Big established suppliers have been snapping up proptechs over the past 18 months. What do they look for in an acquisition, how do you approach them if you want to sell out and what should you expect after the deal is done?
Is it the opportunity of a lifetime or should you be careful what you wish for?
Jennifer Harrison
Okay, the last session of today is how to sell your prop tech to business. My first questions are to Steve, who is here from MRI Software. And I might just combine the first two questions together. The first question is, what are the advantages to MRI software from growing by acquisition, and is there anything in particular that you're looking.
Steve Grubmier
Jen, I think let me start off by thanking everybody for being here today. Great initiative, I think, for MRI being a recognized region and global proptech business. A number of things that we look for, particularly with the focus on our customers and their customers as well. And I think what we want to do is improve their productivity, their day to day operations, but also create a business for them where they can grow and scale fast. And the way we do that is one of three ways we do that, by building new tech and we partner. So one of my roles is to look for new partnerships, and if not, we apply. And the reason why we do that is, I think it gives us more scalability as well to grow with our customers, to fulfill needs across the business as well, but also to drive new initiatives within the real estate sector as well.
Steve Grubmier
I think staying up to trends like we can't keep up. When you think about MRI, it's quite a large organization across EMEA, APAC North America, 250 OD brands we can't scar. So sometimes acquisitions is the best and the most natural thing for us to do. To your second question, I think, what are we looking for? There's a number of different things that we look for. MRI is made up of a couple of different business categories. It's not just residential in this space. I think everybody knows MRI in the residential real estate space. Think of Australia books and know Bolts property tree. But in our other marketplaces, we're more familiar in North America for our commercial business. So acquisitions for us are mixed and varied. We look for businesses that complement our services, that give us the ability to offer new services, new categories into new market.
Steve Grubmier
So I think it's a bit of a mixture. Ideally for us, they're out of a startup phase. They're developed, they're generating revenue, they have a product to fit, they're a good partner in some cases, or we've got experience working with collaboration. In fact, one of our most recent acquisitions wasn't a prop tech. We had no idea, but it helped us scale out our teams to be able to deliver the services faster, to enable us to scale faster.
Jennifer Harrison
Great.
Jennifer Harrison
And do you have a typical process? How do you find your potential investee companies? Is there any typical due diligence process? And how should people get in touch if they'd like to explore the possibility of a deal?
Steve Grubmier
Yeah, acquisitions, it's a rather large team, so we've got a global team, acquisitions, and I think we're lucky because we can remain impartial to that. So local stakeholders aren't always privileged to be a part of those conversations. I think it removes any influence as well. What we do is we go through a whole ledger and acquisitions process. It's probably a 19 or 20 step process. I won't go through it today, but I think the first thing is to identify what we are looking for. Then what we do is we maintain progress through that stage by stage process. And what we do is there are corporate standards that we need to meet. There are negotiations.
Jennifer Harrison
Great.
Jennifer Harrison
Thank you.
Jennifer Harrison
Frank, big news.
Jennifer Harrison
Hello.
Jennifer Harrison
Last year, Domain in the Fin review buying real base for $180,000,000 cash and an earn out of $50 million. My first question is why?
Jennifer Harrison
It's a question of purchase. Okay.
Jennifer Harrison
My first question is why domain, who approached whom, and were you running a process? Were you officially for sale?
Jennifer Harrison
All right, good questions. I like it.
Frank Greeff
I'm going to mix it up to keep the crowd enthusiastic. Today we've got the graveyard shift, but.
Jennifer Harrison
I think it's one of the most.
Frank Greeff
Important conversations talking about cash. So let's start with the who approaches, which wraps into the process piece.
Stuart Dullard
So it's a really interesting story.
Frank Greeff
I had probably a bit of a delusional view of my selling capability. And I thought I could go sell my business myself.
I thought, hey, I could sell to.
Frank Greeff
Customers, I could sell subscriptions, $249, what's the difference, right?
Jennifer Harrison
What's the difference?
Frank Greeff
And so I went out actively, and like I do, John put something on today which was around the Energizer Bunny, and I understand what that feels like. And so I took the view that had no process. I approached a bunch of people and.
Jennifer Harrison
I said, this thing is going to be hot.
