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Similar to how basketball is structured, the preparation for M&A is something we get asked about a lot – when to start, how long it’ll take, how to prepare, etc. Given the uniqueness of the tech industry, there are some very specific things tech companies can be doing right now to set them up for success whenever that exit takes place.
Read MoreIf you listened exclusively to the VC community, this article would be pretty short, as almost all of them would tell you that the only thing that matters for a SaaS company’s valuation is revenue growth, at all costs. However, for the vast majority of mid-cap SaaS companies, this is not the only relevant driver.
Read MoreNationally, there were 1,272,791 active businesses with employees as of June 2018. Ontario reported the highest number of active businesses with 460K+.
Read MoreOn the Let’s Grab Coffee podcast, Sampford Advisor’s George Khalife sat down with Dennis Mortensen who’s the Founder & CEO of x.ai to chat about entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, and exits.
Read More2018 was a good year for tech, and a particularly great one for Canada with global tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, and Google directing their investment dollars to Toronto.
Read MoreAccording to a report by brandwatch, the total worldwide population was 7.7 billion as of January 2019. Of those 7.7 billion people, 44% are active social media users (or 3.397 billion). The average daily time spent on social is 116 minutes a day. That’s significant.
Read MoreAccording to Deloitte’s annual study of M&A activity, technology acquisition became the number one driver of acquisitions in 2018 ahead of expanding customer bases in existing markets, or adding to products/services.
Read MoreStanford? Samford?....Oh Sampford! What does it stand for?
That’s a typical reaction we receive when introducing our firm for the first time to someone. The name stands out, and we’re well aware of it. In fact, we named the firm Sampford Advisors for a reason.
Let us explain.
Read MoreIf you’re in the software & SaaS space, then you’ve probably seen Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of Github – a great example of how valuations can get amplified in specific situations.
Read MoreMeet Nick Lorraine, a Financial Analyst at Sampford Advisors who started a 4-month co-op term in May. Nick is currently studying for his Bachelor of Commerce Degree with a specialty in Finance at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. While in school, Nick is also a Junior Analyst at the Telfer Capital Fund, a 2 year program to give Finance Students in Telfer a chance to gain real world experience managing real money in the Student-Managed fund.
Read MoreIf you’re reading this and you’re a founder of a growing technology startup, you’ve probably been in the challenging situation of figuring out whether you should raise capital or pursue a sale of the business. This dilemma is felt across the board, and one that often doesn’t have clear guidelines. Hopefully through this article, you’ll have some tools to leverage in making the right decision for your business and its future.
Read MoreLet’s rewind all the way back to 1997. Two guys just enrolled at the University of Waterloo to study Computer Science. They became roommates. What eventually took place is a series of exciting and challenging moments, cool experiences, and invaluable lessons that anyone can learn from. Below is the story of Ravin Shah and Tishan Mills and their successful start-up QuickTapSurvey.
Read MoreWith the first quarter of 2018 now firmly behind us, we thought it was about time we revisited how strong the Software M&A markets are in North America. Needless to say, there is still a lot to be happy about and we still expect 2018 to be an extremely strong year for Software/SaaS M&A!
Read MoreThere’s no doubt that the SaaSNorth conference here in Ottawa was a huge success. With hundreds of different SaaS companies in attendance, in addition to many VC and PE firms, the conference fosters a diverse crowd where opinions are shared, challenged, and new insights are gained.
While at SaaSNorth, the Sampford team had the opportunity to sit in on a variety of discussions led by leading executives from various companies and investment funds and we’re pleased to present our key takeaways from the conference.
Read MoreWith rumors continuing to circulate about an acquisition of Qualcomm by Broadcom for more than $100bn in what would be the largest chip deal, I thought it was time to reflect on tech exits so far this year and gauge the general health of the market for both tech IPOs and tech M&A.
Read MoreWith another quarter under our belts, its time again to reflect on how the market is fairing for technology exits in North America, both in terms of the IPO market and technology M&A.
In general, the IPO market seems to be doing well with the number of transactions rebounding from the first quarter low and investor returns continuing to outperform the broader market. As for M&A, we’ve seen a large drop off in the dollar volume of transactions for the first half of 2017 but the number of overall transactions is still relatively strong.
Read MoreGrowth-stage technology companies are increasingly using debt to help finance strategic M&A. Ed Bryant of M&A Advisory Firm Sampford Advisors and Will Hutchins of Espresso Capital, a leading venture debt provider, discuss why.
Well-executed acquisitions can be an important complement to organic growth for growth-stage technology companies, enabling them to achieve critical scale faster and helping accelerate product development, speed market entry, and strengthen competitive position. But for companies that aren’t yet generating meaningful cash flow, finding the right acquisition financing – and enough financing – can be a challenge. Compounding that challenge is the fact that in M&A, speed matters. The ability to quickly secure financing is often a critical factor in ensuring a successful acquisition. With a variety of debt financing solutions now available, we review how the effective use of debt can complement other sources of funding and help technology companies raise needed capital within the tight time frames required by M&A processes.
Read MoreThe first quarter of 2017 was another good quarter for technology company exits. We saw a number of very high profile tech company Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) come to market which is extremely encouraging given the limited activity we saw in 2016.
On the merger and acquisition (M&A) side of things we saw an equally positive trend with the number of technology M&A transactions coming in at 638 for the quarter, a healthy increase over the prior two quarters.
In this article, I breakdown the first quarter technology IPO and M&A markets in North America in more detail and describe what I believe it means for the year ahead.
Read MoreWe always hear from numerous people the complaint that Canadian businesses sell too early especially when compared to their US counterparts. It’s an interesting notion that is always raised when a sale of a large Canadian tech company happens – BlueCat Networks’ recent $400m sale is a good example.
Rather than just relying on hearsay, we thought that it was worthy of us analyzing the numbers to see if it is true that Canadian firms sell too early...
Read MoreGiven our recent post on LinkedIn about the breakdown of VC investment by Canadian city attracted over 4,000 views and a lot of comments, we thought it would be worthwhile to do a deeper dive on this topic...
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