By David Ron and Kevin Scott of Centaur Partners

Maybe you’ve heard the saying that many companies are bought, not sold. What this means is that you may have very little control over who acquires your company and, perhaps more importantly, when that acquisition takes place. Constant readiness then becomes imperative in order to both look attractive to potential buyers and to maximize the value of your company.

This complimentary white paper provides actionable advice for growth stage CFOs on how to maximize shareholder return by proactively preparing your company for due diligence in advance:

• Background on transaction readiness
• What is at stake and why it is critical to be prepared
• What sellers are facing - the reality of buyer due diligence
• 7 top deal killing traps - and how to avoid them
• Advice for selling companies

Click here to download 7 Top Deal Killers and How to Avoid Them

“ShareVault is pleased to sponsor this white paper by David Ron and Kevin Scott, which explores what they see as the critical traps companies often fall into before, during, and after a merger or acquisition. The topic is of titanic importance because making your company ready well before due diligence begins not only expedites the process and maximizes the value of the transaction, but can be the difference between whether a deal is successful or never gets off the ground. After years of experience helping companies prepare for the M&A process and going through the process many times themselves, the authors have defined seven mistakes which companies often make, ones that either reduce the value of a deal or kill it completely. They then offer practical solutions to each of these seven areas emphasizing the need for awareness, preparedness, and organization.”
- Richard Andersen, CEO
ShareVault

About the Authors

David Ron and Kevin Scott lead the transaction readiness practice at Centaur Partners, a business development consultancy focused on technology companies in the software, communications, semiconductor and cleantech market sectors.

David Ron

David Ron has 20 years’ experience as a CFO, leading venture-backed technology companies through their business life cycles and creating value for their shareholders. David has directly led or advised board of directors and management teams, both as a CFO and as a consultant on numerous complex financial transactions, including M&A transactions (sale of companies to Microsoft and IBM), VC financings (over $120 million raised in more than 14 rounds), an IPO (Metaphor) and complex deal and customer agreement negotiations. Prior to Centaur Partners, David was the CFO of Market6, a software/information service that improves supply chain efficiencies for consumer packaged goods companies. At Market6, he raised over $26 million in VC funding and venture debt. While at Rapt, as VP of Finance, he assisted in the transformation of this software company from supply chain optimization for the manufacturing sector to become the leading price optimization technology used in online advertising. In addition, Mr. Ron was a co-founder and CFO for Global Sight and TV Interactive. David received a B.S.B.A. in Business Administration and International Management from Boston University (cum laude) and earned his M.B.A. from Suffolk University.

Kevin Scott

Kevin has a 15+ year track record of achievement across financial operations, M&A, venture capital and secondary investing, and portfolio management. As a partner at PwC, Kevin advised small private as well as Fortune 50 companies on M&A strategy, process and execution. He took a lead role in developing and scaling a $50M merger integration practice across the US and to Europe. At 3i Venture Capital, Kevin led/co-led investments in 15 technology businesses. As a Board member on these investments, he demonstrated expertise in CEO recruitment, compensation issues, financing negotiation, growth strategy, and profitable exit management. Kevin successfully spun out 12 portfolio companies from 3i in a secondary transaction to create Maywood Capital Partners in 2009. Kevin received an MBA in management policy and finance from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA in Political Economics.

ShareVault REIT Manager Streamlines Communications between REITs and their Investor Pools

Los Gatos, Calif. – November 15, 2011 - ShareVault, a leading provider of innovative secure document sharing services, today announced it has launched ShareVault REIT Manager, a new easy-to-use cloud-based secure document sharing solution specifically tailored for the Real Estate Investment Trust [REIT] community. The new on-demand software service enables REITs to securely share and manage hundreds to thousands of documents in the cloud, eliminating time consuming and costly manual documentation processes.

“In a time when every dollar counts, REITs need to streamline their operations and processes. Scanning, faxing, copying and mailing hundreds to thousands of documents during a REIT transaction is simply not an effective or efficient use of time and resources and doesn’t adhere to strict compliance regulations. Our customers are moving their businesses forward by embracing our cloud-based ShareVault REIT Manager document sharing solution, thereby eliminating outdated and inefficient manual processes,” said Richard Andersen, CEO of ShareVault.

ShareVault REIT Manager secure document sharing solution is designed specifically for the REIT market and securely disseminates, organizes and tracks documents and due diligence materials, saving REITs significant mailing and postage expenses. It also streamlines REIT operations by enabling all parties to share and collaborate on documents from any Web browser.

Features include:

• Allows property managers to directly share information securely and in real-time with drag-and-drop functionality
• Facilitates compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley act section 404 reporting requirements and the SAS70 audit standard for accounting with preparations underway for SSAE 16 and ISASE 3402
• Interactive real-time reports provide valuable insight into user activity
• Secures all outgoing information by sending only through bank-grade secure protocols that require no additional setup
• Centralizes and shares all data, documents and reports with all investors, shareholders and board members with no FTP, VPN or other setup required
• Helps prepare all documentation for divesting of a property or to free a portfolio of underperforming assets
• The solution requires no support from your IT department, making it easy for organizations to get up and running quickly. It is customizable to each business and transaction, giving users the option to determine how and when communications and documentation is shared with each audience.

About ShareVault:

ShareVault provides a simple, secure way to share sensitive documents with third parties during due diligence and other critical business processes. The on-demand platform is an innovative and highly intuitive cloud computing solution that enables its customers to manage critical time-sensitive and document-centric processes faster and easier. In addition, ShareVault works with other technologies, such as SharePoint, to safely share documents with third parties. ShareVault is based in Los Gatos, California, with development offices in Bangalore, India.

