Mastering M&A Success with Transparent Leadership and Strategic Agility

Today's episode is brought to you by S and P Global Market Intelligence S and P Global Market Intelligence has private companies covered whether you're looking for your next investment or MA target, conducting peer comparisons, assessing counterparty credit risk, or monitoring your supply chain, SMP Capital IQ Pro's extensive private company data can give you the insights you need for a competitive edge. Uncover tangible insights on private companies by visiting SP global.com private company data. Again, that's SP global.com private company data think about how your company operates. Your sales and marketing teams have a platform like Salesforce to keep everything organized and drive growth. Your HR department uses something like Workday to manage payroll, benefits and onboarding finance. They're probably using a top tier platform like netsuite to keep the numbers in check and streamline operations. But what about your MA team? The team handling the company's largest, highest stake investments? They're likely still managing everything in a folder full of spreadsheets. Now that doesn't make sense, does it? When it comes to M and A, especially buyer led M and A, the stakes are too high to rely on outdated tools. Just like your other departments have specialized solutions to drive efficiency and success, your M and A team needs a platform designed specifically for them. That's where dealroom comes in. Dealroom is built for companies that are serious about scaling their M and A efforts. It centralizes your entire M and A process from managing the pipeline through diligence and into integration. It's about creating one seamless flow that eliminates inefficiencies, reduces the risk of errors and enables your team to handle multiple deals concurrently. And just like your other departments are preparing to leverage AI for smarter decisions and better results, dealroom equips your M and A team with the tools they need to do the same. Whether you're handling hundreds of deals a year or billions in value, dealroom ensures your buyer led M and A strategy is executed efficiently, allowing your company to scale successfully. It's time to give your M and A team the same level of support and sophistication that the rest of your company enjoys. Visit dealroom.net to learn more about how we can help you drive efficiency, reduce risk and leverage AI in your MA process so you can scale your M and A efforts like never before. Again, that's dealroom.net I'm Kisam Patel and you're listening to M and A Science, where we talk with deal professionals and learn valuable lessons from their experience. This podcast focuses on stories, strategies and what actually happened During M&A deals foreign a Scientists welcome to the M and A Science Podcast where we learn from the best in M and A to uncover proven techniques for enterprise value creation. You're interested in learning more about how to optimize your M and A practice or want to get involved with our community of forward thinking M and a practitioners? Visit mascience.com subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. If you want to keep up with us on the go, head over to LinkedIn and follow M and A Science. I'm your host Kisan Patel. Today we're bringing you insights from two experts in M and A. First we have Yogesh Gupta, President CEO of Progress Software, breaking down what it takes to execute M and A successfully. Progress is a trusted provider of AI powered infrastructure software traded on NASDAQ under prgs. Together we'll discuss key strategies for successful M and A execution, from transparent communication and disciplined valuation to navigating cultural integration and overcoming post deal challenges. Stay until the end to hear a bonus segment with Jack Glazebrook from S and P Global Market Intelligence. Jack will give us a look at how the M and A data landscape is evolving and and the latest tech solutions on SMP Capital IQ Pro that can drive smarter deals. Yogesh how are you doing today?

Isan I'm doing great and it's a pleasure to be here on this podcast of yours.

Thanks for hosting in person live just outside of Boston at Progress's global headquarters.

It is a wonderful place. Today is a great day and it's a pleasure to meet you in person as well. Nowadays so much work happens online and virtually. It's great to sometimes meet people face to face. It's always the best.

Absolutely. Here we kick off our conversation a little bit about your background.

I've been CEO three times. This is my third CEO gig, so I've been at Progress for almost eight years. Before that I ran a private equity backed business called Kaseya which is a software provider to managed service providers and very successful. Before that I ran a VC backed company called fatwire which was exited to Oracle. So that's sort of my last 15 years or so and then before that actually I spent 18 years at Computer Associates CA and CA Technology was a serial acquirer and I think it's relevant for this conversation because that was my formative years of my career and I did a variety of things. Of course I started off on the technology side but then I moved into marketing, became Chief Marketing Officer, then ran strategy for the company, went back, became cto, ran worldwide engineering and Then for two and a half years I ran M and A And in that two and a half years we put $2 billion to work. We acquired 18 companies in 30 months, which was a pretty fast pace. Three of those were public companies. It was a fun time. So tremendous amount of learning around M and A and how it can truly help a business grow and change and evolve.

And then at Progress, you did more deals.

Once you start doing deals, you realize that's one more tool you have in your basket of tools to make a business successful. So I came to Progress, decided you know what we needed to strengthen our core product portfolio. So we made two small tuck in acquisitions early on. One was in the low code, no code space because our application development platform needed something to make it easier for application developers to build modern applications. And then we also acquired a machine learning AI company back in 2017, before it was fashionable, because again we believed that data could be leveraged through machine learning to predict, for example, in this scenario we were targeting manufacturing organizations and to predict things like supply chain issues or factory floor problems and those kind of things. That was the initial part. And then we said, okay, now that we have strengthened our core, let's broaden our portfolio. Let's broaden what we do for our customers. And so we have been on a journey of acquiring products that are adjacent to our markets and continue to grow through acquisitions.

Getting away from your core, expanding adjacent to the core.

You never should get away from the core. From my perspective, that's too far away.

From the core, expanding it. So I wanna connect that you have engineering background.

I do.

We didn't talk about that, but it'll probably come up at some points because I've noticed that your type of wired a little different. The CA is where you got your chops. You worked in house, did a lot of deals, seen it, been there, done that. And then you've ran the CEO roles which you've been involved with some deals and then more recently a progress. What's it like being a CEO of a publicly traded company?

It is fun. It is an amazing responsibility. I enjoy it immensely and I'll tell you why. You are truly solving problems for customers. In the end, any business only exists if it can solve problems. And it can solve problems in a way that customers recognize delivers value to them. So you're solving problems for customers. We're a global company. We have 4 million developers who rely on our software every day. Hundreds of thousands of businesses. By doing that, by solving those problems, by making sure that your employees are Engaged and we have a great culture. You then deliver great shareholder returns. And in the end, that's what business is supposed to do, is to grow the business and make sure the investors get their money's worth.

Okay, I would agree. Being a CEO is fun. Let's trip out everything in just the public part.

Sure.

That doesn't sound fun. You're at the mercy of market sentiment. You got to do all the earning calls. It just seems like way more extra work. That doesn't seem fun.

