Partner Before You Buy: The M&A Strategy Most Corp Dev Teams Skip
Tomer Stavitsky has rebuilt corp dev functions from scratch at Intuitive Surgical, Pfizer, Ginkgo Bioworks, and now Omnicell. His approach: identify your most strategic targets, build a structured partnership with them first, and convert the ones that make sense when the time is right. It’s not soft strategy — it’s a system.
About
What You’ll Learn
- How to build a partner-first acquisition framework from scratch, including market mapping and target tiering
- How to keep 2–3 partners warm simultaneously without signaling which one is your real target
- How to structure non-exclusive agreements that protect your optionality without making a partner feel like a backup
- What to understand about a PE-backed partner’s exit timeline before you get too deep in the relationship
- How to convert a partnership into an acquisition without losing trust or momentum
- Whether the partner-first playbook travels across industries — and what needs to be rewired when it doesn’t
Who Should Attend
Corp dev leaders, strategy and ops practitioners supporting M&A, and executives building or rebuilding an acquisition function inside a company where deals are not yet systematic.
.avif)
Agenda
In this live interview, we’re going deep on how to build that system: how to tier your partners, how to maintain optionality without tipping your hand, and how to navigate the complexity that comes with PE-backed counterparties. We’ll use the Orpheus Medical acquisition at Intuitive as a live case — a partnership that generated $15M in new digital revenue in year two.
Live Q&A at the end — bring your deal questions.