Frank Greeff
You got to move fast. And a bunch of people just kind of dropped off and they just said, you're haphazard. And then one day, I got a LinkedIn cold message. And so this is my biggest key point for everybody here is the deal size and the commission that happened, all was done from a LinkedIn Cold message. And it was an amazing man by the name of James Yee from Adastra. And he says to me, Frank, I believe that Domain is the right purchase for your business. And I think I can get you exactly 180,000,000 word for word. Would you like to have a conversation? I was like, at that time, I'd already spoken to Domain and they said, no, thank you, good sir.
So I said, well, what's the harm? Right?
Frank Greeff
And so I had the conversation, I explained to him my amazing sales strategy and he said, Frank, with great respect.
You'Re doing this all wrong.
Frank Greeff
We need to run a process and you're selling yourself. You need to sell their strategy and how you fit into it. I think that was fundamentally the biggest shift. And so then, to your point, who approached who? Initially, I approached, in a backdoor roundabout way, domain and got in front of Jason Pellegrino. Amazing man.
Frank Greeff
But it was unsuccessful. So went through a process. The process was probably one of the most grueling processes of my life at that time. My wife was pregnant with our first son. It was a nine month process. It was just myself and the CFO. I was trying to protect the business, not get all wrapped up in the day to day. And I had what I would consider a couple of very close to my version of a mental breakdown. And on the final negotiations that were the main deal, it was at. I like to tell that story. It's a bit of fun. I was at the birthing class, final birthing classes with my wife, right? And there's a moment in birthing class, if anybody's been, where they say, hey.
Husbands, now's the time. We're about to show we're about to show a video. If you feel uncomfortable, you can stand.
Frank Greeff
Up and obviously all the husbands like not me, not me. And I looked at the time and it was 1 minute for my final negotiation. I said I'm sorry babe, I've got to leave. And she said everybody stared at me and for 4 hours in the car I was doing my final negotiation. That's your last point of your question. Why Domain? There's two parts. Number one, I had a view which was we had built a business which in my opinion had a great culture and people were enthusiastic to be there. And one of my things I was always really big on when I CEO was I want people to be proud to work here. And so my starting position was when this sale happens, when they go to a barbecue, will they proudly tell their friends were acquired by them or they'd be slightly embarrassed because they weren't very cool and they didn't align.
Frank Greeff
And so I guess the piece there is cultural alignment. So like the way in which we saw the world, the way in which we treated our team members, the enthusiasm and excitement we had to do our day to day, did they fit that? And that was a huge checkerbox. John Fung during the deal said to me, frank, let's go for a bush walk. And that was one of our part of the Hearts of Minds campaign. We went walking in the bush for an hour and I thought this is pretty cool. And then the final piece is around proud. But then also do the products make sense to each other? So the products had to make sense. There's a number of people that were looking to do the acquisition which there was either no overlap or too much overlap. Domain, we saw it as the analogy was were the missing puzzle piece to add to their very large puzzle and vice versa.
Frank Greeff
Long answer, apologies.
Jennifer Harrison
I mean, Domain had to do a rights issue to raise the $180,000,000 and obviously they had to make a case to their shareholders why this was a great deal. I'm curious to know what case did you have to make to your shareholders and other stakeholders as to why this was also a great deal?
Frank Greeff
The total sharepool of realbase was ten stakeholders, all original founders and some early stage employees. My approach as CEO and the approach in our boardroom was kind of relaxed with constant communication. So I was managing those ten stakeholders at all times through the entire process. So I think the why domain was hey, this cultural piece is going to be really important because some of the shareholders were at some stage going to look to exit. And did we want to have spent for myself it was ten years for the company we merged with, 20 years. Did you want to spend 20 years working on something that's going to go up in smoke? Yes, you got your cash, but is that something you're going to be proud of. And so that was the piece that they had to trust in me and I had to deliver them why I believe they were the right company for the future.
Frank Greeff
And that was probably my main piece, is really talking about, this is the reason that it's the right partnership and the clients will see that and the clients see it and our team sees it. We're going to be in the right way for this.
Jennifer Harrison
Now, Real Base was itself the result of a merger of Campaign Track and Real Hub in 2020. Now that you've done the big deal, with the benefit of hindsight, is there anything in particular you did right when you merged Paint Track and Mill Hub in 2020, or was there anything you would have done differently?
Jennifer Harrison
Great question.
Frank Greeff
So what did I do right the single handed? Best thing I did, I'll give myself a slight pat on the back for this. One was the negotiation for the merger for context, campaign Tracks was eight times the size in revenue, five times the size in profit. The negotiation position I went through was two things. Number one, it had to be a 50 merger. And number two, we had to move fast. Now, the 50 was absolutely outrageous.