It's interesting because I have been CEO at all three types of companies. VC backed, private equity backed, and public. I actually have a much more balanced view. I think people who say public company CEO roles have this public component is too onerous. I think they don't realize that it's equally hard on the other side. It's not easy being a private equity backed CEO either. Everybody's looking for outcomes, and whether it's public or private, they're all looking for a financial outcome that is increasing the value of the business in a public environment. Actually, one of the things I have found really positive is that if you are transparent with your shareholders. You mentioned you do these quarterly calls. I think you have to be honest, I think you have to be transparent. I think you have to share the good and the bad. And if you do that and you also share how you expect to overcome the challenges, the investors work with you, they stay with you. And we've seen that at Progress. It's been a really good ride. Now, not every day is fun, not every moment is exciting or positive, but challenges will happen. That's what business is. That's what life is. The question is, how do you overcome them? Investors know that and investors understand that. It is when they see inaction, it's when they see that the communication is not transparent. It's when they think that they are being not told the whole truth.

Interesting.

And the same thing's true with customers. Between customers, employees and investors. Transparency in my book is the number one foundational element to build trust. And you're building trust because investors are putting money into your business. That is trust. You're building trust with customers. They're relying on your products. They want to work with you. They want to make sure that their job gets done. You're building trust with your employees that we're going to all win together, that we can actually succeed together. I think of it all as really that foundational piece that how do you build trust? How do you communicate in a way that people feel and recognize that you are being transparent because you are going.

Back to the private side. I feel like it's pretty objective. It's about the numbers and you got to report up to the board and especially private equity. They want to calculate their RRR and be on point. But public, it sounds like there's more of owning the public perception and creating that transparency.

In the end it's the same though they also are looking for the irr, the investors.

That's what I was wondering is how much of it in a public context is purely the numbers versus driving public perception.

We are not a consumer company. I am running an enterprise software company. So the public perception for the investors really is about what is the perception of the product and what is the perception of the business. And on top of that, are you delivering the results. So results matter. No matter where you go, what you do, results matter. But even in a private company, if your product image changes, your business outcomes change, I don't see that much of a difference. Kisan, as I mentioned, I was nine years a corporate officer at Computer Associates. I actually did the investor relations for several years myself and the cfo, we'd go and do the IR conferences and analyst relations and all that stuff. To me it's about sharing, it's about being open. And I think if you do that well, the market rewards you.

You're cut out for the job.

I'm not sure about that, but I enjoy it.

Is it harder though?

I think it has some additional components, but I don't want to call that harder.

I want to talk about strategy. I want to learn from you. What are the key elements to really create a clear and actionable strategy? How did you approach it when you join progress?

I think the question starts with and from my view, figuring out strategy starts with understanding what things are, where they are, what's the current state? If you don't understand the current state, then it's really hard to figure out where do you really want to go and then can you actually get there? Because strategy has to be executable. So if somebody says I want to fly, but if you're a pig, I don't think people have yet figured out how to make a pig fly. So the question is, if the business is a particular type of business, how can you grow that? How can you create more value for the shareholders? How can you make your employees happier? How can you serve your customers better? Because in the end, that's the foundation. If you serve your customers better, all the others follow. So the strategy has to start with understanding what products do I have? Where are they strong? Where are they weak? What markets am I in? Is there an opportunity there or not? You shore up your weaknesses. You figure out the areas where you're wasting resources because the return isn't going to be there. You figure out areas where if you double down, you could actually do much better. And that's how you put together a strategy. And you would. I think the other second most important part of strategy, in addition to figuring out where you are and being honest about it with yourself and everybody around you, is having a team around you that then helps you figure out how to where do we go and how do we get there?

I'm curious about this. I'm not trying to sidetrack too much, but aspiring to be a great CEO. When you got the job, you got to have your interpretation of what the strategy is and the impact you're going to make on the company. What was like that? What'd you do to win over the board to get the job?

I think I was very upfront with the board, and I've always been upfront with the shareholders and investors and the employees that what I will do is I will take the first couple of months to actually figure out where we can actually go, what is going on in the business. The five years before I joined, the business had struggled. The investors weren't that happy, but that was water under the bridge. The question was, how do we go forward from here? So when I came to progress, we had a slight decline in revenue year over year going on. And so the question was, first of all was how do we stem that? This is a basic foundational thing. If you have a leaky bucket, how do you plug the leak? So what can we do with our products that can actually make them stronger, that can create additional value, that retains our customers, that maybe even does so much for them that they actually expand their relationship with us. And so we spent the first 18 months to two years doing that and stopping some of the other stuff that we were doing. It was chasing new things while not watching the house, so to speak. I think strategy is common sense. The question is execution. Actually, to be honest, Khe San, execution is the hard part.

We're going to get into that. What I'm getting is like a lot is understanding the current state. And when you do do that, you understand some of the problems. Cause it's not immediately go do M and A, it's hey, you gotta make sure your house has a good foundation infrastructure. Can you tell me, like, first 90 days what did you do to learn that business? Current state.

So I spoke to more customers and more employees during that first 90 days than one usually does. I spoke to hundreds of customers. As it happened, we had a conference which had some of our larger ISV customers. These are other software companies who use our products to build their products. It's actually a big part of our business. And we happened to have a conference already scheduled for them. I went and spent two days there walking the floor, meeting every customer, asking them what they liked and what they didn't like. I visited all of our large offices and met with employees. I held open town halls, I'd walk the halls, I'd walk into people's offices. People would go, why is the CEO in my office? I've never seen a CEO, I've never talked to a CEO one on one, once they realize that you are there to learn, then they open up and they tell you. I met with every product manager to find out what was going on with each of their products. I am a product centric guy. That is my background. To me it starts with product. What do I offer that my customer wants really solves a problem for them. So met with product managers. I met with the leadership team. I met with every single, not my direct report, but all the direct reports under them. So about 70 people. I did one on ones with all of them. That's your homework.

Some pretty hardcore diligence.

You have to. The problem sometimes is that people find out parts of the story and then they don't get the complete picture. And when you don't have a complete picture, you jump to conclusions. I think conclusions come later. So once you do that, you're slowly building the picture. You're validating the picture, you're validating your assumptions, you're asking follow up questions to figure out whether what you've come up with is accurate or not. So that was the first sort of 90 days. And as you're doing that, you're also evaluating the people. I mean, I actually made significant changes on my leadership team within the first 90 days. And that was all part of you have conversations with them. You also try to figure out whether they fully understand the picture. If you get a different picture than they think and you think your picture is more accurate, then you wonder whether they are doing the hard work of connecting with people and connecting with customers, or if they're missing it. Speaking to customers gave me a wonderful background into really how critical and important our products were for them and what were the few things they wanted from Us so that they would do more with us. I joined in mid October and then I remember first week of January, I was in places like Minnesota because Quicken Loans is there and we have a large healthcare customer and we have other manufacturers who are our customers there. You go to where the customers are and this is pre Covid. So we were all traveling and you meet customers at their place, you ask them, you basically are very open to something new. What can we do better?

