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The 10 worst things you can do when selling your software company (Part 8 of 10) »
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The 10 worst things you can do when selling your software company (Part 7 of 10) »
The 10 worst things you can do when selling your software company (Part 6 of 10) »
Focus on: Cisco »
London WFS Recap »
Guerilla Marketing – Card Decks »
Q1 Global Tech M&A Report »
Cisco Continues its 2013 Acquisition Pace »
How Big is Big Data? »
The 10 worst things you can do when selling your software company (Part 5 of 10) »
SAP's Big Data Move »
Smart Phones - To The End Of The Earth! »
Mobile Spotlight Report »
Private Equity Panel Recap »
KC Revisited »
Gartner Analyst Day - Big Data Analytics »
Dow’s Record Close – M&A Market Soaring »
Field Report Overview »
Mobile Spotlight Report »
Social Spotlight Report »
Electric Reliability - Building a Smarter Network »
SaaS Spotlight Report »
Gaming Spotlight Report »
7 Habits of High Effective Sellers, Habit #2: Begin with the End in Mind »
Growth & Exits in Geekwire »
Living with the Jetsons »
The Trends that Define M&A »
Google Fiber Report »
Top Six Interviews of 2012 - Part Two »
Top Six Interviews of 2012 - Part One »
The Langara Experience »
Forecast 2013: Global Tech M&A Review & Predictions, January 17 »
Guerilla Marketing – Open house at a new installation »
Healthcare Market Spotlight »
The 10 worst things you can do when selling your software company (Part 4 of 10) »
The 10 worst things you can do when selling your software company (Part 3 of 10) »
Growing pains in e-commerce »
7 Habits of Highly Effective Sellers »
2013 Will Be a Banner Year For Tech M&A »
US Energy Policy and M&A »
Energy & Cleantech Market Spotlight Webcast »
Gifting before the Cliff! »
Very cool interactive graphic re: Euro-debt Crisis »
Interview with Corum VP Jeff Brown by CED »
Apple's bruises »
Election Politics and Tech M&A Special Coverage »
Guerilla Marketing – Pre-announce dramatic “vaporware” »
Software Defined Networking: New frontiers in virtualization of the datacenter »

Private Equity Panel Recap

The main event of our February webinar was an all-star private equity panel with representatives from ACCEL KKR, The Carlyle Group, and Riverside Company. Here are a few of the insights they shared with us. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 15 March 2013

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Social Spotlight Report

Social is and will remain an important topic in tech and tech M&A. We covered it briefly in our January webinar, and an overview of that information is below. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 20 February 2013

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Healthcare Market Spotlight

Yesterday I had the opportunity to moderate a World Financial Symposiums Market Spotlight webcast about healthcare technology. The healthcare market is being driven by significant regulatory, technological and societal changes. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 19 December 2012

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Corum negotiates sale of Zeacom

Congratulations to our client Zeacom, acquired today by Enghouse (TSE ESL.TO) in Toronto. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 01 June 2012

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Esterel + ANSYS will change an industry

Yesterday ANSYS (NYSE: ANSS) announced that they had signed a definitive agreement to purchase our client, Esterel, for euro 42 million, subject to certain working capital adjustments at close. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 30 May 2012

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Unintended consequences: Europe's shift to the left

A French client recently asked me to guide the buyer of his company toward cash retention bonuses rather than options. I asked him why. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 30 May 2012

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Angel Capital Association Panel

I moderated the M&A panel for the Angel Capital Association Northwest Regional Meeting, which attracted about a hundred investors from Washington, Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 22 May 2012

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Facebook Frenzy: What does the Facebook IPO mean for tech M&A?

