M&A Science Live - How to Buy Companies That Aren't Profitable Yet

​Venture-backed M&A is one of the most structurally complex deals a corp dev team can run. The target is priced at a future state. The founder thinks their company is worth more than it is. And your board wants to know why you're paying a premium for negative EBITDA.

​Matt Arsenault has navigated this at Jamf — a public company acquiring venture-backed targets in the Apple enterprise ecosystem — and at Dell EMC, Everbridge, and GE before that. He's been in the room where the bid-ask gap looks unbridgeable, where earnouts get ugly, and where figuring out if the founder actually wants to stay post-close makes or breaks the integration.

​What You'll Learn

• ​How to value a company priced on future potential, not current EBITDA
• ​Where the biggest disconnect happens between VC, PE, and strategic buyers — and how to navigate it
• ​How to close bid-ask gaps using earnouts, equity rollovers, and structural terms beyond the headline price
• ​How to tell early if a founder is planning to cash out or commit post-close
• ​How to prepare entrepreneurs for diligence without killing deal momentum
• ​What 'Rule of 40' tells you about whether a founder really understands their business
• ​What to build into your process if you want to actually win venture-backed deals at scale

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