So I take this sort of diligence and there's parts in strategy, but I don't want to focus too much on strategy because I think you had a good point. A lot of this is about execution and you obviously done a lot of deals. I'm wondering, you done the diligence from shaping the strategy with the team to like preparing some of this execution or sort of building that. Is there something you're doing that early where it's like, hey, I'm saying the tone. This is sort of the yogish way of working here.

This is absolutely. There's a little bit of that. Because as you're doing the homework and as you're doing that work, people begin to see who you are. They begin to see what is important to you. They begin to see whether you actually do listen to them or not. Are you truly listening and creating a viewpoint based on what you are hearing versus you've already come in with preconceived notions. Nobody hates anyone more than a know it all.

Nobody wants to be told what to do. Nobody does.

Nobody does, right? And there are many folks who I think come into a new role and they think that, oh, they know it all because they've seen something before. Each business is different. Each circumstance is different. So coming in with an open mind is critical. As I went along, I said, yep, I need to find people in these spots for my leadership team. And I started reaching out to my network and I was able to draw on that network to have a couple of people come on board. I found others inside Progress itself who I promoted to fill in the slots of the people I asked to move on.

Were you pulling people that, you know, have like M and A chops because, you know, like, hey, to grow this business.

Not at the start. Not at the start. At the start, it was purely people who I thought would be really good at. So I needed a new head of sales for the vast part of my business. I felt that I needed somebody really strong who would understand managing customer relationships and really growing the existing customer base and retaining them and Making sure that their views are understood and shared. I brought in an engineering leader who I knew that basically could work with that sales leader and actually they could work together to make sure that when we heard something back from the customers, we would be able to address that in our product side. I brought in a new chief marketing officer who I knew understood how to target and how to go after the audience that we have. To me, it is about that role. M and A was sort of an afterwards, right? M and A was okay, now I'm going to solve this particular part of the problem with some M and A. Initially, M and A was purely, as I said, to shore up the core business so it was less so of a focus. It wasn't until about two years later that we said, okay, now we have the core really strong, our base is really strong, our margins have gotten stronger. My cash flow has more than doubled. I am going to now build the rest of the business through acquisition. Because now I'm generating cash and I can use that to buy companies. And the more companies I buy that are adjacent to my portfolio, it grows my footprint with my customers, it grows my customer base, my cash flow grows with it. I can buy more. Then you get into a virtuous cycle. I hired a current head of M and A, Jeremy Siegel. He actually joined on Covid time. I think he has been on your podcast.

Jeremy's awesome. I actually do a head of Corp Dev Roundtable Group with Jeremy. If anybody's listening, they're head of Corp Dev, hit me up. But we do this private call once a quarter and compare notes and it's awesome to hear what other industries are seeing and how they're structuring deals and just it's fun. He's a great person, he's a great.

Guy and he has a tremendous background in M and A.

So.

And that was a point when you got to where it's like, hey, this isn't a one off thing. It seems we've got our business dialed in, big focus on the core, really got some operating efficiencies there. And part of doing these acquisitions, we're driving that same level of efficiency to these companies we're acquiring and they still fit along the strategy, which I'm going to ask you for some examples of. Then it's prompted of because we're going down this path. Let's get a good seasoned leader that can focus on the execution.

Absolutely correct. So what happened was in late 2018, early 19, we said, okay, it's been two years, we've done our work on the heavy lifting on the core. Let us now really start doing M and A. So the first deal we did we actually did locally. In fact, this headquarter you're in used to be the headquarters of the company we acquired company called Ipswich. We acquired that company in May and it was a really great business. It provides probably as businesses around helping IT organizations develop, deploy and manage amazing applications and digital experiences. And nowadays it's all AI powered. At that time it was primarily around developing and running those things. Not too much of how do you deploy it, how do you scale it, how do you monitor it, manage it, how do you make sure that the application is actually available and performing and secure. That product portfolio didn't exist. So we actually have. The first one we did was Ipswich and that brought us observability products and additional products. And then after that we said, you know what, this is what we need to do in a more repeatable fashion, so let's hire somebody. And so we hired Jeremy in early 2020. I was interviewing him before COVID and then of course by the time he started we had Covid. So the first deal we did after Covid was October. It closed in October of 2020 and it was entirely done virtually as far as I'm aware of it. We were the first software company, enterprise software company that had done a deal during COVID where everything was virtual. We did not meet a single soul. All your experience of how you do a deal completely gets put on its head.

Was this Chef?

Yes, this was Chef. That's exactly right.

And it's like a good company, It's a great company. I remember I had the T shirt and I was showing Jeremy, I'm like.

Congratulations, it is a great business, it is a great company. The number of mission critical large businesses that rely on it is astounding. And without Chef, Christmas shopping would come to a standstill. How is that? Every single credit card company uses Chef products to scale their backend infrastructure to handle the transaction load that goes up as Christmas comes around or any holiday comes around. And then they basically use it to scale it down once the rush goes away. A small example of the kinds of things our software gets used for DevOps.

Those of you who want to do some homework around it and it seems like part of this is you've built the core and you've got a good distribution model and customer retention. So as you add these products, that's a big thing that you're leveraging for synergies that you actually figure out how to connect these products into the distribution, grow the business and then put the same operational efficiency practices in play. How has this strategy evolved over from that first deal till now?

As I said, the first couple of deals were primarily tuck ins which was more around making. The existing core was strengthened. But from then on it has actually been the same strategy. Identify a company with a great set of products that have a great set of customers. Great set of products means what? It's a wonderful product in a good market. A great set of customers means what? Customers who recognize its value and therefore stay with you. Do they renew the product? Do they continue to stay with you? What is the average lifetime of a customer? Are you seeing churn? So those are some of the things and then in the end the financial metrics make sense. It's all backed by people and culture of the company you acquire.

Now we've seen all this buzz around AI and I feel like every company has. Even the recent sentence I got by a company is AI into it. I feel like everybody's pivoting. AI is core. How do you view that? As these are big companies that are turning into the dime and they're doing acquisitions related to AI, they're actively spending ton of money in R and D to revamp products with AI functionality. How do you think through this?

