How to Buy Companies That Aren't Profitable Yet

Venture-backed companies don't get valued the same way everything else does. A company doing $4M in revenue can carry a $100M valuation, not because anyone believes that's what it's worth today, but because VCs are pricing the company at what it needs to become to justify the bet. When growth stalls and the fundraising window closes, that gap between VC valuation and acquisition reality becomes the central problem in every deal conversation.

Matt Arsenault has navigated this problem across hundreds of targets at GE Digital, Everbridge, and now Jamf, where he leads corporate development for one of the gold standards in Apple device management. His work starts before the deal process does: build the relationship with the founder before they're fundraising, understand the cap table dynamics before you're in diligence, and get the founder thinking clearly about their actual risk tolerance before they've anchored to a number their investors told them they're worth.

‍What You'll Learn

• Why a $25M offer today can beat a $125M VC exit three years out
• How AI is shrinking the moat of wrapper-product startups and changing target screening
• The seven stakeholder groups in any acquisition and why most founders miss them
• How liquidation preferences and cap table structure change the math behind any offer
• Why VC relationships matter as much as founder relationships before a deal starts
• How to structure deals for underwater targets without losing the team
• What entrepreneurs should know about VC terms before taking their first check

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If you're working a deal where the founder's VC valuation is the first thing they said and the last thing they'll let go of, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, gives you the guidance to close the gap without overpaying.