Brokers at Morgan Stanley and the other underwriters of the Facebook IPO didn't realize how many Facebook friends they had until they were allocated shares for individual accounts. Everyone wants a piece of the action. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 18 May 2012

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Day two of Interop 2012 in Las Vegas

This is one of the best tech conferences on the planet, and they outdid themselves this year by tying up the end users with the data center. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 10 May 2012

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Conference Cuisine in Las Vegas

My Interop coverage is interrupted to bring you this note. Las Vegas service workers will tell you that tech conference attendees arrive with "one white shirt and one twenty-dollar bill, and they don't change either the whole time they are here." [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 09 May 2012

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Runaway success

Buyers often explore OEM agreements as an alternative to taking on the risk and expense of acquisition. Usually it takes only a couple of negotiating sessions to reach the conclusion that OEM will be cumbersome, risky and expensive. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 04 November 2011

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App store fever

Remember the good old days, when good software companies received M&A offers, rather than invitations to become one of 100,000 apps offered for ninety-nine cents in the app store? [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 26 October 2011

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Closing the deal – playing the reps and warranties game

Engineers are skeptics by nature. They make decisions based on facts, not convenience or speculation.When they take risks, the risks are calculated and supportable by assumptions based on facts. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 15 June 2011

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Creating value in early stage companies

The topic of our next webinar is "Social Wars" - building value quickly in the new social landscape. We will interview several CEOs who have successfully done this. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 31 May 2011

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The Skype is falling

Will Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype mark the high-water mark for tech M&A in the current cycle? [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 11 May 2011

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HP's new Web OS devices

MSFT’s new mobile OS is truly excellent, but nobody is buying it (except me). Meanwhile Nokia has the world’s biggest smartphone market share... [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 15 February 2011

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Motivations and outcomes – Navigating the incentives of the financial markets

There is a maze of incentives out there and most of the people with their hand out are destroying, not creating value. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 18 November 2010

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Paris on two wheels

Traffic in Paris is always sluggish, and parking is hit or miss. One lucky enough to find a parking spot will often return to his car to find a fender crumpled from the impact of another driver pushing, bumper against bumper, along the curb to open up more space. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 25 October 2010

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International arbitrage – Asia

When I worked in Japan, we funded a lot of the M&A deals with EuroDebt with Equity warrants. It was free money, as long as... [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 16 September 2010

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Surviving the deal – how to ensure success in M&A

If you want insight into how to structure a successful M&A transaction, download my new white paper profiling EMC’s acquisition of Data Domain. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 20 August 2010

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Working capital adjustments

My colleague Ward Carter posted an interesting blog about working capital adjustments. I’m living his scenario now on a deal negotiation, and encourage everyone to read it. Here is an analogy that I have used... [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 12 August 2010

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Corum President Nat Burgess quoted in USA today

USA has published an excellent article on the surge in tech M&A. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 19 May 2010

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The Google acquisition of Picnik is a huge gust of wind in all of our sails..

First, we have a concrete example of the talent pool created by our local juggernauts –Microsoft, in this case, but other companies are drawing on expertise developed at Amazon, Concur, and others. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 11 March 2010

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East coast vs. West coast

I’m just back from the 16th annual Genesys partners' dinner in Manhattan, where I met with many of the leading financial sponsors in the New York area. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 05 February 2010

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Challenges for French IT companies (Note from Paris)

I recently spoke at an event sponsored by AFDEL, the most influential software association in France. 25 CEOs of emerging companies attended... [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 07 January 2010

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Crouching market, hidden value (Note from Paris)

Recently I met with the VC backers of a (lamentably) public company growing at 40% annually, profitably, with a market capitalization equal to the cash on the balance sheet. The public market is quicksand.... [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 24 December 2009

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Timing the Market (Note from London)

Some of the most interesting discussions at the London WFS conference occurred over coffee, in between sessions. [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 07 December 2009

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Entrepreneurs and Money Men (Note from London)

The Growth Equity Panel at the London WFS conference included a fascinating exchange with one of Europe’s most successful serial entrepreneurs (two of his VC backed companies sold for over 50x revenues). [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 03 December 2009

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Looking East (Note from London)

At the London WFS conference, everyone seemed to be looking East. The European IPO market is basically dead... [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 20 November 2009

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Caught in the middle (note from London)

I moderated the Private Equity Panel at the November 17th World Financial Symposiums conference in London. There were about 80 people in the room – mostly CEOs – and healthy give and take of ideas... [Click on title to read more.]

Posted by NatBurgess, President on 18 November 2009

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