The buzz around AI is amazing right now and I think it is there for making people talk more about what they are doing with AI and also do more. As I mentioned, the very first company we acquired in 2017 was an AI company, AI Machine Learning Company. We have always believed, and I've always believed that the world was going to move to AI and it has been moving to AI in different aspects along the way. Of course, as we know, 18 months ago we had this whole generative AI for text come about with ChatGPT and I think it exposed the power of that aspect of AI, generative AI to the whole world in a very easy to use way. That got really the excitement going in that space. We have over the last several years and especially in the last 18 months or so also made tremendous investments in AI. Our last acquisition, actually MarkLogic is a data platform. It's a database product that supports unstructured data. And MarkLogic itself had acquired a company called Semaphore which does semantic analysis on text. So between those two, the MarkLogic products, combined with our data connectivity and our intelligent decisioning products, we have created this new offering called the Progress Data platform. And the Progress Data platform is all about responsible AI in a mission critical Secure, reliable business environment so that you don't get hallucinations, so that you don't get random answers, so they are repeatable. Then the answers are provided along with the context, along with where does the information come from which this answer is derived, which is really important for business to be able to make sure that it is based on something that is reliable. For example, if you ask a question to it saying, what kind of a product should I offer my customer? They'll give you a suggestion or two and then they'll say, oh, by the way, this is why I'm suggesting this. And it has a link to things like, for example, what products are used for what products solve what problems this customer has these problems that have been identified. Therefore. So what is the logic behind what is the connection behind the question that was asked and the answer that was given? Just like humans do, we don't provide generative AI answers. It does use generative AI to provide the answer, but it is much more of a responsible, secure, reliable, hallucination free AI. We've done a whole host of investments in AI. We have a product that is used by cybersecurity experts to monitor activity in the network. We have now added AI capabilities to it so that it helps the cybersecurity experts identify what could actually be a threat, as opposed to weird activity, but not really a threat. And so this threat detection that is driven by AI and it reduces the amount of time that it takes a cybersecurity expert to hone down on the problem by 52%. Think about it like it doubles their productivity, takes half the time, you can do twice the work. We have a generative AI capability with our content management product so that it can create and target content based on audiences automatically. So AI is big. It's big for us too.

You're gonna be excited. There's so many products I feel like our team needs to learn about. And then I'll come back and bug you for a discount when we stuff.

I'd love for you to become a user. We'll do a good deal.

Awesome. We'll trade customer stories. It'll be fun. Yogesh, teach me how to execute M and A deals and you can't tell me. Hire the best head of Corp Dev and best head of integration. That's the non acceptable answer.

No, that is not the answer. I think you do need great people in leadership. So don't get me wrong, but that's not the answer. That's not the only part of the answer. You do need great People who can lead the acquisition process. And you need a great M and A leader for that. But in addition to that, in the end, the success of a deal comes from execution post acquisition. It is the integration, it is the delivering of outcomes over the next 6, 12, 18, 24, whatever number of months and whatever number of years you want to put the horizon out. But it is a long term thing. And so what it requires is a whole host of what I would call initial analysis, expectation setting, goal setting, and then therefore driven by that due diligence effort to make sure that we validate our assumptions, along with a creation of an integration plan and an execution plan. All of that has to happen before the deal closes. I don't want to be without a plan until after the deal closes. I need to be able to be comfortable that we have a plan and that everybody whose job is to execute on parts of those plans have signed off on it. Somebody who runs M and A will actually help do the deal. Like they will lead the process, all that stuff. But it'll end up under a gm. The GM has to sign off on revenue targets, on efficiency targets, on cost stuff. It'll end up with IT workload, it has to sign off on systems integration, speed at which it's going to happen, et cetera. It ends up with work for people team. Our HR people team. The people team has to sign off on. Can we bring these people on board? Can we train them on our stuff? Is there a cultural fit? How will we make sure that wherever there's a disconnectedness in some part of the culture that we can bring them along? How big will that hurdle be? Can we overcome that? How much time will that take across the board? How will we interact with customers? How will we deliver the next product release? Finance? Will we be able to produce our results so that our auditors can be happy and our investors can be happy and do it in a timely manner? The same rigor that we do with our own business? And how quickly can we do that? I think all of these questions have to be answered with plans. And I think that's the hard part.

A lot of planning.

It is a lot of planning, but at the same time, the more you do it, the better you get.

Let me ask you this though. I mean, like LOI is your proposal and then your close is your wedding day.

Yep, that's exactly correct.

Planning in between. Yep. At loi, how much consideration have you put in on how you're going to integrate this company?

At loi, what you have done is a Very high level analysis. At least what we do is an analysis that says, is this a fit across the dimensions that we want it to be? Do we have a product market fit that is adjacent to what we do? Is there go to market effort similar enough to ours that we can actually bring it together and run it? Well, Is their product really as good based on whatever checks we can informally do, or based on the data we initially get loi, you get very little. Before the loi, you get very little data. Does this product have a good reputation out there? But nowadays, by the way, online resources are amazing. You go to G2 Crowd and you can read about any product and you can see what the customers are saying, the users are saying. So you do that homework that says, is this a good product? Is this a market that we want to be in? Is this a business that we believe is of the right size and scale that we can actually absorb? One of the things I actually think are some of the biggest mistakes that people make is that they will buy companies that are too large and they go, oh, you know what? We need to get from A to B. Instead of taking three steps to get there, I'll make a leap. And sometimes that leap is so big that the risk is much, much greater. People integration becomes harder. Customer integration becomes harder. Product integration becomes harder.

This is an interesting one because that's what they say, you're taking lower risk. And what you described is doing the series of smaller acquisitions as opposed to a large one. How would you measure that? Would you look at revenues of each respected companies or would you look at headcount?

I think it's a combination of both of those. Headcount. So headcount is actually really key in terms of when you operate. If I buy a company and I think that after the acquisition is complete and after we have the work as to who stays and who's not going to have a job, et cetera, Figure that out. I want there to be five of the existing people versus one of the acquired. Why is that? When you have that kind of a ratio, the culture of the five will survive. And we love our culture. We are really proud of our culture. We win awards for how good we are as an employer. The Boston Globe consistently ranks us among the best places to work in Massachusetts. We get similar accolades in Bulgaria. We have a large presence there from Forbes in Bulgaria. We get similar accolades in India. We have large presence in India. We run a company that basically has amazingly positive employee relationships. Our employee net promoter score is better than most enterprise software companies out there. In fact, it is among the best. Our employee turnover is half that of the industry average because people love to work here. I want to sustain that culture. And by the way, it's good for business. If my turnover is low, I'm not spending money hiring, I'm not spending money training and I've got business continuity. I don't have people leaving and I have to figure out who's going to do that job. So it is that. To me, the culture matters. So one is to five is a good ratio. One is to five, one is to six.

One to five, one to six.

