bringing in advisors should be based on the company's readiness to accelerate negotiations or when the stakes are particularly high.
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Common Misconceptions in Startup M&A
- Conventional Wisdom: The belief that competitive bidding will always result in the best outcomes.
- Reality: The best deals often arise from understanding buyer needs and fostering the right relationships rather than solely relying on competition.
- Sales Process Focus: Many believe that M&A is primarily about selling a company.
- Reality: M&A should be viewed as an opportunity for collaboration and unlocking future value.
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Conclusion This episode provides a comprehensive look into the intricacies of startup M&A, emphasizing the need for strategic relationship-building and a mindset shift away from traditional sales processes. Ezra Roizen’s insights and the Magic Box Paradigm serve as valuable tools for founders and investors aiming to navigate this complex landscape effectively.
For more valuable insights, listeners are encouraged to explore Ezra Roizen's book and contributions through his Substack at [mbp.co](https://mbp.co) and to stay engaged with the Village Global community.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Hey, everybody. This is Ben Kesnoka, co-founder and partner at Village Global, a network-driven venture firm. And this is our podcast, where we go deep on all things business and technology with world-leading experts.
0:21Ezra, thank you so much for joining me on VC Mastermind podcast. We're going to be talking about mergers and acquisitions and startup M &A and how to set your companies up for big outcomes. To introduce you a little bit for our listeners, you are the general manager of Advisor and you're the author of the Magic Box Paradigm, which is a framework for startup acquisitions. And we will talk a lot about that during this conversation. You initially started your career as an entrepreneur, co-founding two technology companies, one called Montclair Technologies and another called Convoy Corporation, which is now part of SAP.
0:57And Ezra, you hold an MBA, a combined program at Columbia University in the business school and University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and a BA in philosophy from University of California, Davis. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Gosh, I was thinking, I have known you, I think, for, I think going on 18 years. I met you in 2007, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. We were both five at the time, but yeah. Exactly. But man, it's been so fun. And we've interacted and crossed paths professionally and personally so many times. It's been great to work with you on M &A kind of throughout that whole 18-year history.
1:37Just to set some context, we're going to dive into the magic box paradigm and how you see both executing M &A and guiding M &A for your clients, and then open it up into more of a conversation across a bunch of different topics. Ezra, give us a little context. How much M &A have you seen over your career in terms of number of deals or dollar values? As you mentioned, I started out as an entrepreneur in actually the 90s. So co-founded an enterprise software company, co-founded a services company. Tremendous time to start your career at that time and be young. I was in my 20s and all of a sudden I became CEO of a 60-person company and had another one that had some success and was acquired.
2:15And it was great because I thought when I was young, I wanted to be CEO of a company and that was where I was going to be. And then I got to be CEO of a company and I absolutely hated it. And, and I was fortunate to be blessed to have had that experience. And one was a part and had such a success and one actually, frankly, the better run company, um, ended up getting taken down the first internet bubble, which I think ended up itself as an interesting lesson. Good learnings. Yeah. And so I got to see a lot fast on the entrepreneurial side. And one of my board members, my second company in 2000 said, Hey, have you ever thought about doing investment banking?
2:49I think you might be good at it. And he had a small firm and I understudied. It's an apprentice business when it's done well. And I understudied with him for years. Not really as much in tech at the very beginning. Did a lot of manufacturing, aerospace, things like that. And then went to a succession of firms and started Advisor about 10 years ago now. So you're an entrepreneur now. Entrepreneur, banker, advisor, something. As my wife Bambi once said in describing me, he's you, he does nothing. The, uh,
3:22your question over that journey, doing ultimately successful transactions, two to five a year pays 25 years. So a hundred, a hundred deals directly. But yeah, but what I was two other factors on one, it was interesting that before I logged in, I popped over on my data and was reading a couple of things. And I saw that Maxwell Eddison has a podcast or was on a podcast like this with somebody I haven't gone through or listened to it all, but one of the big headlines was only study your failures. And I think that's actually really important for our conversation now because I've been around many more than that haven't worked out.
4:00And some of them crushing failures and collapses and for everybody. And so I think you learn as much and more frankly from the ones that didn't work out as the ones that did. It's fun to talk about the ones that did, but it's not a lot from the ones that didn't. And then naturally because of the book and because of my sub stack and other stuff, I get calls and emails and questions all the time from people saying, hey, I'm in this weird situation. What do you think? Which is great because it just increases your sample size of stuff that you've run into. And it comes from billion dollar deals down to million dollar deals.
4:35And it's fascinating to see the different scenarios. So I've been fortunate doing the same thing, Groundhog Day, over and over again, that you get to build a nice pattern recognition format and some experience. But always bring a beginner's mind and try to see where else there is to learn. Yeah, that's amazing. I had about three years of experience in the M &A industry, you may recall, through Exit Round. And the biggest learning for me was that in a traditional fundraising environment, there's a market. There's market expectations. There's market terms. There's competition where you can actually move a process along.
5:08And in M &A, it's the opposite. It is the Wild West. You may have terms. Guess what? Those don't matter anymore. You may have a cab table. Guess what? Those don't, that doesn't matter anymore. And so many things were just shocking to me. And, and, and yet an entrepreneur only goes through it once or twice, or if they're lucky three times in their career, that's considered experience. You having gone through a hundred successful and a hundred plus not successful. There's just a lot to be learned there. Yeah. That's awesome. you just blitz through a number of really interesting topics. One is the inefficiency versus efficiency of the strategic M &A versus the capital raising market.
5:45That's a really interesting topic. That's the stage for a lot of how you should think about this stuff. And then also the sample size problem. And it's actually a really interesting set of things to talk about there as it relates for the, I think the audience for this podcast, this discussion, which is VCs helping their companies. One of the challenges they're in sometimes is that what happens a lot is a lot of board members lean on their successes and a small sample size of successes and they try to extrapolate from those what is the best practices for how they should help their companies and sometimes actually that's not as it's suboptimal relative to leaning on some of the failures and right and trying to optimize around those constraints we'll dig in more on that but i think there's actually a lot great yeah good i wrote some of those down also and make sure we touch on them.
