OK, say I had built some really great software that met a real market need (let's steer away from whether or not that is actually true, assume it is) and this software is obviously very valuable to the companies named in the title.<p>Now, I want to sell the company to one of them.<p>Presumably I need to be able to make contact and pitch the company on why they should acquire my company.<p>How the heck would I do that? Do I just go and look up the people that it seems most likely to be the people who would drive an acquisition and ask them for a meeting?<p>Has anyone done anything similar? Anyone got any ideas or pointers on how to succeed in doing this?
Get a substantial number of their current (or now former) customers using it.<p>Until you can demonstrate your offering is real and the market thinks you matter, they won't think you do. There's really no way to skip this step unless you already have a personal relationship with someone who can drive the acquisition at the acquiring company.
1. Partner with them. If that goes well, they'll be clamoring to buy you. This also gets you an internal business unit/advocate to push for something.<p>2. Talk to their corporate development team. Their job is to buy companies. Hopefully they've reached out to you. Otherwise, you likely don't have any leverage.<p>3. Hire bankers to find you other potential bidders to drive the price up. The good ones will know all the corp dev people.
Two quicks things. What is the time pressure to sell? Do you share customers with them or do they consume your product directly?<p>If there is lower time pressure and their customers are your customers, maybe the partnership route is a better first step (look for BizDev folks). In those talks it should become clear how important you are to their business, or not.
With the disclaimer that I haven't done that, you would do it by getting press that their executives notice that leads to meetings, or (more often, and in tandem) your networks overlap and people are talking about you, which is why it's so valuable to have VCs with a vested interest in your success (their networks overlap heavily with CxOs).<p>Alternatively, they could discover and try out your offering and decide they like it enough to buy you.<p>Pitching the company on why they should acquire you doesn't seem like a position you want to be in, but I'm sure it can work. Maybe someone here has some stories.<p>People I've known that have done it usually make the personal connection first through mutual interests (e.g., clubs) and then "oh hey, I have this company you should buy" flows from there.
You want them to be aware of you already. Ideally, a few desks should have already been pounded by frustrated people at $buyer, while screaming "damn those guys at $seller!".<p>If you haven't demonstrated traction (eg. have users, customers, revenue, etc) it's going to be hard to get them interested. "market need" is just the tip of the iceberg.<p>(Unless your software is something truly insanely special and ground breaking, in which case kudos to you I guess)<p>Hiring an investment banker to run the process and shop you can be helpful. But if there's no "business" around the software you've created, then they probably wouldn't know where to start ;)<p>My $0.02..
As the saying goes, "companies are not sold but bought".<p>Which is a cute way of saying: if you are successful, and play in another company's sandbox, they will eventually talk to you.<p>So don't worry about cold intros. That's not how it works. You can't convince someone who doesn't know you to buy you. Succeed first. That will put you on the map. Getting the right intro is frankly the least of your challenges.
I worked at EMC and we had a group that looked at startups to acquire. Feel free to reach out to me directly and I might be able to dig up a name to put you in touch with.
Facebook ads? Make a LP specifically for said purpose, stack geos and jobs. You can waste a lot of money, but it may create awareness/interest for your product with a relevant audience.