So what you acquire is 1 5th or 1 6th yourself size in terms of headcount and then revenue is proportional, but not exactly right. Sometimes you get a little bit more revenue than the headcount and that's on the ratio. Maybe a company that is 30% of my size, that's okay, that's good.

It sounds like there's a correlation of risk too. If you're doing a bigger deal, there's more risk attached to it. You mentioned the culture piece, which is interesting because I'm wondering if there's a view of I want to look for a strong suited culture that I know is going to mesh well, versus I'm going to have some HR people reach out and have counterarguments to this, but versus I'm going to change this company's culture to be more like ours, or I have confidence that I can change this company's culture to be more assimilated with ours.

There's a little bit of both. I don't think you'd ever find two companies have identical culture. It is often that you find a company that has what I would call 80% culture overlap and that's a random number. It could be 70, it could be 90. I'm not measuring. There are no metrics, but you kind of look at it and go culturally. Are we similar, by the way? Progress, Lived values. What are the lived values? Not what people put up on science, but what are truly the lived values and our lived values that you can ask progressors people within the company about. We work together, we collaborate, we respect each other, we respect differences. We don't care what people's backgrounds are, what they look like. We respect everybody in the company and respect each other. We own our outcomes, we own the goals that we set for ourselves and deliver on those. That's a really important thing to us. We uphold trust. I mentioned earlier, trust is the foundation of everything we do and we continually innovate we continually improve ourselves. We innovate on the product side, but we also innovate on how we do things internally. The question is, you're looking for companies that you go, are they a transparent culture? So if the transparency is missing at the top, that is easy to fix, replace the top. I'm going to be the top, hopefully. And in which case I can enforce transparency and I can be transparent. The question really, is it transparent on the way up? Do people feel afraid to share information with management? Can you break that? Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. So you have to figure out where there might be potential differences in culture and where they are, whether they can be overcome. So, yes, we do that analysis.

It's interesting. You're only going to get so much of perspective before loi around that.

No, no, no, you will not get any perspective on loi.

Yeah, so then.

So you make the loi and this is the work you do between loi and closing the.

I feel like at that point I got this commitment. It's, we just need to figure out how to overcome this versus not really.

Not really. Because I think, would you look at.

It as a factor of, okay, there's a threshold. We're going to walk away from this deal.

So we walk away from deals on a variety of fronts. We walk away from deals after doing Lois on the following set of things. We find out that the business was not as it was portrayed and that as it was portrayed is an important thing. And that could be financial metrics, that could be product characteristics, that could be customer profiles, and that could be people and culture. Any of those four, because it has all four, have to work before you do the loi. You get one management meeting and you basically ask them those questions. What is your people culture? They spend five or 10 minutes and then you go, okay, that sounds good enough, reasonable, and we'll find out more. And if it turns out that it's horrible, you walk away. Again, I have a very different view about M and A. It is absolutely critical for the buyer to not fall in love with an asset.

If I've heard that term usually reflected with the sellers. Don't fall in love. You just got to, you know, right price, sell it. But for the buyer, that's a good.

Perspective because you want to stay objective through the process. It isn't that you shouldn't want the asset, you absolutely need to want the asset. Otherwise you shouldn't put an ally in front of people. And you have to be honest that you are doing this loi with the right intent.

My view of an alloy is here's a deal thesis or a general business case and why we should do this deal. But as we go through and validate through the diligence period, then I can come back and say okay, based on actual validation. There are some references here why we things aren't the way it's going to line well and we're not going to hit the anticipated value because of that cultural misalignment or financials are different and whatnot.

And then in that scenario there are two things that can happen. One is it's so bad that you walk away. Another is you basically say, you know what, we will do this but the valuation is different. And that also happens. But in general, most of the time I try not to do the valuation change unless there's some obvious reason that basically says, you know, it's a different size business.

So much of that overcoming these surprises challenges is the relationship you have with the counterparty, specifically the CEO. Can you teach me that? I think it's something I'm already, you know, we're a small company but I'm building pipeline now. I've transitioned from working in the business, working on the business and having these early conversations for when we're ready, we're ready. When you do that first conversation, you don't trust each other that much. You know, maybe a little bit of like I like the person, I can tell they're good personality. We got an idea of how our companies could come together but there's still a lot to figure out. What's your approach to building their trust? But then also I think, I don't know if you have some advice on like that clarity on why these companies are really going to come together.

I believe that trust starts with transparency and I'm very upfront about that in my very first conversation with the other party. And I'll be honest, I'll say, look, we may or may not do business, but I will always tell you the way I see things and I want you to do the same. And if you ask me a question, I'll give you an honest answer. And if I ask you a question, I expect an honest answer as well. And if that trust is broken, Kisan, I have a really hard time moving forward at that point. When you set the ground rules between the two parties and both agree that yes, we will be honest and open and transparent with each other, that then creates the foundation on which you continue to have conversations. And as you have conversations, you're of course validating even though you're not validating in the sense that you're questioning every question or every answer, but internally you're validating whether or not the other party is being honest along the way. And I think again, if you don't fall in love with the asset, you can basically along the way say, you know what, the other party is truly not telling us the full truth, the whole truth. They're actually trying to hide something. Now, you know, I had to ask three ways before I found this answer. And if that is the case, then you go, do I really want to go through with this? Aren't there other.

Tell the person that is like part of the transparency of hey, I'm going to be transparent that I don't feel you've been transparent. We're dealing with these issues. We see these issues. Yes. That's why I don't think we should move forward.

Because when you don't move forward, you have to say why.

I like it. Pretty gangster. I like it by the way.

And there is no animosity. There is no, hey, sorry, you know what? I no longer believe what I've heard. And so therefore I can't move forward. There's no animosity in that. It is what it is.

It's a very matter straight as straightforward. Yeah, exactly. As matter of fact. Do you ever convince someone you sell their company?

Yes.

Teach me how to do that.

It's kind of an interesting thing. I don't want to say convince. Convince is too strong word. I think you. There has to be a gem. Yeah. You influence. Influence. There has to be a germ of a thought on the other side at least that they would consider moving on. So I think what you do is you don't start with the question. If somebody asks you do you want to sell your business? Nobody will start with yes.

Will it give you like the billion dollar valuation or they'll give you some of.

So the question, what you start with is the following. You try to understand what their goals and aspirations are. So we do a lot of calls, I do a lot of CEO to CEO calls who have been nurturing this opportunity, so to speak. They know that they don't intend to sell in the next near term year or two. I know that they don't intend to sell in the next year or two. That's okay. I just want to get to know you. I want you to know me and I want to learn what you think your aspirations are for the business. And they come back and they say what we think next year we're going to grow and do this and we're going to come out with this new product and we're going to do this. That's wonderful. We touch base again in six months, how is it going? Or nine months, how is it going? Are you making good progress on that front? Are you seeing stuff? And at some point you get a feel that the person is getting tired. And if they are getting tired, that's when you start the conversation that says, look, we've been talking for the last few years that we. Obviously the reason I'm talking to you is I think that you have a good business, but you are not really getting to exactly where you want to go. And so would it make sense for us to get there together? And that's how you approach it. And I think sometimes you can influence somebody, other times you can't.

