Tech M&A with Fexingo: Software Acquisitions, Strategic Buyers, and Tech Deals

In this episode of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna unpack a shift that's quietly reshaping software deal terms: the length of earnout periods. Once a standard two-year earnout was nearly automatic; now buyers are pushing for three- or even four-year earnouts tied to specific milestones like recurring revenue retention or AI model performance. Lucas walks through a recent mid-market SaaS acqu...

In this episode of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna examine how acquirers are increasingly pricing customer willingness to pay into deal valuations. Using Oracle's recent acquisition of Cerner as a case study, they break down how subscription pricing models, discounting behavior, and customer upgrade history have become critical diligence metrics. Drawing on live market data from July 10, 202...

In this episode of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna drill into a metric that has quietly become a deal-breaker in software acquisitions: implementation time. Drawing on recent data from ServiceNow and Snowflake, they explore why buyers are now discounting targets with long onboarding cycles and paying premiums for companies that can get customers live in under 30 days. They walk through a rea...

In this episode of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a due diligence metric that is quietly reshaping deal terms: the customer acquisition cost payback period. Drawing on current market data — including Oracle's 2.8% five-day gain and ServiceNow's 2.4% uptick — they examine how strategic buyers are scrutinizing how quickly a target company recovers its sales and marketing spend. Using...

Episode 100 of Tech M&A with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna dive into how acquirers are increasingly pricing software targets based on customers' willingness to pay — using transaction-level data to assess pricing power and churn risk. They examine a real mid-market case: a $200 million HR SaaS acquisition where the buyer forced a 15% price increase post-close and lost 40% of customers within six months....

Episode 99 of Tech M&A with Fexingo dives into a metric that's quietly reshaping how acquirers value software targets: willingness to pay (WTP). Lucas and Luna unpack why strategic buyers are now scrutinizing not just whether customers renew, but whether they'd pay more for the product. With concrete data points—including Adobe and ServiceNow's recent pricing moves, and a look at how Tesla's price...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into a structural shift in software M&A: how buyers are pricing in customer concentration risk. Using the latest data — including Palantir's 15 percent surge in the last five days and a new billion-dollar SambaNova round — they explore why a single customer representing more than 10 percent of revenue is now a deal-breaker for many strategic acquirers. They walk...

In this episode of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a new clause appearing in software acquisition term sheets: the founder retention multiplier. As big tech buyers like Microsoft and Salesforce chase AI talent, acquirers are pricing the risk that a founder leaves within the first year. Lucas breaks down a recent deal where the earnout was tied to the founder's continued employment, a...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore a new frontier in software M&A valuation: customer implementation velocity. Drawing on recent market data showing Palantir up 14.6% in five days and ServiceNow trading at a premium, they discuss how fast a software buyer can actually deploy a product is becoming a key pricing metric. Using the example of a hypothetical vertical SaaS acquisition, they break d...

In this episode of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna drill into a clause that rarely makes headlines but can crater a deal after signing: the founder stock lockup. With Palantir up 14.6 percent in the past five days and Snowflake trading at $262, the hosts examine how acquirers are tightening lockup terms to prevent key talent from cashing out and leaving. Lucas explains why a typical 180-day...

When a company acquires a software target, the speed at which new customers can go live is now a pricing factor. Lucas and Luna examine how implementation velocity — the time from signed contract to first active user — is being treated as a earnout metric and valuation multiplier. They reference recent mega-deals like the Snowflake acquisition of a data integration startup where implementation spe...

In this episode of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore how strategic acquirers are shifting focus from simple revenue retention metrics to a deeper metric: customer relationship tenure. Using recent data showing Palantir up 14.5% over five days and Adobe up 8.4%, they discuss how long-term customer contracts are becoming a premium in software deals. Lucas explains why buyers now discount...

In this episode of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a new angle in software dealmaking: how buyers are now pricing in the composition of the target's engineering team. They break down why a balanced mix of senior and junior developers is increasingly treated as a valuation metric, using real-world examples like a recent mid-market CRM acquisition where the buyer adjusted the earnout b...