Jennifer Harrison
That I could pull that off.
Frank Greeff
The move fast was very intelligent, but very dangerous. And so my view was I didn't know them.
Jennifer Harrison
I hadn't yet built a level of trust.
Frank Greeff
So if we move fast, what it means is I can't be strung along and then the rugby pulled under my feet. However, going through a true acquisition process and going through nine months of rule in detail, you realize there's a lot that gets uncovered during that and a lot of very scary moments. So this conversation could be very different. You could be asking me a question at a very failed merger on the side of a cafe, and I'd be telling a very different story. The reverse is if things were uncovered and went from a conversation to six weeks later, were merged, our accountants and our lawyers said, you're crazy, Frank. And they were rightly, so saying that, but it turned out great. So my thing would be, make sure.
Stuart Dullard
You appropriately manage the due diligence process.
Frank Greeff
Because that could have gone wildly wrong.
Jennifer Harrison
Wow. Six weeks. Wow.
Jennifer Harrison
Have you heard of anything faster than six weeks? I don't think so.
Stuart Dullard
No, definitely not. But it's funny, you sort of talk about the people and a strategy and the product fit, because I've been doing deals just for 20 years, right, and people think about price and earn outs and we can talk about all of that. There's all these legal mechanisms that the lawyers put in and the investment bankers negotiate. But of all the train wreck mergers that I've been involved with, I touch wood. It's not the legal and all of that. It's when the frenzy of the deal is done and people are in the office on a Monday and they've got to work with a bunch of new people. And I think if that, particularly at that senior leadership level, if the people don't get on, if they don't share a vision, if they don't respect each other, there can be real cracks and that can go forward.
Stuart Dullard
And I've been involved in a few of those and often I think, founder led businesses, when they're selling, there's a lot of cash on the table, it's a good opportunity. Yes, there's some earn out, and particularly in volatile capital markets, the alternative to selling can be risky. Right? Like, how's my runway, am I profitable yet?
Steve Grubmier
How's it going to go?
Stuart Dullard
But I also think that they can forget that. Well, they're in the business. Maybe there's an earn out. They need to stay for the earn out. And they perhaps underplay their strength that if I sell this business and they don't keep me happy, then this is going to be burning the upfront pain for them. So they don't want that either. So I think particularly in the last 18 months, there's been a dynamic because of the way that capital market has been playing out, that there's been a lot of negotiating power on the side of buyers and we act by side, sell side, as you would know from the buy side. But my practice is predominantly acting for founder led businesses and I think some of them are feeling that desperation in the market and not recognizing that cultural alignment and the importance of the senior executives to making the deal a success for the buyer.
Jennifer Harrison
Matt, you might need to grab a mic. Thank you. It was announced in March last year that Reaper, backed by Excel KKR, had acquired Console Group. Could you please start by explaining the relationship now with Reaper, KKR and Console?
Matt McGowan
Yeah, sure. So I'm Matt McGowan. And I'm Phil. And look, Slkr is a private equity company that primarily backs founder led businesses. That's their bread and butter. They take category leaders in certain verticals property, proptech being one of them, so they're the investment arm. Their lead investment into proptech was Reaper in the UK. It's a very large business, it services the top end of the market. In the UK market, console is a subsequent acquisition within that group. So Reapit being the lead company, we kind of fall under reap it. Console becomes a product of the company, reap it, as does Agentbox Ire and Asia Point.
Jennifer Harrison
So why was Reapit the right partner for Console?
Matt McGowan
Yeah, look, I think part of it was we'd just come out of COVID we just built a brand new product, were acquiring customers very quickly and were looking for that next level of growth. The stable in REIT was really impressive. They had already acquired Ada Books and at that time were asking ourselves the question, how do we accelerate growth. And were thinking about building it ourselves, moving into the CRM space ourselves. So when were approached by Gekr and we'd had a relationship with Eddie and Agent Box previously it was just a natural fit. And I've been both a founder who's sold entirely out, I've also been a founder who's taken capital. And this was almost the best of both worlds. We were getting capital to accelerate growth. It's like petrol for a fast growing company. And we had a synergistic revenue opportunity with Agent Box.
Matt McGowan
So there was a lot know, we've talked about product, market fit. That's really a really big thing. Akkao runs the due diligence and through that process we got to know Eddie and his team a little bit further and the cultural fit was quite obvious as well.
