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.