{"id":43114,"date":"2023-10-20T15:26:12","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/navigating-acquisition-proposals-connect2field-founder-shares-his-advice-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:26:12","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:26:12","slug":"navigating-acquisition-proposals-connect2field-founder-shares-his-advice-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/navigating-acquisition-proposals-connect2field-founder-shares-his-advice-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating acquisition proposals: Connect2Field founder shares his advice – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was a message from a LinkedIn connection last year that started the process for Connect2Field founder Steve Orenstein to sell his business software service company to global fleet management corporation Fleetmatics last month.<\/p>\n

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Connect2Field launched in 2009, and Orenstein had since built up customers around the world, when he received an out-of-the-blue message from a senior Fleetmatics manager he was connected with via the professional networking site.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey were in the early days of looking to acquire a business. They were searching all over the world to see what was available,\u201d Orenstein told StartupSmart<\/i> in a phone interview from Portugal, where he was on holiday.<\/p>\n

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Then in May this year, Fleetmatics came back to him expressing an interest in taking over Connect2Field, which allows service businesses to store information such as job sheets and invoices in the cloud and are accessible anywhere.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMy initial reaction was \u2018no, it\u2019s not the right time to acquire us\u2019, but they came back with a good offer and also their business connected so well with what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Orenstein says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI still thought we had a long way to go in our growth curve and I still saw there were a lot of opportunities for us and we were executing well, we had plans in place.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt wasn\u2019t really on the cards to consider an acquisition at that point in time. But once I started to look into the deal in more detail it became very attractive, but also from the point of view of seeing the product become a leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A deal was done for an undisclosed sum and Orenstein, 33, has moved from Australia to Dublin, where Fleetmatics has a large development team, with his wife to join the company while remaining chief executive of Connect2Field.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s exciting times now because we\u2019re part of a much bigger organisation and it has a lot more funding. So having been in start-up land, where you\u2019ve always been looking at how much you\u2019re spending and that sort of stuff, it\u2019s now a very different ball game. You\u2019re able to do a lot more things than what you could previously,\u201d Orenstein says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He says he had previously been approached with offers to buy the company, but he had been focused on building the best possible product with the best possible customer service.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBy doing that you should have people contacting you,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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Orenstein advises other start-ups to try to avoid having to go into the market themselves to find a buyer.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt becomes very difficult and your ability to negotiate is far more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He suggests that the biggest thing for start-ups is to ensure they have money in the bank.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re close to running out of money or anything like that, and you\u2019re negotiating for investment, you\u2019re in a very difficult position, and then an investor will take advantage of that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Orenstein also says the best advice he can give for companies going through an acquisition is to make sure they have a good legal team.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen you\u2019re involved in negotiations, let a lawyer have those arguments for you rather than you having those arguments directly with the person who\u2019s looking to acquire the business,\u201d he says, adding that it takes emotion out of the process and avoids hurting relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a message from a LinkedIn connection last year that started the process for Connect2Field founder Steve Orenstein to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3,4,20,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}