Jennifer Harrison
And having gone through that process now, is there any advice you would have for any proptech founders who are interested also maybe to approach rebit and following console systems?
Matt McGowan
Yeah, I think we're really focused on taking category leaders and a category is in some way self defined, it's also market defined, but you need good product and business fundamentals. You need to be owning your vertical or one of the top two companies in your vertical. And if you're not, there needs to be a pathway to get in there and it needs to be able to be communicated to a buyer generally. And because capital markets have changed recently, we are an acquisitive business and it's probably swung a little bit to the buyer side. Efficiency is now the new growth and we're looking for businesses that are profitable, growing and own their category. And if you meet those three requirements, you're a very attractive acquisition opportunity. And also we're also looking for people who have a vision beyond the exit. We're not a company that takes 100% off the table.
Matt McGowan
We like founder led businesses and we like businesses that are in there for the long run.
Jennifer Harrison
Stuart, I'm curious to know from your perspective as a lawyer, we've got a mixture here of some VC backed, some minority. What differences do you see as a lawyer? Because deals are often done in stages and what difference is it if you're negotiating with a strategic party rather than a VC?
Stuart Dullard
Well, it's a good question. I think a lot of companies, as they grow, they'll take on venture capital or minority investments. So that's a sort of far more common path for high growth technology companies. And I think one potential error that people make, particularly in the founder business is I've done a couple of rounds of funding maybe in this company or maybe in a past life. So an M and a exit can't be too different. Right. So particularly in the last 18 months, I've acted for a bunch of companies where they're actually considering between, well, maybe I'll take another 5 million, but if someone comes along, I might sell and I think they conflate the level of rigor and the time involved in a VC or a minority investment and an exit. Another error they'll make is if they're considering both of those and if they're not yet profitable, it can be quite a risky play to say well, I'll turn down this minority investment to pursue this bid up because both of them will work out in three months.
Stuart Dullard
Now in all likelihood the buyer will take longer. And if you're running out of runway if you're not yet profitable, that's a precarious position because if it fails you're in a lot of strife. But also even if it doesn't fail as the clock ticks along, the buyer is becoming in a much stronger position because they're looking at you going well, if you don't accept my terms, the alternative for you is not fantastic. So I think that's a high level. But when you think about it from the buy side, a minority investor is keen to get involved. They want to provide some growth capital and they're backing the founder to grow the business but taking a big step back. Those VC investors have got a portfolio approach, right? They'll back 510, 2050 companies and they'll really rely one or two outliers to get the IRR of their fund above their forward target.
Stuart Dullard
They don't need 19 out of 20 to knock it out of the park so they just need to back a few. And they know that most of them won't provide abnormal returns. But with a buyer, whether it's a sponsor or a sponsor backed company or a trade buyer, they're all in. They're not buying this and buying 19 companies and hoping that one of them turns out they're paying real money for this business and they really need it to work out. And their board will be grilling the deal team as to whether the deal still makes sense. So the level of rigor that a buyer for 100% or a controlling interest will apply to an acquisition versus a VC to bring in 10% of the company is quite a different investment proposition and that'll play out through the deal to dynamics as to the level of rigor and the time and the effort it will take.
Stuart Dullard
And to give you a sense in just terms of the legal side of things, depending on the size and complexity of the deal. But say a large fundraise might be sort of $50,000 worth of legal work for a Series B or a Series B like a proper deal. And then the legals on an exit between one and 200 million would be ten x that. So there's ten times the hours spent by the lawyers doing an exit than.
Frank Greeff
There is for an investment.
Stuart Dullard
Just to give you a little bit of the quantum as to the deliverance of the transaction documents and the completion process.
Jennifer Harrison
Thank you.
Jennifer Harrison
Now, as I mentioned before with Frank's deal with Domain or real basis deal with Domain. There is a $50 million earn out in there. Could you explain a little bit more what is an earn out and what are some of the examples of hurdles that might be agreed to?
Jennifer Harrison
Sure.
Stuart Dullard
So just the economics of it. It's basically the founder saying, my business is great and it's growing. It might have a certain amount of revenue and profit this year, but next year it's going to be even more. And look, the year after that it's going to be even more. So my company might be worth 100 million today, but I reckon it'll be worth 150,000,000 next year and 200 million next year if the growth keeps going the way it is. And the buyer says, that is fantastic, that's great, but I'm only willing to pay you $100 million because today is right. So you've got a malalignment or an expectation gap between the value of the business for the seller and the value of the business for the buyer. And if you could only pay 100 cents in the dollar on completion, you may not get the deal done because there's just a malalignment of value or a different expectation gap.