6:31I mean, you know, since you've been in the industry for this amount of time, where are we in this market cycle, right? Like today, 2025, the GPs that I'm talking to, the GP, you know, our firm at Shasta, we're looking for liquidity. Our LPs are asking for liquidity. Our funds are getting, you know, old 10 years, 12 years, 15 years, even beyond. And yet it doesn't seem like there's a lot of liquidity unlocking through IPOs. So that means that M &A is certainly the prime exit opportunity. and give us some context as where we are in this market cycle in February 2025 and maybe just for setting the stage is how we should be thinking about approaching M &A over the next year or two.
7:10Yeah, I think good. And I don't want to say that. You call me, you know, 2008, it was bad. So it's good. We're not in the 2008 cycle. We're not in 2008. So good. You know, the driver of startup M &A, and you couched this right at the beginning. We're not talking about M &A generally. There's all kinds of M &A. And in my book, I talk about different flavors of M &A. And startup M &A is its own animal. And I call it startup M &A, and you call it that too. How would you define that startup M &A versus the other M &A? M &A where most of the value is going to be future-oriented and things that will happen, not the things that have happened.
7:48A lot of finance and a lot of Wall Street is trailing multiples on various metrics and so on. you're maybe you're constructing the value dynamics from a lot of knowns in startup m &a you're constructing the value dynamics for a lot of unknowns and that is a changes the game that's yeah that's a huge distinction here's yeah we're gonna talk about that too and how to think about that but once you know that's the game then you can orient towards it so one of the things i you know i do a lot of my writing is like i understand the game you're playing and then if you understand the game you're playing then you can optimize around the variables that really pull the levers that help you.
8:28And don't fall into the traps by playing the wrong game. So startup M &A is powered by optimism. Because ultimately, and what I'm talking about here is startup M &A with strategic partners, with operating companies, not PE. So we'll talk a little bit about PE. And actually a good thing is a lot of PE has come into this startup world and come into arenas they weren't in before. I talk to PE companies all the time and say we're you know, somewhat indifferent to profitability. That wasn't a thing 10 years ago or 15 years ago. That was, that was, I'm not saying that there's an easy category. There's challenges in that arena, but, but there's a lot more PE money than there used to be.
9:08And we've done several PE transactions over the last few years that are really exciting and, and worked out great. But we're going to talk mostly here about the fairway as it were, which is startup innovative teams and products being acquired by larger operating companies to fulfill a bigger mission that they want to accomplish. And in that case, that really is fueled by optimism because executive teams are usually making a big bet based on a bunch of unknowns and they have to really believe that this is the moment to make that bet. And so what you're looking for in the market generally, because they're as a market.
9:48How do you feel? And if people are optimistic and executive teams are optimistic and they feel like it's a time to make some moves, that's frankly the biggest piece. The second piece is large technological shifts. And if you look at, when you started Bemidate, do you look over the last, since I've been around, the internet bubble, the internet boom itself, the first one, 1998, 2001-ish. I was mostly an operator at that time and I was part of it. And actually my clients were a lot of other startups at times. So I saw a lot of that. I wasn't doing this business per se, but that was kind of the big boom that caused a lot of stuff to happen.
10:25And then there was optimism and a big technological shift. Then you had, I would say generally kind of in the tens, you had the social shift and a lot of ad tech, social, things like that, online stuff happening at a pretty rapid pace that was consolidating. And that was a pretty big shift. and you would see a lot of optimism and aggressive moves then. And then kind of, actually before that, you had mobile, where there was a big shift in mobile, 5 to 10, where you had a pretty substantial amount of optimism about what was going to happen in mobile, and you had a lot of technological shift happening.
11:00And so to move forward to now, I think we're the AI moment. And the only thing you get around it, it's in every executive shareholder call. It's on everybody's mind. It's in every race topic. I'd say everybody has exactly what they want to do or the moves mapped out. But I think we're in a significant technological moment. And I think the AI moment more broadly just means sort of advanced tech. You know, it's not just a chatbot. It's how you use data. It's how you use machine learning. It's how you use, you know, lots of tools, robotics, you know, how you use a lot of stuff. We're in a moment where there is a realization that a lot of tech is happening fast and that winners and losers are going to get sorted.
11:42And I think that on the strategic side, and I think that is going to combine that with some, I think a fairly optimistic view of where capital markets are and generally the outlook of the economy. You combine those two things together and I think you have next two years are going to be pretty significant. And so, great. Yeah. That's exciting. Yeah, no, that's exciting to hear. I mean, it's been interesting too over i've been in you know tech for 20 years venture for 10 years and 10 i mean during along that path you know when venture funded businesses we would do it and the company had to be an ipo company you know it had to be this category creator you know 10x plus returns to underwrite and it's been interesting to watch since kind of the you know uberization of private companies where you just don't go public.
12:32You stay private forever and you have Uber took forever and Stripe is kind of the canonical one today and Canva and you have all these multi-billion dollar revenue companies that are not going public intentionally. And then at the present moment, you're adding in the huge AI majors, open AI and perplexity and Anthropic and all of their private peers who are now raising so much capital. I think the venture mindset is changing to say, okay, IPO-ing, yes, hopefully you can find one and you can invest in the perplexity that will IPO. But in advance of that or before that, there's just a lot of other M &A opportunity on the table to still get 10 extra turns going into these very large companies.
13:15And I think we need ventures kind of resetting the shift on, hey, what are the expectations and how do we underwrite that? Yeah, I agree with all that. And look, even if you are an IPO-able company, the number of IPOs is way down. So just the traffic, even if you wanted to, not only the guys you mentioned that don't want to, even if you wanted to, the window is guinea. And there's a lot of good companies. You can talk to a big bulge bracket bank and ask them for their IPO report. It's going to be a giant sheet of companies that are ready to go public and they're all kind of waiting to get out.
