Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

You Have to Have Synergy When Acquiring Other Startups - #QuotableMoment at SaaStr Annual

25 Apr 2019 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:59

Short video clip of a conversation advising founders on acquiring startups: speaker emphasizes importance of synergy, shared values, and prior working relationships between teams to ensure smooth integration and retention after acquisition. Speaker cites an example where prior collaboration (and common investor) led to successful integration with minimal employee loss over nine to ten months.

Chapters

What advice do you have for founders who may be looking to go out to acquire startups themselves?
Yeah, I'd say we were lucky in that Dan and I had worked together at Google. They were funded by Felicis, as we were funded by Felicis. We had been. We had spent six months kind of working out an arm's length transaction. Our engineering teams were working well together already. So that kind of synergy and that shared values and shared vision of what this product could be really made it easy. So I'd say anything where you have that shared kind of mindset and strategy. And the nice thing is it's now been nine, ten months, we've lost hardly anyone. The two teams work really well together. The products are getting integrated really well. So if you didn't have that, I think it would have been, obviously, a lot harder to make the deal a success.