Stuart Dullard
So an earn out is just a mechanism to bridge that says, okay, well, I'll pay you 100 million today, and if you hit those targets, then I'm willing to pay you that extra money over the next typically two or three years. But then the buyer will also come on and say, but I want you to hang around like you're not getting this money if you just give it to me, and then I do all the work and get it there and you get your extra $50 million in that case. So there'll be some hooks into keeping the founder there. If the business just goes plummets and doesn't hit those targets, then you don't get the earnout. What are the common earnouts? They're really varied, and it depends on the way the buyer will value the business. But the easiest ones are the top line. So revenue is the easiest because everyone knows how to calculate revenue.
Stuart Dullard
But once you scramble an egg, bottom line becomes a lot harder. So EBITDA is a bit harder than revenue and impacts sort of even harder. But there can also be, particularly with earlier stage companies, more business aligned metrics. I'm doing a deal now where there's product uplift and product integration as triggers for the earn out. So they're the kind of key things to think about. The only other one, just when people are thinking about this, because I think it's in 90% of deals in the space, would be it's great to agree the earn out and for all the reasons that people are aware of. But then during that earn out period, the buyer needs to give the founder the autonomy to run the business, because otherwise the buyer can run a business in a way that may not maximize the ability to do that, earn out.
Stuart Dullard
So it does add some deal complexity, but I think overall, it's worthwhile for solving that problem. I'd be interested to hear sort of how you thought all that played out.
Speaker 1
Very good.
Frank Greeff
Well, I'm still here, so that's positive. So is that one double back around and just back your point there. I think one of the biggest things that stood out to me upon the transaction was the cost of the unknown. And I think I had zero idea. And let me explain it to you. So going into the deal, like I said, it was a nine month process between the legal, the financial and the tech due diligence. We were $3.3 million in the whole with zero view that you were going to be successful because you're going to a transaction, then people are coming to the party, then you're negotiating. So you have to do all of what they call vendor due diligence, which is upfront work. And so I just think that's a really important point because it's something I was like, if I knew this would be amazing.
Frank Greeff
But to your point there, the earn out pieces. Yeah, it's exactly like you're saying.
Stuart Dullard
It's varied.
Frank Greeff
The only thing it's interesting that you mentioned there is when we had KPMG look at it, they said for earn out can't attach you, the founder, to it. So there can't be a mechanism. Now, it could be incorrect, but the mechanism, they said they can't attach you to it because then it's no longer a capital gains tax, it's therefore an employee tax. And then you'd be disproportionately affected by like $25 to it has to be other ways in order for you to kind of want to stay, I guess, is what happened to us in terms of mechanics, we're spot on, was revenue as well as EBITDA and having both of those meet. But then things you can do is things like rollover clauses. So something that we had was, well, if the market drops and that's not our fault, well, the following year, can we call it?
Frank Greeff
And so there are different mechanisms there, and it's all in negotiation. That's the big thing, is many hours, many lawyers, many not much time.
Jennifer Harrison
Frank while you've still got that, mike, final quick tip for long term success.
Jennifer Harrison
Love it.
Frank Greeff
Okay, I got two ones. So first one for me is, I think when you start the business, when you start whatever business it is, starting with a position that when I sell, in my opinion, is not a very strong position. And I'll say that I'll explain because you can go, I'm going to do these things. So one day, if I do sell, it'll be great, that's fine. But if you have the view that when I sell, people will feel that they'll sense that from you, whether it be your team, whether it be your customers. And so I think what we. Were really lucky is were like we're long term mindset, we're long term. And so the customer felt that, our clients felt that. And so then it makes everything much more smooth sailing. So that's probably one. The second one I would be is understanding the process as best you can, early and upfront is really advantageous because the reason our deal was so expensive.
Speaker 1
Was because it was messy.
Frank Greeff
We had messy companies, messy organizations, twelve entities, all this stuff. And we hadn't kept track over 20 years. We hadn't thought of the selling process. So therefore the selling process was very cumbersome.
Jennifer Harrison
And the last one, I know you.
Steve Grubmier
Said quick, but I'm not that quick.