13:45So it's a backlog. Even if we had a great next two years, there would still be a backlog of issues. Yeah. Totally. If you're looking for liquidity, you know i think you should be thinking about it but not saying you put every you know we're not going to talk about this too but don't put a forced sale aside in the company but i think there is a an understanding that m &a as an investor is going to be a pretty important part of your strategy yep and so maybe it's a good time to kind of shift into the magic box paradigm and kind of set the stage for how you think about organizing m &a and kind of advising people whether they're you're advising directly or through your book or through you know advisor the network but yeah so quick background on that and i have one visual i'm going to show that's it cool the the you know the book was originally i actually started a file i called the bbma the big book of mna and what i realized was over the years i was seeing things happen repeatedly and getting you know you know it's great because you get to see all these really smart people at a really stressful moment you know really grinding their brains and i was seeing interesting things people on the buy side were saying i was seeing interesting things before on the sell side were saying i was surrounded by these legendary attorneys and able to sort of just take notes on things that I noticed that were thieves.
14:57And then I was also working with other bankers who had their way of doing things. And I began to realize that there was a mismatch between how things really worked and the way people were approaching startup M &A. And the mismatch just became more and more pronounced over time. And so in about 10 years ago, I said, you know what, I'm going to sit down and write this up into a book and then I'm going to, I'm going to start a firm called advisor, which is basically going to follow the book. So we kind of open source our method and said, here's our method, here's our philosophy. And some people look at it and say, that's nuts.
15:28And some people read it and go out. That's really helpful. And we, as a team, follow the method in the book. And then I've expanded on the book on my sub stack. So I have a sub stack, mbp.co, where we're going to see one thing from there. And then we expand on the ideas there. But the idea is that there are things which are consistent with traditional theories of how this stuff should work. And there are things that are really inconsistent. And I pin all of this on the fact that most of baking philosophy and theology descends from Wall Street, where it descends from the IPO market, ultimately.
16:01And so in the IPO market, you're selling the company itself and trying to get people to believe it's a great company. And you're trying to basically get the best value. You're creating an argument for why this asset, it should be a premium, highly valued asset, as high a value as it can achieve. So the story is all about what the thing is in and of itself. In startup M &A, it's a buy-side driven business. And so ultimately, the story isn't about what you are and of yourself. It's about what you can unlock for the buyer. And so it's a radically different starting point. And so the magic box paradigm, the reason what the magic box is, this is my magic box right here, is in the magic box, depending on who opens it, are gold coins, silver coins, or a lump of coal.
16:40My friend actually painted a magic box for me. That is very cool. And the idea is it's in the hands of the beholder. So the thing I want to share here, let me share my screen real quick. I have not shared on here, but it should be, I'm assuming, consistent with other modes of sharing. You see my screen? Yes, I do. So for those of you who are just listening on audio, join the video or I'll link in the show notes to what Heather's going to show here. So this is on the Snapchat. I have a lot of new stuff. It's going to be quick and straightforward. but the, the, it's sort of three pictures, ultimately one picture.
17:13But in our view, if you had to summarize, this actually isn't even in the book, but it's become pretty popular with, with, with folks as a visual for that frames kind of what we're trying to accomplish. You know, our view is that M &A is derived from a big idea and a big idea is, you know, another way of saying the M &A thesis. And the big idea is something that you actually construct. And a lot of what we talk about in the book is how do you construct big ideas? And the big idea landscape is shaped by the forces that are creating the realm for this opportunity. And so it could be economic pressures around the edge.
17:45It could be emerging technologies. We're talking about AI. It could be new risk factors. It could be regulatory. It could be changes in consumption dynamics. It could be changes in supply. Whatever the forces are, they're the big ones you'd want to articulate around what is happening in the market. That creates the opportunity field of play, so to in there is your startup. Then you're the red square in that arena. And then there's what we call in our world PSP, which is potential strategic partner. And that partner has some blue squares, probably bigger than you, doing something as well, related, not exactly the same.
18:17And there's a large area. It's very easy to just think about the red square and the blue square because they have mass, they have color. Yeah, interesting. The reality is the gold is in all the squares that aren't filled in. That's where actually the opportunities lie. It's not in just simply focusing on the red square. It's focusing on the things that don't exist yet and creating a reality in which there's going to be an unfolding opportunity that you can take advantage of. So what that gets you is the purple squares. And that's a blend of red and blue. And the red square now is the key to unlocking those purple squares.
18:53So the reason you get outperforming Silicon Valley valuations because the company isn't being valued on the red square. It's being valued on the purple squares. It's being valued on what it unlocks. And so if you're totally focused on the single box, as it were, you're not actually releasing the magic. And the magic is how do we unlock and create a big idea that has a substantial mass to it and substantial weight that this PSP is compelled to execute upon and B is compelled to execute upon with you because you're in the key that unlocks the whole thing. So if we think about the purple squares, that's how you want that to be the frame.
19:32And so what we're trying to do, we're in the business of creating purple squares if you had to sum it all up. And so if you think about what we're trying to do collectively and what we want to help, what you and I are trying to help, some of your VC listeners and community think about it, how do I help my companies create a succession of purple square opportunities. Purple box. Yep. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. That's really interesting. And, you know, I've experienced you doing this process with a number of different companies, I guess, you know, from the VC and board member or portfolio manager perspective, you know, how do you counsel investors to be able to take advantage of this?
20:16And I guess, especially in this type of an environment where, like I was saying, portfolios are getting older and it seems like it is a good time for M &A. You know, when you talk to a room of VC general partners, how do you counsel them to approach their portfolio or their individual companies in a market like this? Yeah. So for a couple of things, and we write a lot about this. I poke fun a little bit at some VCs on my sum stack. I do a thing called hot takes where I go and take what other people are saying about M &A Live and VCs. Some of them are entrepreneurs, apply our method to what they're saying.
20:51and sometimes it's good to overlap. And sometimes I think it's, you know, things to point out that maybe you want to avoid. And so we have some fun with that. But the headline is this. First off, we have a, not a meme, but a notion that recurs in the writing that is get out of the sales process mindset. Everybody thinks of selling my company. In fact, almost everything you read on the topic is how do I sell a company? How do I start? How do I sell? I do sell. It's actually end process. What is the process for selling? And so one of the things that we try to basically say to folks is, okay, that mindset is actually very limiting because when you're in that mindset, it actually frames everything in a way that everything is now for sale.
