MSPs are increasingly leveraging mergers and acquisitions as a strategy for growth. As the need for a transaction of your own grows, the risk of a transaction not going as planned has to be contemplated. You can leverage learnings from the events of the past to create more successful deals today. Join Gerwai Todd, CEO and Co-Founder of TimeZest, for the top 5 insights gleaned from his experience participating in the formative M&A events of 2009 through 2019 at ConnectWise. He will cover the investments in CharTec and LabTech (2009), Quosal (2010), and ScreenConnect (2016), which brought four industry-leading technologies into a single product suite. In this informative session, you’ll look back at lessons learned and tips to make a future transaction of your own successful.

Whoa, I guess I need to write 250+ words... I'm hopeful several of the lessons learned that I took away from those years are ones that can help others. There is also the just as interesting subject of how the competition wasn't our biggest challenge and how to avoid that yourself. I can walk through the timeline of events from 2008 and key decisions we made along the way. So many years have passed that a lot of people in the community don't recall the technology landscape at the time. I'll preview some of that here. In 2008, there wasn't a single PSA + RMM product or company. ConnectWise and Autotask were the 800 lbs PSA gorillas. N-Able, Level Platforms, and Kaseya were the well known RMMs, LabTech was a few guys working out of a house in Toledo, Ohio. No one had combined a PSA+RMM and Arnie was rightfully concerned that the MSP market would reject the idea of ConnectWise picking a side. We made several decisions based upon that concern. Now looking back, the clear value of combining a PSA and RMM has proven itself several times over. The entire ConnectWise leadership team was confident in the decision, we just had to manage how the MSP world would accept the landscape shift.

I guarantee my walk through memory lane will be entertaining and interesting. And, that you will walk away with at least one golden nugget for you or your business.