1. Pay attention to the owner of M&A company.
It will be a very important step to gradually understand all aspects of the acquired company. We should not only deal with the top management of these companies, but also deal with all the employees of the company as much as possible. This will help you stay in control of the company after the merger, and also help you decide which departments of these companies you can work closely with and avoid some problems. If necessary, try to share the task with the co-founders of the company, let one of you run the company, and let the other founders study how to make the best use of the company's employees and resources.
In short, after the company is merged, the measures to satisfy the founders and employees are not only to consider financial factors, but also to find some ways to guide the company and learn things of interest. In this regard, Christian said: "For entrepreneurs, it is at least important to consider the income generation of M&A business, that is, buyers need to have similar methods and long-term goals as setting up a company."
2. Talent
Christian also pointed out that in the ever-changing market, talent is the key factor to determine the final result, and the ever-changing market is often where M&A business often happens. As the CEO of one party to the transaction, you should see everything through your important talents. Christian pointed out that the failure of M&A business is often due to the failure of the integrated new management team to involve important talents in related affairs. Christian said: "When you arrange a deal, you should not forget important talents, such as star programmers, artists and architects. How do you create everything (financial or otherwise) to keep your star talent as long as possible? How can we make corporate life as rich as possible after the merger? "
The founder of the company should gain the trust of employees and provide the content that employees trust. Explain your new goals and why they are exciting. Let your new talents work for them. Star talents value their autonomy and influence in start-ups. Therefore, it is also necessary to find ways to maintain the feelings of these star talents in the merged company. In addition, we should try our best to find the best opportunity to maintain this team. Christian claimed: "M&A business people often talk about empty talk. Employees want to pay attention to you and wonder if you are still making a decision. You have to make sure that you are still making decisions, and employees will obey the orders of the CEO of the acquirer so that the information can be symmetrical. "
3. Corporate culture
In a start-up enterprise eager for development, no financial incentive plan can replace or copy the internal motivation of this enterprise. Sometimes, it is difficult for buyers to identify with these cultural problems of M&A enterprises, but usually, it is as important as accounting issues. What needs to be reminded to the CEO of the acquirer is that preserving the corporate culture and "how things are done" will be the key factors to attract talents and also play a key role in the performance of the acquired business entity.
Christian said: "In the end, you set up your company to change the world. You may work with people you like and in your favorite environment and culture. Your employees may join your company for the same reason. By retaining these cultures, you will have the best chance to succeed after the business merger. "
4. Dramatic factors
One way for M&A to simplify the problem is to integrate the employees, professional titles and salary systems of the two companies. People often ignore that some employees' titles were not high before the merger, but once the merger, people will pay attention to their new titles and compare them with their peers.
In other words, "am I the person in charge or a senior person in charge? Is it 2 1 or 23? " Christian said that people's attention to these issues often leads them to neglect their attention to products and customers. Therefore, Christian suggested that if possible, we should maintain the independence of employees' e-mails, and let employees not pay attention to these things, or don't integrate the human resources department of M&A enterprises until everything is ready. In the case of personnel flow, the less the minds of talents are dispersed, the greater the possibility of enterprise success.
5. Too much or too little?
This does not mean that you should not integrate some departments of M&A enterprises. After all, this M&A transaction has certain business logic-which is also the reason for the merger of the two companies. Sometimes, the correct answer is to integrate everything on the day of the transaction, but sometimes it is not. Christian claimed: "In one of my companies, I have been so worried that this company will be destroyed that I finally missed many opportunities to develop my business."
Your integration with M&A enterprises needs to be consistent with your goals. For example, one of the reasons for your integration may be to integrate the scientific and technological experience of your start-up with the big brand companies you acquired. However, Christian said that this kind of goal needs a certain degree of integration, so that you can achieve the previous goal later. Too slow integration process will damage the performance of enterprises, of course, too fast integration process will certainly have problems. In short, the degree of integration of M&A enterprises needs to be appropriate.
Step 6 communicate
Letting your employees know the information will be an important behavior in the whole merger process. You should sincerely state the rationality of the business combination and the reason for this transaction. Christian said, "Don't pretend that nothing will happen tomorrow. Tell employees honestly that this risk is coming to an end and another risk is about to begin. Celebrate first, then start with the details. Don't take everything for granted. Guide them to gradually understand that new things will be exciting and interesting. "
Employees will pay attention to you, and they will think, "Will my CEO stay? What do your words and deeds do? " So, you need to make a promise that you can achieve. In this regard, Christian said: "The worst thing is to tell employees that things are going on as before, or make a promise that you can't achieve."
Christian also claimed that small things may cause big problems. You need to tell the clerk that they will still get free fruit in the new company. But then, the CEO of the acquirer may say, you can't do this. In this regard, Christian claimed: "If you have to break your word in front of employees, then you will lose more. If you break your word on the small issue of fruit, what role will your words and deeds play in the big issues such as company strategy in the future? "
7. Investment strategy
Christian's concern for talents also applies to his investment business. When Christian runs an investment company, he mainly digs talents among all employees. He said: "In the field of games, you need to pay more attention to the artistic director and the main programmer, not the CEO. Once the company is successful, the CEO will become more important, but before the product is launched, the CEO's role is to retain relevant important talents. "
Game startups are more likely to succeed as long as the work team has worked together before. Especially for game companies, products are the soul of the work team. Christian said: "Paying attention to products is like paying attention to work teams-you will have an intuition about who they are and what they care about."
8. Dealing with conflict affairs
When asked how to deal with the conflict when selling the company, Christian claimed that his company (recently involved in the $654.38+05 billion transaction between Supercell and Softbank) has always supported the founder. He said: "We clearly support everything the founder wants to do. We tried our best to help. We will design strategies to consider who is worth socializing with and who is not. But in the final analysis, we are entrepreneurs ourselves, so we will regard ourselves as consultants or helpers to make decisions. But in the end, this is still the call of the founder. "
In addition to the above eight aspects, Christian also talked about the following matters, for example, the initial capital only uses its own funds for investment, and will not use foreign capital. Christian said: "We will see ourselves more as co-founders of the companies we invest in than as financial investors. We don't have to worry about any funds, because we invest with our own money. We don't have to worry about other financing issues, which will make us completely free. "
In addition, Christian still pays attention to game companies and thinks that you can still create large-scale business, and mentions the case of Supercell. He also said that the game industry has a very mature market, so it needs relevant key plans. In addition, Christian also said that Initial Capital has invested in more application ecosystems, including the Internet of Things and consumer health applications.