21:33It is a sales thing. It narrow casts your thinking. And so what we want to do actually is expand the playing field a little bit and think a little bit differently about what you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it. And I think that really, I think the venture capital board members and investors and board advisors actually have a real opportunity. One of the areas I think they really do have an opportunity to influence is how founders who probably aren't very good at this approach this stuff. And they can actually have that influence very early on and significantly increase the chances of success for both the founder and their fund.
22:06And so I think it's like thrice blessed by being a little bit early. And so what I say to folks, first off, I really recommend reading the book. I know it's self-serving, but - No, yeah, right. MVP.co is the blog. And then there's a book out there. You can get it on Amazon and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. Read the book. In fact, anybody listening to this, if you DM me on LinkedIn or send me an email, I'll send you a signed copy of the book. Say you, yeah. Say you heard about it on DC Mastermind. There you go. DC Mastermind. You get a pretty DC Mastermind copy and I will either write DC Mastermind in there.
22:39Awesome. So anyway, so yeah. So yeah, we'll send you a copy of the book or buy it if you're overseas and I'll Venmo you. The, the, so the headline is a few things. You can be, you can have a lot of impact. And the first thing is let's break free of the sales process mindset. And let's set the foundation. If we're thinking about purple squares, we'll use that purple boxes. We'll use that, that, that metaphor. What you want to be doing is getting your companies to start to build big ideas with strategic partners. It's amazing how many times I get by a CEO, even a CEO of a relatively substantial startup that has almost no industry relationships and almost no real landscape built out of what's going on in the category.
23:20A little bit here and there, but almost nothing really. And we call that a standing start. And there's no reason for anybody to be at a standing start because it doesn't require that much work to get a huge headstart, giant headstart. And so what we would say is start to think about, okay, what's the frame of that box? What are the things that go around it? What are the big trend shifts happening? And by the way, a lot of your operating strategics are going to be interested in those same trends. Start conversations, identify who are the companies. I would even as a board member say, have as one of the elements for board meetings, okay, what's the, who are the list of potential strategic partners that we think are important and who act those companies, not just names, but who act those companies are the heads of product in our area that we should probably get to know somehow, either at board level or whatever.
24:06By the way, if you're a VC and you call up a head of product, say, hey, I'd love to pick your brain on X, Y, and Z, they're going to take that call. I mean, you have a great way to start building the pipeline of big ideas and talking to them. And it doesn't have to be about selling the company. You don't even bring up the company. You start talking about those big trends, the outside of the box. And then start to think about, okay, what are the key elements that would be interesting to potential strategic partners? Understanding that most startups aren't bought for what exactly they are today.
24:35They're bought to power something bigger in the future. almost every startup acquisition is directional in nature. It's not a thing in and of itself. It's what the thing unlocks. In fact, I can't tell you. I mean, in fact, for certain companies, your startup is like a big resume. Just basically is proving that you know how to solve this problem. They're planning to throw away almost everything you built. In fact, the mentor I mentioned that got me into the business said 90 % of the value in a startup is learning curve. And it probably varies, But you have to think about the open-ended nature of that conversation, which is great.
Read the full transcript
25:10A VC conversation, as I say in the book, is a pretty closed-ended. There's really only one big economic tool, which is inserting cash. There are some other things VCs bring. If I'm pitching you, I have to come in with a story about how I'm going to solve for distribution, how I'm going to solve for product, how I'm going to solve for revenue model, how I'm going to solve for every aspect of the company. If you're talking to a big strategic player, they've got most of that already solved. What they're interested in is, are you going to unlock something substantial for us? And is the way you're doing it going to align with the way we do stuff?
25:42And most people say, well, they have like NIH, non-inventative year syndrome or something, that company. But the reality is, it's not that. It's actually not my way. So are you going to unlock this big thing? And are you doing it in a way that it's going to match the way they do stuff? That's what they're really interested in. So what you want to do is start to set the frame as a VC, get, in my opinion, is get entrepreneurs thinking about this stuff. Get a little bit of a programmatic approach to understanding who those companies are, getting to know some of the people of those companies, setting the framework for that big, happy.
26:16And guess what? None of that is being for sale. Right? That's going to go. It may start a partnership. It may start an investment. It may start a collaboration. It may just start a knowledge sharing. It may start nothing. And it may bloom into an M &A deal if you follow the progression. So there's a progression that we outline that, okay, now once you're in the room, how do you go about building a big idea all the way to an M &A thesis? That is the core that you have to follow. But outside of that, just getting started. Don't be at a standing start. Don't think of it as a sales process. Think about it as getting to know companies, starting to build big ideas.
26:53And guess what? each of those purple stripes is going to be different from company to company. And so you're going to end up finding all different kinds of a spectrum of opportunities that you can take advantage of. So I think it's a great opportunity for a huge amount of value add from investors to start the team and just a little bit of effort getting to know who those companies are, who are the people of those companies, what things are they working on. And the last piece on that is take the stuff you're learning from all of that and produce some targeted, what I would call of strategic thought leadership.
27:25You know, consolidate that thinking because thought leadership has a lot of benefits. It becomes a great tool for starting a conversation. It also is a beacon because what happens is when people start to think about areas and topics, they actually go online and start to search stuff. And you want to be known as having a refined hue of these topics and thinking at their level. And one of the things that we really push our clients to do thought leadership, And it's amazing how many times we get on a Zoom or something with a juju party. Like, oh man, I watched your podcast or I watched this on this.
27:58And I really agree with this and that. And it's a great way to triangulate and reinforce your ideas. So also got time, but a little bit, a little bit, you know, one piece a quarter or something. Targeted. Yep. That's fascinating. So you're saying like, get started with this kind of, not that this is an M &A cell process at all. But you're saying get started with this value building, strategic relationship building process, almost at the time of a VC investment. If I make an investment, day one, we should raise to the board level that we should list all of the potential partners, competitors, list out who we should talk to and just start having coffee meetings day one.
