What founders need to know about acquisitions: Shopify’s Daniel Debow on M&A lessons from selling three startups

Our guest today is Daniel Debow, a VP of Product for Demand at Shopify. 

Daniel is a three-time founder and a seasoned M&A pro. Daniel oversaw the process of all three of his companies’ acquisitions and has helped continue to grow them at scale inside larger corporations. His most recent startup, Helpful, was acquired by Shopify in 2019. Before that, he co-founded Rypple which was acquired by Salesforce in 2011. His first startup, Workbrain, was acquired by Infor in 2007. 

In our conversation today, we focus on all the moving parts of running an M&A process as a startup . Daniel shares tactical advice on:

What conditions founders should look out for at potential acquirers, as well as what established companies can do to create a more “founder-friendly” environment

How to spot clear buying signals and weed out companies that are just “tire kicking”

How to build meaningful relationships with executives of all types, not just corp dev teams.

Techniques for including your investors in the M&A process, as well as messaging tips when opening up about the process to the wider team. 

You can follow Daniel on Twitter at @ddebow. You can email us questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.