Alex Chircop, Ondat Co-Founder/CTO, shares why Ondat chose GrowthPoint as their investment banker. Ondat, with GrowthPoint engaged as its exclusive financial advisor, entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Akamai Technologies in March 2023.
“We spoke to a number of different partners, some through referrals, some through, you know, just research. And one of the things that we could understand with GrowthPoint was they were big enough and experienced enough to have done this sort of thing before, but they were still small enough to be approachable. And that meant that we got the senior person working very closely with us.
The relationship we developed was very close. And certainly when we were going through the process with some of the other alternatives that might have been, say, bigger, we kind of got the feeling that we were being fobbed off to lower level associates and didn’t necessarily get the feeling that we were going to be handheld through the process.
So, I think the personal touch with GrowthPoint was a big deal. The second thing was that they got what we were doing. I still remember, from our first or second call, I was asked to pitch as a founder as if I was selling this product and it was a little daunting. I felt as if I was being evaluated.
But it was an important moment, I think, for both parties, because Growthpoint learned a lot about us. But I learned how they think, and I could see them. There is a lot you can get from those questions and the type of questions that they ask and the connections that they make. And I could see that GrowthPoint were making the connections and that was the deal clencher for me.
The fact that Growthpoint could see the possibilities and how our technology could plug into different companies and different technologies with which they were already familiar. So, it put my mind at ease because it made it clear that they could pitch and be our ambassador, if you wish, to the acquirers with which we were working. And that was that was very, very important.
Our technology is not a mainstream app on a mobile phone. It is infrastructure software. And that is necessarily niche. But we got that in both the niche understanding and the personal senior partner to work with us on that.”
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