Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A

Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by 0xbadcafebee on Friday February 18, 2022 @10:25AM (#30386892)

These are the lessons from the selling side. From the buying side there's a different set of lessons, like: they sold us junk that doesn't really work, their people are leaving to another start-up the founder created, nightmarish regulatory violations that only pop up after the merger, having to re-build their entire tech stack/accounts from scratch because it was all built by hand and held together with masking tape, contracts not discovered until after the merger, vetting all software licenses and use cases, the product not being able to integrate with your product like they claimed, 10 years of tech debt. Then there's how much time and money you lose and risk you gain from not doing enough due diligence or not having an efficient onboarding/integration process. I've been at large companies that were M&A masters, and companies that have done dozens of M&As and still can't get a single one right.

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Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by codingdave on Friday February 18, 2022 @05:51PM (#30392222)

> the product not being able to integrate with your product like they claimed

This one jumped out at me.

I've definitely seen integration struggles post-acquisition, but I typically find that the parent company (buyer) needs to be accountable for that integration. But you seem to be saying it is the seller's responsibility to understand the buyer's product and evaluate the integration during due diligence? Did I read that correctly? If so, I'd like to understand that perspective better - would you be willing to elaborate?

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Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by sangnoir on Friday February 18, 2022 @06:20PM (#30392525)

> But you seem to be saying it is the seller's responsibility to understand the buyer's product and evaluate the integration during due diligence?

I'm not OP, but I don't think that's what they meant:

>> the product not being able to integrate with your product like they claimed

It's lack of due diligence by the buyer after being deceived (intentionally or not). I imagine the seller saying "We support gRPC too, so we can interop easily" and then discovering that's not quite the case afterwards.

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Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by 0xbadcafebee on Saturday February 19, 2022 @11:16AM (#30398179)

Yep. It's 100% the buyers' responsibility to vet what they're buying, but the seller can obscure a lot until after the sale.

It's like buying a used car. You need a mechanic to really get in there and find all the rotten bits, based on where you intend to drive it (and how long)

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Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by ProAm on Friday February 18, 2022 @05:00PM (#30391684)

Due Diligence is an art form. Not an activity where move fast and break things works.

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Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by anonymouse008 on Friday February 18, 2022 @03:32PM (#30390685)

I have wondered this too -- honestly the big co's best strategy is either: truly hire you with an upfront bonus or wait for you to die out and pick up the pieces. Those that go for flashy deals to fly with the stock price seem to suffer from what you note above.

Heck you could even say the Amazon Whole Foods Acquisition was a loser -- they haven't leveraged the store network like Walmart has.

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Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by superyesh on Friday February 18, 2022 @04:43PM (#30391499)

>Heck you could even say the Amazon Whole Foods Acquisition was a loser -- they haven't leveraged the store network like Walmart has.

As someone who was a regular at Whole Foods even before the Amazon acquisition, from my viewpoint, it has been a win-win.

1. The online shopping experience has been amazing from the Amazon site/app. Target comes close. 1.a. The free delivery for Prime members was an awesome perk while it lasted and definitely made me buy from WF more than the alternatives I have.

2. I get 5% from the Prime card, I actually am incentivized to shop more at WF.

3. Amazon wise I can safely pick up my packages from the nearest store.

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Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by fudged71 on Friday February 18, 2022 @03:55PM (#30390973)

We've been working on tools for post-merger integration, and there don't seem to really be any other tools in the space. It's a huge problem.

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Re:Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A by 0xbadcafebee on Saturday February 19, 2022 @11:26AM (#30398260)

Personally I think it's more of a standards/process problem. We need an ITIL for M&A. Then you can create tooling for it, or just throw something together ad-hoc, but either way you'd be following a uniform process. Good tooling without good process won't lead to good results.

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