For more information, visit: www.ShareVault.com

Los Gatos, CA  November 7, 2011 - ShareVault, a leading provider of secure document sharing services including its highly innovative virtual data room, will exhibit at one of the world’s leading Biofuels conferences when it goes to San Francisco for the highly targeted Advanced Biofuels Markets Conference held from November 8-10, 2011. The conference is attended by some of the most influential Biofuels market thought leaders from around the globe.

In fact, the prestigious Advanced Biofuels Markets event is the only US west coast event that brings together all the CEOs in the Advanced Biofuels world, and is the largest advanced biofuels event in the US. The attendees include the leading experts who are responsible for bringing advanced biofuels products to market.

ShareVault personnel at booth #2 will be explaining the many unique benefits that the ShareVault service can bring to companies who need to share their sensitive documents in a compressed time frame with third parties for partnering and fundraising activities. Booth personnel will also be giving demos of the ShareVault web application.

The virtual data room market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 29% and is expected to reach nearly $1 billion in revenues by 2013 according to leading industry analyst Daniel Krauss of Forrester Research, Inc., an independent research firm.

About ShareVault:

ShareVault provides a simple, secure way to share sensitive documents with third parties during due diligence and other critical business processes. The on-demand platform is an innovative and highly intuitive cloud computing solution that enables its customers manage critical time-sensitive and document-centric processes faster and easier. In addition, ShareVault works with other technologies, such as SharePoint, to safely share documents with third parties. ShareVault is based in Los Gatos, California, with development offices in Bangalore, India.
For more information, visit:  www.ShareVault.com

Bloomberg, TDWaterhouse, MarketWatch, Yahoo! News, WebHost Magazine and several other key publications posted stories on ShareVault’s next generation product release.

The articles are available via the following links:

Bloomberg

TD Waterhouse Research

SF Chronicle online

MarketWatch

Yahoo! News

StreetInsider

Web Host Magazine

Green Technology World

Business Insider

LawLink

Customers to Benefit from Unparalleled Ease of Use, Enterprise-Level Control and Security

Los Gatos, CA, September 27, 2011 — ShareVault, a leading provider of secure document sharing services, today announced it has launched the next generation of its secure, intuitive virtual data room cloud service giving customers unparalleled ease of use and enterprise-grade control and security.

Secure document sharing is a critical piece of our due diligence process whereby our staff and external parties are provided controlled access, along with audit reporting and tracking, of information without regard to geographical limitations,” said Greg Berkin, Executive Director of Information Technology at Regado Biosciences. “ShareVault’s latest offering incorporates some of our feedback including a very intuitive user interface and increased tagging capabilities that are important to our users and our business.”

“The new features in the latest version of ShareVault simplify and further enhance the ability to structure and customize access to large amounts information within ShareVault to fulfill the needs of various stakeholders,” said Ulrika Wennberg, COO of Pergamum AB.

The next generation ShareVault secure document sharing solution features a plethora of new features that enable customers in the financial services, real estate, biotech,cleantech and legal industries to share sensitive documents and transact in an easy-to-use, enterprise-grade, secure environment.

The virtual data room market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 29% and is expected to reach nearly $1 billion in revenues by 2013 according to leading industry analyst firm Forrester Research, Inc., an independent research firm.

“In spite of some lingering global economic uncertainties, M&A activity is on the rise for the first time since 2006,” said Richard Andersen, CEO of ShareVault. “Our next generation secure document sharing software service is the easiest way for companies to facilitate their transactions. The new features we’ve added to our cloud offering are not only for M&A activity, but the new capabilities make it easier for any company to securely share all of their sensitive documents privately, from managing real estate investment trusts (REITs) to partnering and business development in the biotechnology and clean tech industries.”

• Hierarchical Tags – New in version 3.0, ShareVault’s patent-pending approach to hierarchical tagging with permissions combines the ease-of-use and flexibility of tags with the hierarchical structure and permissioning previously only available with folders. Competing solutions are based on folders, with only limited support, if any, for tagging. Hierarchical tagging provides for additional flexibility that is invaluable for multi-party due diligence applications because the same document can reside in multiple places within the hierarchical due diligence list.
• Ease of use that counts – Built from the ground up with the user in mind, ShareVault 3.0 has a highly intuitive and sleek interface which enables users to get up and running in as little as 4 clicks of a mouse versus 20-50 clicks with other leading solutions.
• Security that matters - ShareVault employs unparalleled security with encryption for data on the server and for data in motion. Document security policies allow the administrator to configure document security settings to block printing, prevent saving (view only), and inhibit screenshots. A user’s permission to open any file can be revoked at any time, even retroactively, for files already downloaded.
• Unrivaled Speed – Virtual data room users want their documents at the speed of thought. ShareVault unique technology delivers pages from very large files in seconds without having to break the files down into smaller pieces.
• Enterprise-Level Control – The ShareVault administrative console turns chaos into control with drag-and-drop user/group management and point-and-click permissioning.
• Document Sharing Cloud – Just throw documents at us in virtually any format and ShareVault automatically full text indexes, converts them to PDFs with thumbnails, encrypts them, applies dynamic watermarks, prepares them for streaming, tags them and stores them.

About ShareVault:

ShareVault provides a simple, secure way to share sensitive documents with third parties during due diligence and other critical business processes. The on-demand platform is an innovative and highly intuitive cloud computing solution that enables its customers to manage critical time-sensitive and document-centric processes faster and easier. In addition, ShareVault works with other technologies, such as SharePoint, to safely share documents with third parties. ShareVault is based in Los Gatos, California, with development offices in Bangalore, India.

For more information, visit: www.ShareVault.com