The Secret to Startup M&A: How To Set Your Companies Up for Big Outcomes with Ezra Roizen of Advsr

Hey, everybody. This is Ben Kesnoka, cofounder and partner at Village Global, a network driven venture firm. And this is our podcast where we go deep on all things business and technology with world leading experts. Ezra, thank you so much for joining me on VC Mastermind podcast. We're gonna be talking about mergers and acquisitions and start up m and a and how to set your companies up for big outcomes. To introduce you a little bit for our listeners, you are the general manager of adviser, and you're the author of the magic box paradigm, which is a framework for start up acquisitions, and we will talk a lot about that during this conversation. You initially started your career as an entrepreneur, cofounding two technology companies, one called Montclair Technologies, another called Convoy Corporation, which is now part of SAP. And, Ezra, you hold an MBA, a combined program at Columbia University in the business school, and University of California Berkeley's high school of business, and a DA in philosophy from University of California Davis. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you, Priya. Yeah. Absolutely. Gosh. I was thinking, I have known you, I think, for I think going on eighteen years. Yeah. I met you in 2007, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. And We were both five at the time. But Yeah. Exactly. But, man, it's been so fun. We've interacted and crossed paths professionally and personally so many times. It's been great to work with you on m and a, kinda throughout that whole eighteen year history. Just to set some context, like, we're gonna dive into the magic box paradigm and how you see both executing m and a and guiding m and a on for your clients, and then open it up into more of a conversation across a bunch of different topics. Ezra, give us a little context. How much m and a have you seen over your career in terms of number of deals or dollar values? As you mentioned, I started out as an entrepreneur in actually the nineties. So cofounded an enterprise software company, cofounded a services company. Tremendous time to start your career at that time and be young. I was in my twenties, and all of a sudden I became CEO of a 60 person company and, and had another one that had some success and was acquired. And it was, it was great because I thought when I was young, I wanted to be CEO of a company, and that was where I was gonna be. And then I got to be CEO of a company, and I absolutely hated it. And, and I was fortunate to be blessed to have had that experience. And one was acquired and had some success, and one actually, frankly, the Better Run company, ended up getting taken down the first Internet bubble, which I think ended up itself as an interesting lesson. Good learnings. Yeah. And so I got …