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Add mentionPraveen Ghanta, Founder and CEO of DevHawk
Twenty-four hours before diligence expired, the buyer's board came back and cut the offer by almost 50%.
Praveen Ghanta bootstrapped HiddenLevers to over $8M ARR at 52% EBITDA and signed an LOI at 16x ARR. Then a $2M enterprise contract with TD slipped, and the private equity owners behind the buyer, Orion, took an ax to the price. Praveen walks through three rounds of renegotiation, setting a walkaway number, and landing around $130M with a small earn-out.
He also covers what to define in the LOI before exclusivity, how he cut a $600K sales tax claim to about $100K line by line, and an integration lesson every buyer should hear: his team shipped at two to three times the acquirer's engineering velocity, and that dropped 70% after close.
Praveen's technical integration worked because it was mapped during diligence and tied to the earn-out. Sales integration wasn't, and his team lost control on day one. See how SPS Commerce uses DealRoom to carry diligence decisions through to integration: here.
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About M&A Science
M&A Science, hosted by Kison Patel (Founder & CEO of DealRoom), is your go-to podcast for mastering the art of mergers and acquisitions. Each week, Kison and his expert guests from leading brands like Xerox, FastLap, and Cisco dig deep into real-world M&A strategies, offering actionable insights to optimize your M&A practice. Whether you're an experienced practitioner or new to the field, M&A Science provides practical advice on key topics like sourcing, due diligence, integration, divestitures, and more. With over 300 episodes, this podcast is the premier thought leadership resource designed to streamline your deal-making process. Start listening today and visit mascience.com/podcast to access over 300 episodes. Brought to you by DealRoom, the leading M&A optimization platform used by the best M&A teams around the world
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