Securing funding and selling a company represent fundamentally different challenges, each demanding its own expertise. Even CEOs with extensive experience raising capital may struggle when handling mergers and acquisitions, where distinct skills and knowledge are required. Research from the MIT Sloan Management Review shows this gap: 46% of all M&A deals ultimately fail, with an average span of a full decade between acquisition and divestiture.
Guy Taubin, CEO and co-founder of EvE—a strategic advisory firm—has observed these trends firsthand from both sides of the transaction. He attributes the issue not to a lack of intellect or preparation, but to a fundamental misunderstanding. Many executives mistakenly assume that their ability to attract investors translates seamlessly to buying or selling a business, when in reality, the two processes operate under entirely different rules.
The Difference Between Raising Capital and Selling a Company
Taubin emphasizes that while investors typically expect quarterly updates, an acquisition brings a long-term collaborator who will be deeply involved for years. Shmuel M. Ginat, EvE’s co-founder and chief business officer, reinforces this perspective from a financial standpoint.
The financial implications alone should prompt caution among founders. According to SRS Acquiom, sellers often receive just 21 cents for every dollar of the stated valuation, meaning founders walk away with only one-fifth of the headline figure. The discrepancy between the announced price and the actual payout frequently widens due to delayed milestones, last-minute negotiations, and unmet financial targets.
Post-Merger Integration Phase
Data from WTW reveals that 70% to 90% of mergers fail to deliver their projected value, with cultural misalignment identified as the primary obstacle. The acquired company retains its own workforce, traditions, and internal hierarchies, elements that cannot be absorbed through legal documents alone. Taubin argues that the integration process is not a single event but an ongoing evolution. Even when dealing with seasoned buyers and founders, the power dynamic remains uneven; one party possesses institutional M&A expertise, while the other lacks comparable experience.
Taubin, Ginat, and Ronen Berger, EvE’s co-founder and chief revenue officer, bring diverse backgrounds, including operations, business development, finance, angel investing, and government, to their advisory work. Their strength lies not in isolated specializations, but in their ability to analyze challenges from multiple angles. A problem that one partner views as operational might trigger a structural financing solution from another, leading to innovative resolutions that a single adviser could not devise.
Berger illustrates this approach through a case involving two separate clients each facing fundraising difficulties. he posed. The insight led to a merger proposal neither had considered, structured in a way no individual adviser from a single discipline could have conceived. The industry, however, has been slow to acknowledge that raising capital repeatedly does not equate to readiness for the first M&A deal. The traditional M&A playbook, effective for earlier generations of founders, no longer fits today’s more complex transactions and sophisticated buyers.
Modern deal structures are far more detailed, acquirers are more discerning, and the repercussions of missteps are more severe. If the M&A process has remained largely unchanged over a century, how can it effectively serve the markets and leaders of today? Taubin highlights a critical limitation: a CEO who successfully scales a company to 40 employees is not necessarily equipped to lead it to 4,000. The same principle applies to M&A, where experience and institutional knowledge are indispensable. EvE’s methodology hinges on the belief that such expertise cannot be acquired solely from textbooks, real-world lessons, including past mistakes, play a vital role in successful transactions.