Quick Link: All About Acquisitions

Jeff Seibert, a techie who founded one company while still a student at Stanford and sold it to Box and then founded and sold another company to Twitter (where he still works), describes - in this returning to campus talk (at Stanford eCorner)  - "what went well and what didn't during the acquisition of his earlier startups by big-name technology companies, stressing the importance of culture fit, maintaining your team's trust throughout, and continued investment in growth after being acquired. Seibert also explains how an acquisition isn't always the best exit strategy for a promising startup.

Enabling the Exit - Special Peer to Peer Discussion

The Venture Intelligence APEX'14 Private Equity Summit on March 6 at Mumbai saw an amazing coming together of Founders and executives as part of this special "peer to peer" track to share some amazing experiences and strategies to create exits in the Indian context - both via M&A and public markets.

The discussion started with Pangea3 Co-founder Sanjay Kamlani relating how the company's board decided to provide Thomson Reuters - a vendor to the company which had been tracking it closely since inception - a minimum valuation expected and a deadline, only after which it would start approaching other potential buyers. Sanjay also related why, despite going an existing partner - with whom all the stakeholders were very comfortable - Pangea3 still hired an investment bank to facilitate the transaction and, also brought in the good offices of its non-executive chairman, to sort out "hairy issues" that cropped up. Since the founders and other top executives would need to work closely with members of the buyer team post transaction, it is key to have such buffers during the deal negotiation. Other speakers in the insights filled track included:

• Sesh AV, MD, Basiz (Session Chair)
• Sandeep Parekh, Founder, Finsec Law Advisors & Formerly Executive Director at SEBI (who provided the legal and regulatory perspective)
• Raman Gopal , President & Head - Business Development, Hinduja Group
  (who provided the acquirer’s perspective)
• Pramod Maheshwari, CMD, Career Point
  (which provided a successful exit via an IPO in the Indian markets for its PE investor)
• Neeraj Bhargava, CEO, Zodius Capital & Former CEO of US-listed BPO firm WNS
• Ajay Bohora, Co-founder & CEO, Credila Financial (majority owned by HDFC) & formerly Co-founder of ClaimsBPO (acquired by WNS)
• Chandu Nair, Co-founder, Scope eKnowledge (acquired by Quatrro BPO) 

The session is a must view one for entrepreneurs - especially ones planning an IPO or M&A for their firms.