Project Success Stories
'Key Player' assessment helps VC firm
evaluate acquisition risks.
To assess the contributions of the founder/CEO we clandestinely invited ourselves to a customer conference where he was the primary speaker and visited with employees to find out how they saw his role. We also hobnobbed with important customers.
This savvy venture capital firm was considering acquiring a $50 million training company.
The acquisition target was experiencing high growth, and was the leader in its served market. However the property was highly dependent upon its charismatic founder and CEO, and the VC firm was concerned about the risk should they be obliged to replace him. So they hired FUSION to (a) examine the consequences should the founder/CEO elect to leave and (b) develop a recovery plan for replacing the CEO while maintaining the momentum of the business. We were also invited to contribute our overall insights concerning the overall merits and drawbacks of the business as an acquisition property.
To assess the contributions of the founder/CEO we clandestinely invited ourselves to a customer conference where he was the primary speaker and visited with employees to find out how they saw his role. We also hobnobbed with important customers.
We determined that no one individual could replace the founder/CEO's rich mix of skills, and that it would be a mistake, in any event to try to do so. As an alternative we organized the founder/CEO's contribution into six categories, and recommended a transition plan where these attributes would be covered by a combination of current personnel and a less charismatic, more operations-focused externally-recruited CEO.
We also alerted our VC client to additional industry-specific vulnerabilities due to inroads from new technologies and weakness in the overall economic climate.
FUSION 
31 Atkinson Lane Sudbury, MA 01776
PH: (978) 460-1539 esfusion@sellmoretraining.com