Frank Greeff
The last one is around Speed. I'm so passionate about speed to execution. It's almost everything. And so, like, when you're starting a business, everything you do, it is a race. You do it at pace, you will be disproportionately over time, so much better off. And the way to think about it is it's all compounding. It's a compounding effect. If you can very quickly test the market, iterate get customer feedback, get the new customer, you can very quickly move forward. And we did that to the point where we never actually raised capital. So I sold at the time, I Djed turntables for two grand and then the next time was my investment property. We just sold everything we had because were moving at pace that we had a view that we had to be profitable enough to pay for ourselves. But that only happens because went from Idea to create real hub to launch at our market.
So the first technology piece was six months until we first got in people's hands. I'm seeing businesses today that are three years in Idea. That's good.
Jennifer Harrison
Steve, kind of the same final tip question because I know when you're in the middle of a deal, everyone just wants to get over the finish line. They want to get to that final signing ceremony. We just want to sign, pay the money. But what would you recommend people think about? Stuart mentioned a little bit before tips for longer term success of a deal.
Steve Grubmier
I think understanding the culture of the business that you're merging into and also anticipating some of the challenges with that acquisition merger, particularly if you're talking to customers, communication is fundamental as well, how you're showing up. I think at a senior leadership level, the communication that you share down, but also within the huddles that you have, I think it really comes down to, for me, working with some of the teams, most recently with the Prop Tech Group acquisition, making sure that we're keeping key stakeholders engaged, the different entities that are exiting a business as well. Like how they exit the business, what communication we're sending out to their old staff, their old team members. I think the process is never really over until you have one fully embedded billing system all operating off the same software. Like salesforce, it hasn't been completed until you get to that stage.
Steve Grubmier
And I don't think at MRI we still have some gaps, but I think we're working through to close those. But I think it's for the exit. If you're the founder of exiting the business, I think it'd be a successful merger would be or acquisition would be. Being there for your team after you've left the organization, but also making sure that you've set that business up for success, to continue to serve those customers in those segments. How you saw it as a part of a founder or before you actually saw it out.
Jennifer Harrison
Thanks, Steve.
Jennifer Harrison
Matt, what would you observe?
Matt McGowan
Yeah, I think I might have summarized the two comments before. I think when we're going into an acquisition, we're really looking for companies with a long term vision and not running out of steam. We're looking for people who honestly they could keep going without our investment. That's a really strong company. I think going into the deal there can be a bit of deal fatigue. So it's how do you keep the momentum through the deal? Because there's a lot of reasons a deal could fall over and really you want the company that you're acquiring, or if you're a company being acquired, you actually need the energy to come out and continue to grow. They're probably the two big things. Integration of culture is really challenging and really like you don't really know somebody until you're actually in there together and you find out a lot of things quickly.
Matt McGowan
I think one of the things that we try and do is be radically transparent. Now all groups that come together storm form normal process and two companies merging together have to go through that process really quickly to achieve the deal outcomes. Because the deal team does come under pressure, there's always someone doing an evaluation after you've gone through the process. They're probably the three things you want energy coming into the deal, you do want to do it quickly, as quickly as you can, because you need that deal team to come out of it and you need your merge company to better than you were going in. And I think cultural alignment, or at least vision alignment is really important. Otherwise acquisitions aren't successful.
Jennifer Harrison
Thank you. Stuart, you made some great comments on this point earlier. Any final tips?
Jennifer Harrison
Look, I think just from at least.
Stuart Dullard
From a legal perspective, I agree with everything said and that resonates with deals that have gone well and not so well, but just making sure, particularly with earn outs and the contracts, making sure the interests are aligned in a really sensible way. One thing I've seen again over the last couple of years is with an imbalance of power. Some people have taken advantage of that buy side, sell side and sort of screwed the dial so hard that someone just feels like it's not fair deal. And I think get the best deal you can, by all means. But I think cutting a fair deal and even to the extent of leaving a few crumbs on the table so the alignments are fairly set are setting yourself up for success rather than sort of having a purely adversarial approach to the negotiation. I think the way you present yourself through the negotiation with transparency and integrity and a sense of fairness rather than just winner takes all, can be really helpful.
Stuart Dullard
And I think it's also important that the buyer or the founder picks a deal team, whether it's lawyers or investment bankers, and really instructs the deal team that, yes, we want a good deal, but we want to walk away from this feeling like were fair, we did it with integrity and transparency. Otherwise you're taking a first. Pretty material misstep.
Jennifer Harrison
Yeah, absolutely agree. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for actually being really honest and real. That was a great discussion. Thank you.