What is the reservations you see from them? Is it I got to keep the control? I love the control. Is it I'm growing, Like for me it would be growing 60% year over year. And I have vast majority of the equity, feel like I'm doing pretty damn good. So what are those typical objections you get? How do you overcome them?

Objections range from exactly the kind that you said, look, we are doing well, we're growing well, we're doing well, we're hitting targets. I'm happy, I'm enjoying what I do. In which case I say, great, we will wait. I cannot at that point, change your mind if you truly are happy with what you're doing.

We stay in touch and see if things change down or not.

If things change. And things can change, by the way, nothing to do with business. They can change on personal levels. I know a CEO who went through something on the personal owner. He was practically, he owned like 90 plus percent of the business. He went through a personal life event which basically led him to rethink his priorities and go, you know What? I've spent 20 years building this business, or more than 20, maybe I should think of doing something else and pay attention to some other priorities. And because we had that relationship and the conversation, we then started the conversation of, okay, maybe we ought to do something together.

I like it. So the timing is part of it. And that's why these deals don't get done overnight. Building those relationships and waiting for the right time.

And you have a big pipeline for small outcomes. Your pipeline might be hundreds companies, and then you basically get one at a time. Slowly, over time, do you get a.

Lot of valuation gaps that you got to overcome?

There's always a valuation gap. Think about it, right? There's always a valuation gap.

Yeah. Because you give me an offer to my ask for double.

No, it's not just that. It's your baby. If you're running it, you think of it. There is a little bit of subjectivity in everybody.

How's the dance go? You approach me, I would expect you to make the offer first.

If I'm actually outright approaching you, yes, I will make the offer. If you say, okay, so, Yogesh, what do you think you'd be willing to pay? I'll say what I'd be willing to pay.

You wouldn't fish?

Not really. Because that's. Kisan, the way I look at it is I'm disciplined about what I'm going to pay. If you say, no, Yogesh, that's not enough. I'll say, okay, I'm very happy that you said no. Because a quick no is better than a long drawn out maybe. And you know what, Kisan? I wish you every success in getting more.

So you're very pragmatic about how you value company.

Yes, we are. We're extremely disciplined. We're extremely pragmatic.

I look for, like, the best deal possible at all times.

You are looking for a best deal possible, but the reality is that what you really are looking for is a good deal.

It is. That's why I'd want to fish and lean and somehow get a clue, even if I got to take the guy for drinks. No, you got a number in mind. I want to know what that is so I can offer you half of it.

If the person has a number in mind, that's a different story. Then they usually say, I do have a number in mind. In which case, okay, tell me what your number is.

Yes, they hate you. Yeah, okay.

But usually. But I'm also.

But most people would know the goal. I think the fundamental rule of negotiation is you don't want to give the first number.

You get the first number. Yeah, I know. And so my view is, I'll give you the first number.

But as a buyer, you get pressured more to do that.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll give you the first number. And I will also say, if you get meaningfully more than this today, go out and go for it. Good luck. If you don't and you still want to sell, I'm still here. So that's point number one. Point number two, if we wait 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, and your performance is better and you're a different business than you are today. Obviously, the number will be different. So don't compare tomorrow's number to today's number. So tomorrow, if you don't decide to sell today and nine months later you come back and say, hey, Yogesh, I grew up 40% in nine months, I'm growing 60% a year. Obviously the number will be different, but now you're at a different scale. Yeah, I'll give you a different number.

Fair enough. Hey, let's get to the meat of this. The crux of this is really the execution, integration. And I feel like so much of that hangs around the communication. Obviously got a lot of people to communicate with customers and the ecosystem, but the employees are the heart of this. What's your approach to handling the communication with the employees? I feel like the cultural sort of alignment and changes happen there. What does that look like from sign to close and then after close?

Yeah, so there are three phases. So pre sign, you get very limited access to anybody. You get access to, let's say between four and eight people in the company. Nothing much happens there. They know who we are, we know who they are. There's enough meetings. They get to know us, we get to know them. It is the when between sign and close is really the key phase of getting the employees to understand what is going on. So sign is usually when the employees first find out. The management team knows, but the employees don't know. We acquire a company like MarkLogic. We acquire a company like Chef. We acquire a company like Kemp. Acquire a company like Ipswich. It is only upon signing and the public announcement that happens along with that, that you go, we're being sold. Our communications team does enormous amounts of work beforehand with our people team, our HR team and our people team and communications team. They work very closely together and they will have communications ready for day one for the employees. So we start communicating to them. Why attempt to do a call or some kind of a meeting to basically say, hey, I want to let you know, this is why we're doing this. We send out electronic communications. This is why we're doing this. Then in addition to that, hey, this is the timeline, approximately. This is the process. We will talk to each of you over the coming X number of days. We want to understand what you think of this. We want to share with you. We'll answer your questions. Oh, by the way, here's a bunch of resources around our benefits policies. Here's a bunch of resources around our other things. If we don't keep everybody, when will we tell the people who we're not Going to keep, et cetera. So we explain the timeline, we explain the process, and we do that early on and we repeat it and we are consistent and we execute on what we say to them. So if we tell them, for example, there are situations where we did an acquisition and we said to them, within the first 48 hours of closing, we will tell every one of you one of the following three things. One, you're part of us going forward as anybody else. Welcome to the family group. Two, sorry I don't have a permanent job for you, but I do need you for some period of time. That period will be X months, and if you stay that X months, we will do something extra on top of your regular severance Group C. Sorry, I don't really have a role for you at all. Here's your severance. Here's how we'll help you. Thank you for your service. We are very transparent. We're very upfront, as quick as we can. In some cases, we're able to do that within the first few days. In some cases it takes us 30 days from close, but as quickly as possible, we communicate that. And the reason for that is uncertainty is the worst thing for morale. Not knowing what is going to happen is worse than finding out exactly what is happening. So then you can plan. We want to eliminate the uncertainty. We want to be respectful. We want to make sure we treat people right. Historically, we have done more for severance than the company that used to do for its own people before we acquired them. And part of it is because we are bigger. Part of it is that we're bigger part of it. Our policies are more generous than some smaller companies usually are. But that's okay.

