Stop Falling in Love with the Deal: Guardrails for High-Volume Acquisitions with Birgitta and Lars Elfversson
Release Date: 02/19/2026
How to Build a Deal Model That Beats PE on Price
M&A Science
Buyers who mistake a high LOI bid for a winning strategy are easy prey for sellers who know the growth equity playbook. Jeremy Segal's position: precision at the LOI stage is a stronger differentiator than price. Jeremy Segal is EVP of Corporate Development at Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS), a publicly traded software company that has nearly doubled revenue through M&A, from under $400 million to nearly $1 billion. He has closed roughly 50 acquisitions across his career at Progress, LogMeIn, and Akamai. How do you build a cost-optimization model before LOI for lines you know you can execute?...
info_outline
The People You Lose in M&A: Key Talent Retention Before Close
M&A Science
The people who leave post-close are usually the ones the deal depended on. Which means the problem starts with how you read culture before LOI and whether financial incentives are the only retention tool you are building with. Haseeb Jawad heads corporate development at Commvault, running a lean team with full accountability from sourcing through integration. He has led two to three acquisitions per year across multiple companies, sat on both sides of a transaction, and serves as his own IMO lead. The signals that tell you a deal will lose people are visible from the first founder...
info_outline
How to Buy Companies That Aren't Profitable Yet
M&A Science
Venture-backed companies are priced at their future state, not their current revenue. When growth stalls and another fundraising round stops making sense, the gap between VC valuation and what a strategic buyer will pay becomes the hardest conversation in any deal process. Matt Arsenault, VP of Corporate Development & Strategic Alliances at Jamf, has run this play across hundreds of targets. His work starts before the deal does, with the founder relationship, the cap table, and a clear-eyed conversation about risk tolerance that most corp dev teams never have. What You'll Learn ...
info_outline
When Deals Get Weird: Stories You Don't See in the CIM
M&A Science
, , , , , , , and Eight deal professionals share the M&A moments that never make the CIM. A birthday cake in a management presentation that confirmed a culture fit and influenced a bid. A buyer who died before close, forcing a nine-month restart from scratch. Eight years of customer revenue data on a 1980s IBM that management claimed did not exist. A target quietly heading toward Chapter 11 while diligence was underway. Unexpected events mid-deal are not exceptions. They are the deal. How you read them is what separates experienced practitioners from everyone else. What You'll Learn:...
info_outline
The Real Work Behind the Close: When Judgment Beats the Checklist
M&A Science
, , , , and Winning a banker-run auction at 5% under the highest bid. Closing a deal when co-sellers have not spoken in months. Getting through 22 countries of employment complexity with a client who refused to work with EOR providers. Acquiring a Netherlands-based public company and discovering the due diligence documents were in Dutch. These are the problems that no playbook prepares you for. Four corp dev professionals share how they handled them, and what it cost when they got it wrong. What You'll Learn How to win a competitive auction when you’re not the highest bidder What...
info_outline
The Nordic Compounder Playbook: How Jörgen Wigh Runs 85 Companies With 22 HQ Staff and No Integration
M&A Science
Lagercrantz Group has completed 90+ acquisitions over 20 years and never sold one. CEO Jörgen Wigh runs 85 niche B2B companies under a 22-person headquarters with no integration, no exits, and no value realization targets. This is Part 2 of 2. , while Part 2 is the operating culture. Jörgen gets into how 85 autonomous companies are governed without a matrix structure, why this model exists almost exclusively in the Nordics, what makes a founder walk away from a signed deal twice, why Lagercrantz deliberately targets a 10% failure rate, and what he would do differently starting from scratch...
info_outline
The Nordic Compounder Playbook: How Lagercrantz Bought 90 Companies and Never Sold One
M&A Science
Jörgen Wigh has been CEO of Lagercrantz Group (STO: LAGR-B) for over 20 years. In that time he completed 90+ acquisitions, built a portfolio of 85 niche B2B companies, and delivered 15 consecutive years of record earnings per share. No capital raises. No forced integration. No exits. The Nordic compounder model has quietly outperformed global markets for decades, and Lagercrantz is one of the longest-running, most disciplined examples of it in operation. In Part 1 of 2, Jörgen walks through the deal model behind that track record. What You'll Learn How Lagercrantz finds...
info_outline
M&A Integration Technology: What Actually Works
M&A Science
| | | Four integration leaders from Intel, Coursera, Ansys, and UKG debate what integration technology actually delivers versus what creates expensive overhead and where the real value leaks are. Todd Manley, Jim Buckley, Carey Pugh, and Mahesh Ganesan bring decades of deal experience to a conversation with no presentations and no curated answers. What You'll Learn Why the diligence-to-integration handoff keeps failing and what actually fixes it How to evaluate integration technology without getting sold on complexity Where AI is genuinely useful in integration today and where it is not...
