M&A Science
Corporate Development Strategy: Notion's M&A Approach with Hilary Shirazi
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Hilary Shirazi - Head of Corporate Development at Notion
On one deal, Hilary Shirazi's team was buying a startup of fewer than 50 people and ended up with 75 people working the M&A internally. "We had more people internally than at the company we were actually acquiring." Today she runs Notion's corporate development with a team of two.
Hilary has done M&A at LinkedIn, Zendesk, Pinterest, and now Notion. She walks through the deal thesis every sponsor writes before a single target is named. She also covers her Four T's (talent, tech, traction, terrain) for deciding what kind of deal you're doing. And she explains why Notion skips the IMO: the team that writes the integration plan, often before the term sheet, is the team that runs it after close.
Hilary's fix for the 75-person problem is Corp Dev funneling every internal question so founders aren't buried. DealRoom Diligence gives that funnel a home: requests are created, assigned, and tracked in one place, and sellers see only the requests assigned to them. DealRoom says centralizing your diligence process can reduce due diligence time by 50%. See how it works: click here.