Carve-outs are more complex than the usual M&A transaction of a complete divestiture, but have advantages where the seller would like to retain a stake for financial or strategic reasons, or for both financial and strategic buyers to invest on a smaller initial scale whilst benefitting from the ...

We often get into the discussion around timing in a capital raise situation with potential clients and there are a number of issues that flow from this. But before we get further into the issues, it is worth citing a specific example of our own experience where a multinational deal was done handshak...

What’s up with Square’s market cap at $26 billion, PayPal’s recent acquisition of  iZettle (the “Square of Europe”) for $2,2 billion, and a new study predicting that 1 in 4 Point-of-Sale terminals will be mobile Point-of-Sale (mPOS) by 2023? mPOS turns your smartphone into a card ...

Recently we were pitching for an advisory mandate and the potential client seemed quite keen to have a number of transaction advisors and couldn’t see why this would not work, after all if each is geographically separated, can one not extend the possible reach? In this sequel to our article “Do ...

IoT is poised for an even more dynamic future due to standards-based interoperability, as was the case for the mobile industry (starting with the open GSM standard) which has delivered affordable communication services to the majority of the world’s population, a vibrant ecosystem of vendors, serv...

Timing is crucial to a successful Series A, which is usually your first institutional round. There could be very limited interest if it is too early, and you may run out of money if it is too late. Worst of all is successfully raising capital when your startup is not ready for it. As the […]...

Although esports have 427 million spectators worldwide and revenues approaching $1 billion, this is niche compared to the $138 billion that will be spent on electronic games in 2018. With its massive adoption, can smart phones take esports into the mainstream gaming or sports markets? esports are a ...

Contrary to the “young founder” myth, new research shows that among the very fastest-growing new tech companies, the average founder was 45 at the time of founding. Furthermore, a given 50-year-old entrepreneur is nearly 2x as likely to have a runaway success as a 30-year-old. The “young found...

A strategic buyer will generally be the best bet for acquiring your mid-market tech company, where there is a good strategic rationale, as it is more likely to provide a higher valuation than a financial investor. When strategics want an asset in the current market, financial investors are not going...

Back in 2016 conventional wisdom had it that messaging platforms and chatbots were going to disrupt mobile apps, based on what was happening in China with WeChat, where people almost never leave the app, and do their e-commerce and almost everything else within the app environment. And Chris Messina...