info_outline
Partner Before You Buy: The Pre-Acquisition Strategy Corp Dev Teams Skip
M&A Science
Corp dev teams treat M&A and partnerships as separate tracks, but Tomer Stavitsky looks at them holistically. In this episode, he breaks down the partner-first approach: an acquisition framework for situations where the target isn't ready, the PE owner isn't selling, or your integration capacity isn't there. He walks us through structuring the partnership, keeping the acquisition thesis alive through execution, negotiating and defending a right of first refusal, and managing the three-way stakeholder dynamic without signaling the wrong things at the wrong time. What You'll Learn ...
info_outline
How M&A Turns a Chemical Company Into a Tech Business
M&A Science
Chandradev Mehta, SVP Strategy and Business Development at Hexion Inc., breaks down how a commodity chemical company uses M&A to transform into a technology-enabled, chemistry-as-a-service business. He covers the acquisition of an AI and MarTech company, the build vs. buy vs. partner decision framework, integration planning discipline, banker selection, small deal execution, and JV governance. What You'll Learn How to build a genuine build vs. buy vs. partner framework and when each is right Why buying a commercialized or near-commercialized business changes your risk profile in...
info_outlineBirgitta Elfversson, Non-executive director at Netlight Consulting AB
Lars Elfversson, VP/Co-Founder, Netlight Consulting AB
In fragmented industries, roll-ups are one of the most powerful strategies available. But high-volume acquisition programs come with hidden risks. Without discipline, complexity can quickly overwhelm value creation.
In this episode, Birgitta Elfversson, Non-executive director at Netlight Consulting AB, and Lars Elfversson, VP/Co-Founder, Netlight Consulting AB, share hard-won lessons from building and governing multiple roll-up platforms. Drawing on their experience as operators, board members, and investors, they outline the structural guardrails required to execute consolidation strategies successfully.
The conversation goes beyond sourcing and valuation to issues that determine long-term success.
What you'll learn:
- Why small pipelines create dangerous decision pressure
- How subtle drift reshapes portfolios over time
- The importance of defining and defending an acquisition framework
- Why most roll-ups fail because of people, not numbers
- How inconsistent integration across acquisitions compounds complexity
- Why clarity (whether full, partial, or no integration) must be defined early and communicated clearly
They also discuss governance discipline, board oversight, founder psychology, and the realities of market timing and exit decisions.
If you’re building or advising a roll-up platform, this episode is a practical guide to avoiding deal fever and installing the guardrails that protect strategy.
_____________________
This episode is sponsored by DealRoom
The best M&A teams close deals faster...not because they work harder, but because they have better systems. DealRoom helps you manage your entire deal lifecycle from target identification through close. No more hunting for documents or wondering what's blocking progress. Request a Demo today
____________________
Become an M&A Scientist: www.mascience.com/membership - $995/year for full access to the Intelligence Hub
____________________
Episode Chapters
[00:02:38] From Organic Builder to PE Rollups – Lars and Birgitta contrast building companies 100% organically vs. scaling through programmatic M&A.
[00:10:07] Validating the Rollup Thesis – How PE firms test market fundamentals, recruit operators, and pressure-test early industry hypotheses.
[00:13:02] Defining the Acquisition Framework – Setting guardrails on size, profitability, services, and integration logic before chasing deals.
[00:15:46] Avoiding Deal Fever with Massive Pipelines – Why long target lists prevent desperation, strategy drift, and “must-win” mistakes.
[00:21:07] Saving Your Silver Bullets – How board members influence management without overplaying authority or derailing alignment.
[00:23:43] Why Deals Go Off the Rails – How incentives, scarcity, and human bias quietly nudge teams away from original criteria.
[00:29:10] Picking the Right Companies to Buy – The three core filters: business model, size compatibility, and profitability profile.
[00:46:06] Integration Depth Drives Exit Value – Why partial integration destroys valuation and how buyers now scrutinize ERP, systems, and operational cohesion.
[01:01:56] Signing 27 Deals in One Day – A firsthand look at high-velocity rollups and the operational intensity behind scaling platforms.
[01:02:37] The Craziest Thing in M&A – Accounting “creativity,” forward-recognized revenue, and a deal so distorted it forced a divestiture and loss.
____________________
Questions, comments, concerns?
Follow Kison Patel for behind-the-scenes insights on modern M&A.