Job or no job or something in between. What were the other things that you mentioned or you were going to mention about?

About the communication?

People, like, this is like the main one, though. Like, people just want to know if they have a job or not.

To me, I think that's the main thing. The other thing then becomes, what is our intent for products? What is our intent to invest in the business or not? Because that's the other question that immediately comes up. Are you going to invest in this business?

Then those I feel like are. Follow on to the why.

Yes.

So all of this, I got, you answer the why. And it's really probably the similar way you communicate to the board why we're.

Doing the deal exactly correct.

And then you got, hey, this is the timeline and what the process is going to look like. And then you're getting ahead of the question, always the biggest FUD question is the job security. So you address that and give the rundown of the scenarios and what's going to happen, and then it's getting ahead to some of the other following questions that will likely pop up around products and investments in the business.

And the benefits is early, by the way. So when you talk about job, job has two or three components. Do I have a job? What will happen to my comp? Because some companies have a tendency to potentially change comp at the time of acquisition. We are again, whatever our policy is, we share upfront, hey, we will not reduce your comp or whatever it is because there are people who basically are worried, okay, maybe they'll keep me a job, but they'll cut my salary by 20% and now I'll be stuck paying a mortgage that I can't afford. You want to tell them that, hey, you know what? I'm not going to cut your salary. This is our policy. These are the benefits that we provide. This is our 401 benefit. This is our employee stock purchase plan benefit. This is how we reward people through bonuses.

And hopefully it's like all upgrades and they're excited about it.

Usually it is an upgrade. Invariably it turns out it's an upgrade because it's a small company. They're not public. We are public. So the public stock helps. Any stock grant is a public stock. So as it vests, it becomes instant cash. So I think all those things help. We are a global company, so they recognize that their product will have a broader footprint. The work they do can have a larger impact around the globe. There are all kinds of other benefits that they get out. Being a publicly traded global company.

This is great. I wrote this down. This is Yogesh's CEO deal announcement playbook. I feel like you got all the elements right there to nail your deal.

Announcement internally especially, and similar communication about why we did the deal, et cetera, has to happen to our own employees. Because when we do an acquisition, we have thousands of employees who don't know about the deal. There's a very small group of people that's doing due diligence and figuring things out when we announce. The communication internally with the rest of the organization is equally important.

Yeah, that's a really good point. Okay, I know we're running close on time here. Yogesh, what are the biggest challenges either way? Challenges, biggest lessons learned. Help me so I don't screw up a deal. When I come to one, there's always.

Something unexpected that pops Kisan don't ever expect the deal to go exactly the way you've planned it. You will find out something that you did not discover during no matter how much due diligence you did. And not only that, sometimes you know that something exists but you don't understand its complexity fully. And that usually happens if you don't have a business like that. So I'll give you an example. We acquired MarkLogic. MarkLogic had a business serving and has a business we now do because of MarkLogic serving the federal government. And not just federal government, but federal government that requires security clearances. So that has its own special way of doing things. So even I don't know those customer names, let alone what are they doing with my product. So how do you create the governance structure inside the organization? How do you run it so that you meet the security and clearance requirements of the customers going forward, while at the same time you have your internal governance rule about how do we run and make sure that we are running ourselves and so on. So that was a level of complexity that we were not as aware of as to what it would actually need. We knew there was a government business, we knew it was federally cleared business so that it required clearances, but we didn't understand to the full extent. And so that created complexity and it created a bit of a, if I may call it changing our plan during integration. How you overcome challenges is the willingness to be ready to adapt. I'll give you a very big challenge that we ran into. We acquired Chef. And the challenge at Chef was, and we didn't realize this is that the people in the organization had never been told that the company was not doing great. So the company's prior valuation was at a unicorn. So people were like, okay, I'm going to have a billion dollar exit, so my options are going to be worth this much and I'm going to be this big rich. The business went sideways. It was still a very good business, but was not growing anymore. When you're a single digit growth company and you're 75 million in revenue, you're not going to get billion dollar valuation. So when you acquired it for much less, there was a group of employees that were really frustrated and were really unhappy with prior management. But the way they showed it is by leaving. So we had a whole lot more people leave than we had planned. Now that's a real risk.

That is probably your biggest risk.

That was our biggest risk. And so what ended up, we were very thoughtful about it. We had a team in India that we had Basically said, if needed, we will bring this team to bear. So we brought in a team that was working on other products, about 25, 30 people, and we completely shifted them into working on Chef. And then we built around them and we grew the business around them and we were able to, we served our customers. The business has grown since then. It's been good outcome, but it required tremendous agility and people to really pivot, if I may call it how we're going to execute.

It's like you have to have that skills and acquirer to be agile and really proactive. You're not letting problems come.

You have to monitor and you have to deal with problems as they arise and be willing to do that. And there's nothing. There's no finger pointing. There's no nothing. It is what it is. You have to deal with the situation. That really to me is the most important thing about succeeding. Making sure that nobody forgets what outcomes and goals we are targeting. And if surprises show up, which they will, overcoming them in the most collaborative, efficient and rapid way possible.

That's like a culture you have to have as a company.

Yep. It goes back to the culture.

Yogesh, what's the craziest thing you've seen in M and A?

The craziest thing I've seen in M and A is the expectation that if you lash together two sinking rocks, they will float. Tell you what I mean. So Symantec was a $14 billion market cap company. They acquired Veritas, which is a $14 billion market cap company. Both were struggling. Both were really struggling.

I've seen this. Now I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

And then they decided, you know what, if we acquire this company together, we will be dramatically successful. So they went from being 14 plus 14. The net outcome of the combined company market cap was 14. Oh, my God. So it was a value destruction at a scale that I don't think I've seen in a single deal.

Wow.

That 100% of the acquired value went away. 100%. It was shocking. This is more than a decade ago now. It's probably 14, 15 years ago.

Sounds worse than AOL Time Warner.

It probably does. I don't know. Yeah, you're right. That was the dot com. Yeah, that was the dot com time. But this is enterprise software. I look for examples in enterprise software. I think there are lots of ways deals can go wrong. I think discipline is so key, execution is so key, and then agility afterwards is essential.

This has been a great conversation, Yogesh. I want to thank you for taking the time today helping me become a better M and A scientist.

It's a pleasure, Kisan. It's delightful to speak with you and I wish you every success in your business.

Thank you. Welcome to this mini interview on M and A Science. Today I'm catching up with Jack Blazebrook, who's been a leader in the data space for over 14 years. Currently overseeing America's corporate sales and strategic alliances at S and P Global Market Intelligence. They will explore insights on the evolving landscape of M and A data tech solutions that drive efficiency and S and P Global's latest advancements in private market data, textual analytics and more. All on the S and P Capital IQ Pro platform. Jack, how you doing?

