220 Deals. One Playbook. How to Scale M&A Without Losing Control
M&A Science
If you scale the deal flow without the operating infrastructure to match it, things break fast. The playbook is a document nobody opens, closing weeks turn into fire drills, and the returns you modeled start to slip. Shawn Rodricks, Head of M&A - Independent Consultant, built the infrastructure before the volume hit. He closed 220 acquisitions across two organizations, 37 at Rexall in pharmacy and 183 at Amerivet Veterinary Partners, by wiring in the operating system from the start. What You'll Learn The five-part operating model behind 220 acquisitions How to hire for biz dev vs. corp...
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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?...
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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...
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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 ...
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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:...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineNathan Rust, Lutz Lehmann, Troy Pospisil, Jeremy Segal, Patrick Mumman, Tej Brahmbhatt, George Helock, and Angie Astle
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:
- How cultural signals in a management presentation can influence a bid decision
- What to do when a buyer dies before close and the sell process has to restart
- How to find data that management says does not exist
- Why late-stage valuation surprises from founders are a signal you could have caught earlier
- How to take a bankrupt target through Chapter 11 and still close the deal
- Why experienced advisors document every surprise the moment a deal closes
If you're running deals and want pattern recognition built from thousands of real M&A situations to back your judgment, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, gives you the deal guidance and advisor access to know which surprises you push through and which ones mean walk away.
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This episode of M&A Science is presented by DealRoom.
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Episode Chapters
[00:00] Intro
[04:11] Birthday cake in the management presentation
[07:10] Recruiting bankers from the sell side
[09:04] Culture fit as a bid decision factor
[10:03] When the buyer dies before close
[11:46] Nine-month restart from scratch
[17:04] Management says the data does not exist
[18:39] Finding Susie and the 1980s IBM
[22:25] IP ownership surprise at signing
[24:43] Bootstrap founders and commitment signals
[27:43] When bankers favor PE over strategics
[30:40] 78-year-old seller, a fistfight, and an earn-out
[32:25] The 12-year sales cycle
[35:23] Teaching a CEO to speak like an investor
[43:14] Aviation IPO pulled mid-road show
[45:52] Background check kills the deal a week before close
[50:03] Forever corporation: how Chugach approaches M&A
[54:47] HVAC target heads toward bankruptcy mid-diligence
[55:59] Becoming the secured creditor to save the deal