In episode 91 of Tech M&A with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a subtle but powerful factor shaping software acquisition valuations: the remaining term length of customer contracts. They anchor on a real-world example: a hypothetical SaaS company with 80 percent enterprise contracts, average 18-month terms, renewing at 90 percent-plus rates. Lucas explains why strategic buyers now discount targets...

Episode 90 of Tech M&A with Fexingo dives into a subtle but expensive deal-breaker: how contract renewal language now shapes valuations. Lucas and Luna examine a recent acquisition where a target's auto-renewal clauses boosted its multiple by two turns, while another saw its earnout crater because a key customer's renewal notice period was too short. They walk through actual language buyers are fl...

Episode 89 of Tech M&A with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna dig into a quiet but powerful shift in software acquisition deal terms: warranty escrows. As buyers tighten due diligence on AI-generated code, open-source license compliance, and data provenance, the old 12-month escrow holdback is being replaced by tiered, metric-driven structures tied to code-scan outcomes and customer audit results. Lucas wal...

Episode 88 of Tech M&A with Fexingo examines a new frontier in software dealmaking: the valuation of proprietary training data. Lucas and Luna break down why strategic buyers are now discounting targets whose AI models rely on unlicensed web-scraped data, and how a recent $2.1 billion acquisition by a major tech company explicitly priced in a data provenance premium. They discuss the legal risks f...

Episode 87 of Tech M&A with Fexingo dives into why strategic buyers are now auditing data quality before signing software deals. Lucas and Luna examine how cleaning dirty data can cost millions post-acquisition, with real examples from CRM and marketing automation acquisitions. They cite new due diligence checklist items and reference recent market moves — Palantir up 14.5% in five days, ServiceNo...

Lucas and Luna explore a new front in software M&A due diligence: customer relationship depth. Using the recent Bending Spoons IPO as a case study — which surged 40% on its first day of trading after an $18 billion IPO — they examine how acquirers are moving beyond simple retention metrics to evaluate the strength of customer relationships, including multi-product adoption, contract duration, and...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how software acquirers are increasingly pricing platform dependency risk into deal valuations. With major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud raising API fees, changing terms, or introducing competing products, buyers now scrutinize how deeply an acquisition target is tied to a single platform. Lucas breaks down a recent example: how an acquire...

Lucas and Luna examine a new clause appearing in software acquisition term sheets: the data center energy commitment. As hyperscalers like Microsoft and Amazon face power constraints for AI workloads, strategic buyers are now requiring targets to disclose — and in some cases guarantee — future energy costs for cloud hosting. Lucas cites Snowflake's recent 12.6% stock surge and Oracle's 7% drop as...

Episode 83 of Tech M&A with Fexingo examines a new wrinkle in software dealmaking: AI inference costs are volatile enough to blow up earnout projections. Lucas and Luna break down how strategic buyers like Microsoft and Oracle are adjusting valuation models for GPU-as-a-service pricing swings, using the recent $5B Etched valuation as a real-world data point. They discuss how acquirers now require...

Episode 82 of Tech M&A with Fexingo explores a growing factor in software deal due diligence: AI agent risk. As companies embed autonomous AI agents into their products and operations, buyers are starting to audit for agent reliability, hallucination rates, and dependency on third-party models. Lucas and Luna break down why a target's agent architecture can now swing valuation by 10-15%, using rec...

Lucas and Luna dive into a new metric gaining traction in software acquisitions: churn velocity. Unlike traditional annual churn rates, churn velocity measures how quickly customers cancel after the first billing cycle. They analyze why this matters in the current market, using Snowflake's 9.2% stock jump as a case study of how investors reward sticky, low-velocity revenue. The episode also covers...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine why software acquirers are increasingly pricing customer migration risk into deal structures. With a 9.9% five-day gain in Snowflake meaning customers are reassessing their data infrastructure bets, the hosts discuss how buyers now audit customer migration patterns during due diligence. They explore real cases where acquisition values were adjusted due to em...