M&A Science

A rollup can look attractive at signing: cash today, equity in a larger platform, and the promise of participating in what gets built next. But sellers rarely spend as much time understanding what sits above that equity, what has to happen before it becomes liquid, or whose economics take priority when the platform eventually exits.
Bill Johnson, Founder, Chairman & CEO of The Liberty Company Insurance Brokers, has completed roughly 50 acquisitions while building Liberty without PE equity capital. He joins Kison Patel to challenge some of the assumptions behind acquisition-led growth and explore what buyers and sellers often discover only after the deal is done.
What You'll Learn
What sellers should understand about common vs. preferred equity

How investor timelines can change deal economics after close

Why seller character is so difficult to diligence

What happens when acquisition growth outruns integration capacity

How Liberty balanced M&A, organic growth, and leverage

When red flags between LOI and close should make you walk away

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You can do fifty deals and still run into something you've never seen before. DealPilot , powered by M&A Science, gives you practitioner-built guidance from 400+ interviews and thousands of real acquisitions. When the playbook stops working, know what to do next.

Integration problems often get blamed on culture after close. The real issue may have started earlier, when leaders were never given enough clarity on how to operate inside the new company. Kim Jones is an HR Director of M&A with more than a decade of people-integration experience across deals ranging from single-employee acqui-hires to acquisitions involving thousands of people.
In this episode, Kim shares how to avoid integration debt, what to do when trust and operating rhythms start to break down, and the stories that shaped her approach, including a CEO who delayed his own close and a butterscotch Life Savers incident that sparked an employee uprising. 
What You'll Learn
Why experienced leaders still need onboarding after an acquisition

What creates integration debt before the deal even closes

How to define "you'll run independently" before it becomes a source of friction

The retention question Kim asks before deciding where to spend retention dollars

Why integration planning should start around LOI, not Day One

How to spot the people who actually hold influence, even when the org chart doesn't show it

What buyers should preserve from the target before replacing its operating rhythms

If you're planning an integration and trying to get leadership aligned before close, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, gives you practitioner-built guidance for the decisions that shape Day One and what comes after.

Praveen Ghanta, Founder and CEO of DevHawk
Signing the LOI can feel like you've won. For the seller, it may actually be the moment when the balance of power starts moving the other way.
Praveen Ghanta learned that firsthand while selling HiddenLevers. A key enterprise contract slipped during diligence, the valuation story changed, and just before the diligence period expired, the buyer came back asking to reprice the deal by nearly 50%. What followed was a tense negotiation over how much to concede, what to protect, and when walking away becomes the better option.
What You'll Learn
Why seller leverage changes after signing an LOI
What should be defined before entering exclusivity
How to think about your walkaway number
What diligence feels like from the seller's side
Where buyers can unintentionally destroy what made an acquisition valuable
What Praveen would do differently after going through the process himself
 

When diligence changes the deal, the hardest question is knowing what to defend and what to give up. DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, has the deal frameworks and negotiation playbooks practitioners have used to make that call themselves.
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This episode of M&A Science is presented by DealRoom.
51% of corp dev teams are already using AI in their deals.
We surveyed 230+ practitioners on where AI is showing up across sourcing, diligence, integration, and internal workflows, what's working, what's holding teams back, and where the biggest opportunity is over the next 12 to 24 months.
Grab your free copy of the full report: https://hubs.ly/Q04sM2m30
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Episode Chapters
[00:00] Intro
[03:04] Two Decades of Bootstrapped Exits
[04:07] Lesson From an Early Failure
[07:38] Building Hidden Levers From Scratch
[14:49] The Road to Ten Million ARR
[18:48] Picking a Banker Without a Bake-off
[22:43] When the Anchor Deal Collapsed
[34:41] Power Shifts After the LOI
[36:46] Strategic Buyers Beat Private Equity
[32:05] How IRR Misleads Retail Investors
[35:03] Why Secondaries Data Can't Be Trusted
[40:07] What Belongs in the LOI
[43:04] The Sales Tax Surprise
[47:03] Two Diligence Teams, One Model
[48:21] Integration Wins and Losses
[50:15] What the Buyer Should Have Done
[53:16] Staying Sane Through Renegotiation