28:39That's fascinating. That's brilliant. Yeah. Get going now. Don't worry about it. It's not for sale. It's just remember. Right. Right. Remember, you know, one of the things we say is the grand unifying word. Cause you'll go, what are you interested? You know, why are you talking to me? And founders are terrified of that question. They're like, oh man, I don't want to, what if he asked, do you want to get acquired? And, and you know, there's one word that you can unify all the answers to all those questions. And the word is impact. So all you have to say is I'm interested in, I'm a founder of this company.
29:10I'm like, yes, we've raised some money and we're doing great things. I want to have the biggest impact possible on the world. And if that means it's a partnership with you guys, that's great. If it means getting acquired by somebody, that's great. If it means I take some money from you and I do something, that's great. If it means I do a licensing deal, that's great. So I just want to have the biggest impact. So I'm here sitting here across from you, Mr. Strategic, because I'm just looking for ways to have an impact and to get more people on the bus and to get more resources. And whatever we decide is the best way to have an impact, I'm going to follow that threat.
29:39And boom, conversation. You didn't say you weren't interested in M &A. You didn't say you were only here for M &A. You just said, I want to have a new impact. And M &A is one of the things that may happen at the end of the game. So now you can get your founder. Because a lot of times, you know, it's hard to pay for two ends. I get paid for VCs saying, I really got to kind of figure out how to get this founder. And if I go tell them that I got, you guys start kind of thinking about M &A, then they're going to get all, you know. Yeah, that ruffles feathers for sure. And then I go on the other side, like a friend Will Quist has said multiple times, can you take your whole book and just take the word M &A out of it?
30:15Because I'm not going to give it to my providers. That's what I'm going to be like to the therapist. So I'm like, actually, I'm thinking about doing that in a different way. Like a brilliant kind of book. The other conversation I get is for founders saying, hey, I really want to get this going. I'd really love to work with you, but I got to go to my board. And then they're going to think I've lost faith in the cause. And how do I do that? And so the problem is what we have to do is take the pressure out, like depressurize the whole situation and say, look, an M &A. It's about building big ideas with strategic partners and creating a landscape of opportunities.
30:48And then M &A comes out the back end. Now there are times where you have just more significant constraints or maybe you're just late to the party with a company and you just didn't, you get to this podcast in time. And you're out of money and whatever. Yeah. Then you got to be more aggressive. And then there's strategies for doing that. But that's, don't optimize for that. Like if you're a newer investor and you're placing capital now, you don't want to end up there. You want to do what I'm talking about and not end up there. Yeah. And it starts years in advance. Yeah, that's brilliant. When is there, and kind of maybe dovetails into like, all right, you know, let's say you do have more time pressure than you need to sell, but when is the right time to bring in an advisor?
31:26Yeah. So it's a really interesting question. It's also one that we get a lot. And it varies from case to case. To me, there's a set of actions that we kind of described, not go back to all the actions, but we talked about a set of actions that people should be doing to build big ideas. I mentioned before we hopped on the recording that I get emails, calls. You can search on LinkedIn. You'll get random references to the book. The people used our process and didn't hire bankers and got great deals done. In fact, a couple of the cover quotes that I specifically want as cover quotes or people that use the book and didn't use our firm or didn't hire us or anybody.
32:04It just got deals done using our framework. So I love that. That is so satisfying when someone emails me or LinkedIn or calls and man, I just, I use all your stuff and I just, I literally just did what you said. Or somebody emails me and said, look, I followed your guidelines, trying to create my deck. And it's literally like the slide in from the book. And they created the thing. It's great. You know, that's awesome. And so I think some cases the answer may be never. Would you hire advisors? If you have a propensity for this stuff as a founder or, you know, board, you know, if you kind of, if the right sort of mixture of personality traits is there and, you know, all of a sudden my book helps you and then Substack helps.
32:41I have a founder I talked to the other day and this young founder and, and he, you could tell he was just, you know, he wasn't going to hire us. We're going to hire anybody. He was just going to figure this thing out and do it. Yeah. He maybe drives off a cliff, but he's going to do okay. So the, the, so, so one thing is maybe now is a reasonable answer. Yeah. Next question is, okay, what are the reasons to, and what value, you know, where would it help? One is to just accelerate the volume of activity happening. I mean, you know, a lot of times founders and CEOs just need help because to do this right and to do it our way uses a lot of CPU.
33:16Because we're trying to basically build the purple squares, build the big idea. You go through and see where, build the opportunity thesis, build the methodology thesis, build the execution thesis, build the economic model. It's a lot to get done. And a lot of times CEOs, A, just need or teams need expertise and help. And if you're like, yeah, we really want to accelerate all of this in a more aggressive mode, or we're in a tricky deal and we just need help because this is really tricky and the stakes are really high. Like I got into a deal a year and a half ago, almost at the end, frankly. And they just said, we don't have the right thesis for how we re-engineer this thesis to get to optimal and how do we get this thing to close?
33:55because there's frankly also some closing dynamics I talk about in the book that are unique to this. I won't get into that now. But yeah, so I would say in special situations or situations where you need to increase the volume, those are cases, or if it's just really acute, like we got to get something done for various constraints. You know, we tend to shy away from, I used to do a lot of those deals. Like I got, you know, four months of cash left in the bank. And I kind of, frankly, got a little bit known as the guy to do those deals, which honestly was on one way of flattering and the other way kind of made you feel like, you know, Mr.
34:24Wolf and Pulp Fiction or something. I'm shy right now from those, you know, they're super stressful. So we tend to shine towards how can we really help you build the right landscape, build a big idea and do things correctly. I'm not saying we never dabble, but we tend to shy away from that. But there are bankers who do that stuff and do a great job. And they're, we think we're probably not the best. If it's a straight line, I got to get this thing moved. You know, there's probably better folks than we are for doing that today. But you don't want to be there. Let's not be there as much as possible because you're chopping zeros off your valuation.
