Maximizing Value and De-Risking Acquisitions
We help our partners to de-risk their acquisitions by uncovering technical, organizational, or product-market fit deficiencies. Our pre-transaction in-depth technical analysis spans product and digital infrastructure quality, maintainability, scalability, and security posture. A buy-side understanding of the real technical risks to an acquisition is critical to plan for a post-transaction future.
Product Maintainability
Software and digital infrastructure needs perpetual maintenance in order to survive. Support periods end, bugs are discovered and introduced, purchased services change their API and stop being offered entirely, people leave, and physical systems fail. How long will the product last? How long before the infrastructure falls over? How much effort do you expect to need to put in in order to prevent disaster? Is the product really an asset, or a liability?
Customer Experience
You must know the actual experience of the customers in order to have an enduring offering. What do the customers actually think about this product? Are they happy to pay for it, or do they resent it? Are they actively looking to migrate away? Are they begging for certain features? Are they frustrated by the bugs, or the quality of support they receive?
Code Quality
The code quality of both product and digital infrastructure matters. All too often, a young company grows what they can under a fevered pitch, and they end up with a solution that their market buys, but is held together with duct tape, and is ready to fall apart if looked at the wrong way. It is necessary to be able to describe the actual state of the code in order to make a business decision about whether its state is acceptable. You cannot plan an operating budget for taking ownership of code without first understanding its state. Maybe it is primed for growth and scale already. Maybe it is an MVP that gained traction, but has no hope of supporting growth without a major overhaul.
Security Assessment
We perform security risk analysis from a technical and executive perspective. What is the current security posture? What is being accounted for, and what is being missed? Are security patches applied regularly and backups ready in the event of an attack? Is there a solid understanding of the use of software licenses and relation to competitive Intellectual Property?
Product-Market Fit
It is critical that the product has room to grow. How well does your current understanding of the product and market match reality? Have you been painted a skewed picture of the market, and the product’s value in it? What features does the customer or client base actually use and actually want? What is the nature of the relationship between the company and its competitors?
Single Points of Failure
Business processes as well as technical stacks can often be dramatically destabilized when a single factor changes. How fragile is the business from an organizational perspective? Are there several critical people with no remediation if they quit? Are there many single points of failure from a technical perspective? How can these potential pain points be efficiently addressed before the inevitable happens?
Sell-side Due Diligence
All of the above is valuable for a to-be-acquired company to be prepared to answer for. Can you? We can help not only spot additional risks, but craft a legitimate story for how these risks can be mitigated and growth can be achieved.