I'm good, thanks. Thanks for having me. This is great. I know many of your listeners are clients. There's a lot going on in the markets right now, so we're excited to be talking today and also talking about the evolution of not only tech but also data and how it's impacting M and A professionals.

You've been part of S and P Global through a period of major growth and tech evolution. S and P Global recently completed a notable 44 billion merger with IHS Market. What are some of the most impactful shifts you've seen in how MA professionals use technology?

I would be amiss if I didn't lead off with AI. AI is obviously a big theme. I know that you covered a lot on the podcast. We see AI as an efficiency play both internally in how we collect data, aggregate data, link data, but also how we support M and A professionals get to the information that they need quickly and efficiently and ultimately it's a time saver for us. So we see this as a critical part of our evolution. We're investing heavily in it and the merger with IHS Market has only accelerated that. Another area that I'll point out is alternative data. So alternative data, traditionally, especially for M and A professionals, it was all about financials, company level information. We've seen a huge trend of M and A professionals wanting to also access research, textual analytics, sentiment, and so a lot of our focus has been in aligning with that market demand. We're making a lot of investments in workflow tools that allow you to glean additional insights across textual analytics, research and documentation. Lastly, workflow efficiency. This is a huge theme not only for M and A professionals, but also for us. We're building Capital IQ Pro to be a workhorse platform, something that can be leveraged to build really complex models, aggregate large volumes of data. We're doing that by obviously investing not only in the technology capabilities of the platform, but also making sure that every data set that we bring in is interlinked so that you can build broader views of a private company or a public company. And that's been a huge push for us.

Yeah, AI power, expanding the data set, improving workflows. Which means you're covering more use cases.

Absolutely, yeah. Capital IQ Pro was built for investment bankers. It was actually a platform. The original founders had their own investment bank and they spun off this platform. It became CAP IQ. S&P acquired Cap Iq and we've just built on that deal making focus. And now Capital Iq is used by over 300,000 users, both on the corporate side as well as in the financial market. So M and A is at the core of what we do, deal making. And it's really exciting time to continue to evolve with Capital IQ Pro.

It's been a while since I last checked out and used capiq. What's new? What's the most exciting right now in the world of M and A data?

The biggest areas of need that we've heard for many years is has been around accessing actionable and accurate private company data. There are a lot of providers out there, really great product for M and A professionals are out there. But being able to actually source, link and deliver meaningful actionable private company data, that has been a big trend and that's something that Capital IQ Pro is showing up in a big way. We're excited to now be known not just for our market leading public company information, but also our market leading private company information that involves delivering 54 million private companies globally with a lot of supportive analytics around supply chain. Again research, textual analytics, aftermarket research. Another area, again we touched on this earlier workflow, workflow efficiency. So really investing in AI functionality for our productivity features. So if you're screening research documents, aftermarket research, again key for M and A professionals, this is a big area of focus for us. We want you to be able to comb large volumes of documents and filings and transcripts and get the analytics that you need. Lastly, we recently acquired Visible Alpha. Visible Alpha is a really exciting addition. This came after the merger with IHS Market. For those that don't know Visible Alpha sources and delivers deep granular consensus and broker estimates from sell side contributors and allows M and A professionals to conduct really targeted assessments of a company's business model. We're excited to integrate that and build on the success that they've had and we're really Happy that they're a part of the market intelligence family.

Yeah, that's some really fascinating capability to add to what you already mentioned is adding the AI functionality and even further expanding the data set altogether. For M and a practitioner, accurate and actionable data is critical. Could you walk us through a couple of the most high impact use cases where SMP's data supports decision making and complex deals?

The investment banker is core to the origin story of couple IQ that's around deal making. Obviously some of the biggest use cases and they are ever becoming more complex for the M and a professional is around public and private company valuations. So we want to make sure that we are aligning with their needs, whether that's building bespoke models. We have over 550 pre built models. That takes a lot of time away from the arduous work of building your own models. So that's one area we continue to build on that. The other area is screening targets. Essentially Capital IQ Pro allows you to establish really granular custom searches to be able to identify target or search or screen sectors, to be able to expedite all of the processes surrounding the pre and post M and a deal activity. And that's a big one for us. Screening targets allowing you to comb through a very large global database effectively. And the last one is monitoring, assessing sentiment and competitive intelligence. This is something that we continue to build upon. AI is allowing us to do this. But again there's thousands of documents out there, whether they're public filings, earnings calls, transcripts related to a conference. And we want to be able to glean summaries and sentiments from all of these documents so that you can derive value and textual analytics. A big theme. Sentiment scores or key to the growth of Capital IQ Pro.

This sounds like a whole new product, Jack. From what you already told me, 54 million private companies track 550 pre built models and then doing the sentiment analysis. That's pretty impressive.

Yeah, it's been great. We, we're really excited. This is an exciting space. We are a data provider at the heart of what we do. But technology is really opening things up for us. And if we're just hyper focused on making our users and their workflows more efficient and how they conduct their day to day, that's a huge part of focus for us. So that extends to technology now, that extends to acquisitions and integrating new data sets. We're constantly investing, constantly evolving. Yeah.

Haven't been on Capital IQ Pro lately. Check it out. See how it can save you time during your day as you're crunching numbers working on deals for M and A pros who want to Learn more, visit SP global.com PRO INSIGHTS. Explore how these advanced tools and data solutions are driving efficiencies in M and a. Again, that's spglobal.comproinsights thanks Jack.

Thanks for having me.

Hey, thanks for taking the time. It was fun chatting with you fellow M and A scientists. If you've listened through to this interview and gotten this far, I appreciate you and always welcome the feedback and especially the criticism. I prefer the criticism so I can learn and get better at doing this. And if you have recommendations of awesome, yes, always welcome it. Till next time. Here's to the deal. Thank you for taking the time to explore the world of M and A with our podcast. We love hearing feedback. Tag us on a LinkedIn post, add a review on Apple Podcasts. We'd love to hear from you. If you need help standing up an M and A function or optimizing one that you already have, we're here to help. And if we can't help you, we probably know someone that can. You can reach out to me by email Kisan K I S o n a science.com or you can text me directly at 312-857-3711. If you just want to keep learning at your own pace, visit mascience.com for a lot more content and resources. That's where you can also subscribe to our newsletter. Again, that's mascience.com here's to the deal. Views and opinions expressed on M and A Science reflect only those individuals and do not reflect the views of any company or entity mentioned or affiliated with any individual. This podcast is purely educational and is not intended to serve as a basis for any investment or financial decisions.