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M&A is risky but it can pay off big, Zack Onisko - Ex CEO at Dribbble

2 May 2024 · 1 min

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0:41

Short transcript excerpt from a YouTube interview where Zack Onisko describes acquiring and turning around a business: the company was burning about $3 million the year before acquisition and was turned into roughly $7 million EBITDA last year. Host Mark MacLeod comments that roughly half of acquisitions tend to work out, implying high upside for successful deals despite risk.

Questions this video answers

$3 million

$7 million (approximately)

The prevailing wisdom mentioned is that about half of all acquisitions work out.

Chapters

You know, that was a deal that we. We. We bought the business. It was burning quite a bit of capital, but I knew the business had been having worked there previously, and so I had, you know, a model in mind going into it of how I could turn the business around. And we took that business from burning, you know, $3 million the year before we acquired it to, like, 7 million EBITDA last year. Wow.
Amazing. Yeah. I mean, there's no official stats on this, but the prevailing wisdom is, you know, half of all acquisitions work out. It's just that the half that do work so well that it's worth taking the risk.