Mergers & Acquisitions

Fred Wilson, Managing Director, Union Square Ventures

Fred explains what a merger is vs. what an acquisition is, the two types of payment (cash and stock), and the standard structures (full company purchase vs. asset deal).

Elad Gil, Co-founder, Color Genomics

Elad covers reasons to sell your company: 1. You are exhausted and dont want to keep going. 2. The founding team is about to blow up. 3. The acquirer is willing to "pay ahead" substantially. 4. You are about to get massively crushed by a competitor. 5. You need financial security or regular cash flow.

Elad Gil, Co-founder, Color Genomics

Elad goes through different ways acquirers value acquired companies, with valuation ranges as of 2011: 1. Team Hire ("acqui-hire") 2. Team Buy 3. Technology Buy 4. Business Asset 5. Strategic Asset

Fred Wilson, Managing Director, Union Square Ventures

Fred summarizes pricing in M&A: do the work upfront to get to a target price that makes sense to you, your senior team, your investors, and will make sense to the universe of buyers you want to target. Then figure out how to get multiple bidders to the table to get the best price. And make sure you want to sell the business before you go through with all of that. Because getting a great price for your business is not easy and when you've accomplished that, you'll want to be able to say yes comfortably.

Steven Sinofsky, Board Partner, Andreessen Horowitz