Mechanics of a Small Acquisition

<i>Believing that the finish line is just yards away and finding that it is actually miles is not going to be good for your company’s morale.</i><p>I've learned this lesson the hard way. It's easy to get caught up in acquisition discussions, so be careful not to get ahead of youself. The cost for the acquirer to engage is much less. They are larger and sometimes have full-time staff devoted to M&#38;A, while your startup's bandwidth is very limited.

Interesting read, but for my part, I'm much more interested to learn _how_ to start the process. That is, tips on how to position your company to make it a candidate for acquisition. (Apart from a great product and name of course - got that). Ways to flag potential suitors? And ways to make it clear that you are looking for buyers? etc. Any pointers or text to look at would be much appreciated.

This is very reflective of the acquisition process my company went through when it was acquired(Priced at $13 million). However, one area that can't be emphasized enough is the distraction, time, and mental capital that this process entails. If you are not careful, it can hurt your business and its trajectory. Luckily, we had good people running the business for the founders while we concentrated on the acquisition process. One area not addressed very closely in this article is the difficulty of not sharing the possible acquisition with employees as you go through the process of gathering all of the due diligence data and having all of the meetings. Of course, keeping the acquisition process a secret from your employees isn't always required...but in our case it was. That added to the stress of the due diligence process for us.

There's little public information about small acquisitions and how they happen -- thanks for sharing. Everyone would be better off if there more information and transparency around these processes.

I knew of one company that was, despite wanting to be acquired, made it as hard as possible. Someone showed up with the "accept no other offers for 90 days" and the company freaked out that they were being pressured. All discussion ground to a halt after that.

Has anyone collected advice for after the acquisition? I'm thinking things like:<p>* Give yourself six months or so after joining before finalizing plans to sunset your original systems. It gives you time to work out the lay of the land re: political and software integration.<p>* If you expect more manpower in development or maintenance, get it down in writing.<p>Thoughts?

Off-topic:<p>I love the design of their page. The logo is just very attractive to me. It has a sort of mechanical-organic look to it. Great visuals.