Richard Chow, Partner at PJT Partners (NYSE: PJT)
Secondary deals are often judged by a single metric: the discount. Richard Chow thinks that's the wrong place to start.
After spending most of his career investing in and advising on secondaries, Richard has seen what happens when investors focus too heavily on price and miss what is actually driving the transaction. Richard and Kison walk through the decisions behind LP-led deals, continuation vehicles, private-market liquidity, and some of the assumptions buyers routinely get wrong.
They also get into Richard's own investing mistakes, including a SpaceX opportunity he passed on, and what it taught him about underwriting assets whose real upside may sit well beyond the typical investment horizon.
What You'll Learn
Why the discount can be the wrong starting point in a secondary deal
What separates LP-led and GP-led secondary transactions
How continuation vehicles change the liquidity equation
Where IRR can create the wrong impression of investment performance
Why Richard believes buyers often approach diligence too narrowly
What passing on SpaceX taught him about underwriting long-term compounders
 

If you're evaluating a secondary opportunity and defaulting to "what's the discount," DealPilot's Buyer-Led M&A™ Certification is built on that instinct: stop taking the other side's framing and drive your own evaluation instead.
____________________
This episode of M&A Science is presented by DealRoom.
51% of corp dev teams are already using AI in their deals.
We surveyed 230+ practitioners surveyed on where AI is showing up across sourcing, diligence, integration, and internal workflows, what's working, what's holding teams back, and where the biggest opportunity is over the next 12 to 24 months.
Grab your free copy of the full report: https://hubs.ly/Q04sM2m30
____________________
Episode Chapters
[00:00] Intro
[03:23] Career Path Into Secondaries
[05:49] Why the Secondary Market Exists
[07:10] LP Interests vs Continuation Vehicles
[14:28] LP Versus GP-Led Deal Flow
[15:52] Endowments Face a China Problem
[18:19] Why the Discount Is Wrong
[21:50] Marketing a Deal, Finding Buyers
[30:34] Employee Option Secondaries Explained
[32:05] How IRR Misleads Retail Investors
[35:03] Why Secondaries Data Can't Be Trusted
[42:50] Private Credit Secondaries Explained
[45:16] The SpaceX Valuation Lesson
[47:24] Diligence on Complex Cap Tables
[50:21] The Most Common Buyer Mistake

Bill Stone, Founder and CEO of SS&C

How do you keep buying companies without eventually losing control of the company you built? 
SS&C Technologies founder and CEO Bill Stone has spent four decades avoiding exactly that. Rather than treating each acquisition as an isolated transaction, SS&C built a system around protecting ownership, using debt when the economics make sense, paying it down quickly, and creating enough value after close to preserve capacity for the next deal.
Bill walks through the decisions behind acquisitions including FMC, GlobeOp, and Blue Prism, his experience taking SS&C private with Carlyle, and the discipline that has allowed the company to keep acquiring across changing markets.
What You'll Learn
How Bill Stone kept 15% of SS&C through 100 acquisitions
The exact revenue-per-head and EBITDA thresholds SS&C screens for
Why strategic buyers almost always outbid private equity
How to tell a motivated seller from one just fishing for a premium
When rollover equity can help retain the management team
How Carlyle overruled Stone's own unanimous board vote
The one rule that makes Stone walk from a deal every time
 

Every financing decision changes what you can do on the next deal. If you're financing an acquisition and don't have a hard leverage ceiling you actually stick to, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, has the deal guidance layer to help you set one before you're over-levered on the next deal.
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This episode of M&A Science is presented by DealRoom.
DealRoom is the AI-powered operating system for Buyer-Led M&A™ — one connected system for pipeline, diligence, integration, and reporting. No tool-switching, no manual updates, no data gaps.
See how it works: https://hubs.ly/Q04mcGKy0
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Episode Chapters
[00:00] Intro and Guest Bio Check
[04:27] Protecting Ownership From Bankers
[07:32] Pivoting to the Buy Side
[12:12] Cutting a Client's Cost 91%
[12:32] Technology Cycles From Excel to AI
[15:14] First Acquisition and Going Public
[16:26] Balancing Investors and Founder Control
[20:08] The Carlyle Take-Private Story
[27:23] Screening Deals and Cutting Costs Fast
[32:02] Reading a Seller's True Motivation
[35:29] Winning FMC Under Canadian Rules
[42:10] Beating TPG for GlobeOp
[45:22] The Leverage Ceiling and Debt Paydown
[49:06] Topping Vista for Blue Prism
[53:17] Walking Away From a Lying Seller
[54:23] Diligence Speed and Trust But Verify
[54:58] Valuations and Capital Abundance