34:55When you're selling your zeros off, you want to be bought. We're creating the environment to be bought. Love it. The magic box paradigm. Love it. So shifting gears a little into the kind of private equity style acquisition, a lot of our portfolio companies are getting inbounds and a lot of inquiries and as we've gone down the path evaluations tend to be more lower but and they're definitely tied to revenue and potentially rule of 40 type metrics you know i guess what are you seeing in the market and then how would you counsel investors and founders frankly to think about pe exits i mean we're seeing more we're doing more we've done a couple three in the last couple years and uh and and you know some relatively well-known ones we've talked a lot about where transactions options are just like, I can never remember.
35:43I can never remember like what I'm not supposed to. So I just don't say anything. Good policy. We've done a few. And as I mentioned before, we're seeing everybody's getting those emails, right? You know, we're looking for the SaaS business, five to 25 million in revenue and, you know, five million in EBITDA, give us a call. So every founder is like buried in those emails. And for anything, a couple of those emails are turned into deals. So it's not, you know, not worth the lead them. But I mean, a few things, First off, understanding the playing field. Good news is it is a more efficient market.
36:16There's a lot of them. They have the same general incentive structure as VCs. They need to place capital or not to place capital. On the strategic side, almost all of the incentive structures are against M &A. They don't want to buy you. They will do anything but buy you. In most cases, they would rather do a license deal, a partnership, a test, a this, a that, whatever. It's crazy risky if you're an executive and the thing doesn't work out and you spend a ton of money buying this on this crazy purple boxes idea, it's an extremely high hurdle and a very inefficient market. Which, by the way, means whenever you have an opportunity, you should take it seriously for a strategic.
36:52Because even if you think the company, you're better off having a great amount of interest from a strategic in something with a half-baked company than a full-baked company with a little bit of interest from a strategic. So you can never know the time when lightning will strike. And I have had significantly less sort of robust companies acquired for great amounts when it was perfect fit for the buyer, the purple squares the buyer was trying to fill in. Yeah, that's super interesting. Then the perfect company, waiting for the perfect company. I'd tell you a funny story offline about that. My great example.
37:24When my founder, we were at Gats in San Francisco, and the founder was like, I don't want to talk to anybody because I don't know what I would say because they were doing some slightly shady stuff as well. And they got bought by it for a ton of money. my buyer had a very specific thing they were trying to accomplish and these guys accomplish it so it's much if it's a buy-side driven business and because of that inefficiency take every deal seriously let me do it just take it seriously our dang pe market efficient you know there's structures they want to move the money they want to place capital they want to do deals they want to buy stuff are you a good match don't know but you know you can go through the cycle of relatively efficient conversations because it's an efficient market trying to do deal which is great And if you're trying to do deals fast, might be the better way to go because you can, you know, die on the barbed wire in the trench warfare of strategic, you know, try and go for the, you know, outperforming valuation that you may not get anyway.
38:14Or you can go to the PE market and probably have a, you know, more utilitarian valuation, but get a deal done. And we have that conversation a lot with folks. Yeah. Yeah. Two things. One, there's really the same number of purple boxes in that case, because they typically, there may be a bigger thing they're trying to do. And you want to create that environment. A lot of times you'll do that by saying, hey, buy us, and we're going to go buy these other companies. And I have one company that's really bought a lot of stuff since they got acquired. And that is a kind of variant of that purple box strategy, because you're building into a bigger strategy that's then going to have leverage points and all of that.
38:53So you're going to take some of that thinking, but ultimately they're not bringing to you larger distribution channels or immediate extension of monetization and secondary and tertiary benefits and reductions in churn, enhanced LTVs and all the things you get with a strategic M &A deal. They're kind of buying the red box. of the ring went. And so you're going to then have to deal with more of a traditional, some form of multiples-based, DCF-based valuation dynamic. And so now the question is, how do you strengthen your hand? Then I would, again, there's ways to do that, but it's just going to be more of a deal around A, how strong does that fit?
39:37And B, what's the structure of the deal? Because a lot of times these deals get pretty structured. They'll want people to roll over equity they want to earn out still wanted this right and then so then the question is understanding what the deal even is and it'd get yeah really freaking complicated and then and then you know to some degree competitive dynamics i'm you know i'm not a big i'm very careful with the competition when you talk about the myth of competition but competition is what drives everybody's view of this stuff and we're much more about how do you find the outlier versus how do you play people off each other to get the best deal but in that game maybe a little bit having that dynamic.
40:14And then the second piece of that is, is the company does have a real show with these guys. I think it's going to either have to be a pretty substantial asset if you're not profitable or losing money and there's going to be a lot of vision on the buy side. Honestly, I think you got to be at least breaking even realistically. I'm sure if the pro-fi would be more aggressive. And then you're going to have to have the right story for the growth opportunity post-transaction. They're dipping down below$10 million,$5 million revenue type things. But they're in the kind of one to three revenue range kind of stuff.
40:53On multiples, you mean? Yeah, maybe you get to five. Yeah, low multiples. But the multiples are... You're in the multiples game, which we don't want to be in anyway. And you're not at the great end of the multiples game. There are folks that do run into things, people paying 10x for stuff. But it's, you know, the meat of the market is going to be, you know, relatively utilitarian. Yeah, makes sense. You touched on deal structuring in PE, and I don't want to get into that rat hole. But I did have a question that, from something you mentioned earlier, in a strategic M &A scenario, what can the investor expect to get out of that?
41:31Is it stock in that combined company or in the acquirer company? Is it cash? Is it a combination of both? What's the expectation? How can that be shifted over time? In the strategic scenario? In the strategic, yeah. Let's put PE aside, just in the strategic kind of selling of the future vision. And just to round out the other challenge with the PE stuff is debt, right? They're going to take debt. And there are people doing revenue financing behind the scenes and other interesting financial vehicles, but it is ultimately a lot of times of leverage play. And so that has its own set of dynamics about how is the company going to unfold and what the impact of how they're going to approach running the company on the potential of an outside burnout and all this kind of stuff.
42:11So you had, it's just, you really have to, you have to think, you have to imagine this thing rolling out if you're going to do those deals. So we'll put that over here. Then think about how those dynamics can work. On the burning side, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of everything. And there are a few things that would be interesting to sort of poke on. One is, and you said this really well at the beginning, cap tables go out the window. You're right. That's true. I have another thing we call the myth of the cap table, which is you spend all this time refining and perfecting exactly how the liquidation stack's going to work.
42:44And then the buyer comes in and goes, well, here's what we're going to pay. Here's how we're going to structure it. And that matters between the investors to some degree, but it doesn't necessarily matter exactly in some deal how it relates to the team dynamics. So a lot of these deals end up being two deals. There's a deal to acquire the company as a deal to retain the team. Right. And sometimes the second deal can be bigger than the first deal. Yes. All right. And so - That's what I have seen most common. Yeah. And so what you have to figure out is, by the way, that could be another reason to have advisors because there is a set of moral hazards and agency dynamics that could be useful in certain situations to have an advisor negotiating the deal.
43:23Because at least you know that, and I say the founders are, I say in my book, I say, look, there's time as a founder, you think you're so used to having to be antagonistic or whatever with your investors. Reality is a lot of these M &A deals, you have to defend your investors and defend the risk that they took to get to now. And so the reality is having advisors at times could be useful there too. And the other reason to have advisors sometimes is for the advisor to be the bank. But with that to the side, I've been to consideration. You see a lot of different things. She's approached to just pay cash and sometimes cash up front, deal done.
43:59That still happens. And that's simple and easy. We don't see and we really try to avoid earnouts with operating companies. We have a lot of built up knowledge, capital, industrial logic, whatever, around why it's not good for the buyer either. And a lot of buyers also have gotten pretty mature, especially the more tech buyers, have gotten pretty mature as to why earnouts are constraining on what they're trying to do later. And so they actually have with them as well. We do see, you know, we see that quite a bit in the PE world and not that much in the strategic world. Now, what we do see is people, you know, if it's a high-growth private company, we do see a lot of, hey, let's take stock.
44:39And you should really consider it. I mean, I've had, I had a company, you know, do like a$150 million deal in cash when if they'd taken the stock, not that much longer, we'd have worth about$1.5 billion. Wow. Yeah. And so people walk by a lot of money. And I've also had one deal where we did a snub deal, which was a secondary. We sold the most of the company to company A. We sold a little bit of this thing to company B. We got like, I think their enterprise value was like 30 million. We got like two and a half million of value at the close. They went on to become worth 980 million or something.
45:19And the position was worth 150 million. and stuff. I mean, I've seen some crazy stuff. Almost like making a new investment decision at that point for the investor, right? Exactly. And that's one of the things we say is that when you're doing a private to private type deal, you're buying them as much as they're buying you. It's really a mutual exchange. And so I really recommend to people look carefully. Most of the ultimate big outcomes I've been a part of, the really big stuff, isn't on the primary trade, it's on the secondary. It's what happened next. And I know people that have some very big houses of Pacific Heights because they, you're gone on the right rocket ship.
45:52Yeah. And, and so the, the, so that's one piece. The other piece is then just, you know, structuring the deal in the right way. So another thing that happens is people say, Hey, you know, on these deals, particularly if you're kind of more in the, we got to find a way to make it work. You know, you get proposals from private companies and say, Hey, you know, we really want you to take our stock. Then the question always becomes, you know, what was your last round? with the overhang, this and that. And all of a sudden you get lost because you don't really want to go to the bottom of their mountain.
46:26And so there are ways around that too. So first off, two reasons people want you to take stock is one, they don't want to use their cash. Yeah, reasonable. And they want to align incentives. They really want you to come in and be part of this journey going forward. And then other times, I mean, sometimes they may actually, I've had deals where like a notable board member or something was very attractive. And they were like, well, I want you to come on. We also want so-and-so to join our board and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of ways to get around no cash. You know, we've structured deals in all kinds of ways.
46:55Using debt, we've structured deals in the convertible note, actually, from the buyer to the seller. So that they're not really aligned the interest almost the same way equity would, but it put us with a stack. We also use a safe structure kind of thing. So there's ways that we can say, hey, let's solve for you don't want to use cash and we don't want to be the bottom of the stack. let's solve for both of those and figure out a way that we can still get a deal done in a line incentives yeah and so they're on the stack meaning taking common equity essentially yeah that's right is that what you're saying yeah yeah as long as i'm like hey take our common i mean usually the default offer is take our common at the valuation of our last preferred and it's definitely 250 million dollar preference stack and they've got 30 million revenue yeah you're not gonna do that i really like what you're doing but that seems a little risky is there another way.
47:41And you could find another way. They just got to be a little creative to find another way. Yeah. That's smart. I mean, that would be another reason to bring in an advisor, right? All the kind of financial engineering of a deal. We're getting close to the end of our time and I don't want to take all your time. So I really appreciate it. But I guess in wrap up, you know, what are some conventional wisdoms around startup M &A that are often wrong or off base? Any quick ones to share up? Yeah. I think this relates to how you can be a good VC board member or observer counselor by, by knowing some of those things.
48:13Because what happens a lot is people apply their intuition or their conventional wisdom or a small sample size. And I call it the frog DNA, like a Jurassic park. People will take a relatively small sample size and the bits they don't know, they sort of insert frog DNA and what comes out is sort of M &A advice. which will awkward like it's C-Rex and then something like what you want so you're really going to be careful with inserting the frog DNA into your M &A advice so a few things first a lot of this is in the book and on Substack probably like 1 % are actually going to do the reading your traditional from a banker is going to be oh this is a great company really exciting technology what we're going to do is we're going to get the company prepared we're going to get it in front of the best buyers We're going to drive a competitive process.
49:06We're going to get you the best price through that competitive process. That is, you know, hit the button, roll the tape. That's what most bankers are going to tell you. And they'll bring the pitch book. It'll have really cool stuff in it. And there's going to be a calendar and it's going to give you a date. And, you know, everything's back this straight, right? It's just, you're like, I like order and structure. And it's going to be awesome when they do that. The reality is that nothing really works that way. And it's, you know, it's much more chaotic. You don't want to be for sale. First off, that's all a function of a sales process mindset.
49:39And it overemphasizes the role of competition. And the challenge is that the reason why competition is really hard in this business is because those purple boxes are in different shapes. They're in different phases. They're in different alignment. And so what you're really looking for isn't to create a competitive dynamic. It can be useful. And I'd say it never happens and it's not useful at times. But your default should be, I'm really looking for the outlier. so how do I find the folk that needs what I'm doing more than anybody else has the best thesis and really build my big idea with them and have that be the one that's the best I had a deal one time we had three or four of the logical buyers and one of the big tech companies came in and paid like three times more name and you know okay it was the outlier and so we found the outlier in that case so the reality and I've had a lot of deals fall apart through competition because one of the problems with competition the heavy use of the competition is you piss people off yeah that's burned out and you burn out your backup options you burn out you really got to be careful and so over over indexing that competition as the driver and designing a strategy specifically to create competition almost you know designing a bad idea and so that's one two overplaying your hand people will overplay their hand all the time in this stuff and you just got to be really careful to think about okay what am i actually trying to accomplish year and not try to overplay my position.
51:00That would be another piece. Just be very thoughtful about what cards you really have and how important is it to you to get a deal done versus the deal. Next one is writing and shopping. Very common. People will say, get into writing and then we'll shop it. First off, you don't want anything to write early in the process because it makes it less movable. The more things get writing, the more people have to buy into it, the more people have to improve it. the more people have to say everyone gets a break don't get a writing the last thing you want is things in writing writing should be at the very end I don't like any writing because usually it comes to writing and then eventually I'm going to get an exclusive provision and that's going to screw me up and then eventually I'm going to get a bunch of other stuff either they want to buy your company and there's a lot of purple boxes and they're excited about buying your company or they don't and turstins do not help you they hurt you so the M &A and so the yeah fascinating you want to keep it fluid keep it open keep negotiating over email keep figuring pieces out and get as deep in.
51:56We do deals sometimes where we never even do an intermediate, we call it an intermediate agreement, L-O-I-R term sheet. We go straight to definitive agreements because we figured it all out. And sometimes we actually are negotiating definitive agreements with more than one party. Wow. And so the reality is - That is unconventional. And so the reality is don't want paper, don't want paper, don't get anything on paper. Yeah. Wait till the end. Because you're locking them in in their commitment level to what they're saying and you're locking you in to terms that you may be able to significantly improve as you're building the big idea.
52:25Now, again, somebody just can't fully avoid it. Somebody just got to deal with it. There's a section in my book about what to throw into the term sheets and all the lies to optimize them. But, you know, don't rush to paper and shop it. Really? I mean, you think you're going to take this thing and it's under NDA anyway, and you're going to go to get five other people to buy a company because you maybe have something. It's a very, if you're there, you know you can do it sometimes but it's not where you want to be you know where you want to be is building multiple concurrent big ideas and then you know maybe leveraging your confidence in each one almost no strategic buys a company because someone else is about to buy it they buy it because they need it and so no point to create sort of this giant immediate bidding war by getting some piece of paper is, is, again, maybe, but very unlikely.
53:18And so the reality is build really good relationships, build really good DCs, build multiple of them, have multiple options, and then decide which one is closest to the outlier and work to get, you know, a great outperforming deal done versus trying to do a bunch of, you know, you know, you're not on the street at noon and get your pistols out. It doesn't work that well. So I can't, there aren't exceptions to the rule. want to give you some stories where it has, but if you want to build a strategy and you want to be a board member that's looking long range, do the stuff we talked about earlier.
53:50It's amazing, man. Starting early, right? Starting early. And so here, just pulling up on the visual, mbp.co, mbp.co is your website and your sub stack where you can see the book. And so Ezra, thank you so much for sharing incredible knowledge. I mean, I've known you for 17 years. We've been involved in a number of transactions together and I learned so much right now. I really appreciate it for sharing your time. And yeah, thanks so much. Well, thanks. It's been great to work with you on so many different venues and so many different avenues over the years. And I'm flattered to even call. Thank you for giving me some time to talk about this stuff.
54:31Great. And good luck with this new podcast. I think this is really exciting. And I think it sounds like you're here now. I saw some of the topics you're going through. And if you can get, you know, all these things laid out, I mean, talk about a masterclass for folks. You're adding a lot of value into the e-christmas rooms. Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. All right, thanks for being a part of it. Thanks to Ezra Roizen, GM of Advisor. And thanks to you all for listening to VC Mastermind. I'm Jacob Mullins, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much for listening to the Village Global Podcast. You can check us out online at villageglobal.vc.
55:05We'd love to hear from you your feedback, your ideas, your inspirations, you can email us at hello at villageglobal.vc.
From the publisher
Ezra introduces the "Magic Box Paradigm," a visual and practical approach that helps founders and investors focus on the unique value their company can unlock for specific buyers—what he calls the "purple boxes." He explains why M&A is fundamentally different from fundraising, how to avoid the pitfalls of a sales-driven mindset, and why starting early with strategic relationship-building is key. The conversation covers actionable advice for VCs and board members on how to guide their portfolio companies, the importance of thought leadership, and how to navigate both strategic and private equity exits.
Listeners will come away with a fresh perspective on startup M&A, including when to bring in advisors, how to structure deals creatively, and why conventional wisdom—like relying on competitive bidding or rushing to term sheets—often falls short. Whether you’re a founder, investor, or board member, this episode offers a masterclass in preparing for and executing high-impact M&A outcomes.
VC Mastermind is a private podcast for VC Managing Partners. Designed for senior decision-makers at VC firms managing $50 million to $5 billion of institutional capital, VC Mastermind delivers premium insights, peer exchange, and operational best practices across all stages of a firm's life cycle. It was founded by Jacob Mullins (@jacob on X / twitter) – a 20-year veteran of the Silicon Valley startup tech and venture capital industry based in San Francisco.
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