How To Maintain Your Leverage After You Sign An LOI

Ganesh Ramakrishna and Mike Watson built Opex Analytics to 140 employees before they sold it to PE-backed LLamasoft in the fall of last year.

To read a transcript of this episode, click here.

Ganesh Ramakrishna and Mike Watson built Opex Analytics to 140 employees before they sold it to PE-backed LLamasoft in the fall of last year.

Opex is in the business of helping Fortune 500 companies get their products from a manufacturing plant into a customer’s hands. It’s what data geeks call supply chain design, and it’s a big business — especially these days when many people are working from home, and COVID-19 has changed the game for anyone who sells a physical product.

This episode illustrates the definition of a strategic acquisition: LLamasoft wanted to bring more AI to their customer’s decision making, and Opex was a seamless addition. There is lots to learn from listening to Ganesh and Mike, including:

• How to maintain negotiating leverage (even after signing a Letter of Intent)
• How to hire highly sought-after employees
• How to bootstrap your way to 140 employees without raising money
• Why service companies often fail to build products (and why the inverse is not true)
• The intricacies of sharing equity with employees
• Why diligence is like giving birth — painful at the time but worth it in the end

Ganesh and Mike bootstrapped their way to an exit by tightly managing cash. If you’re worried about money these days, we can help find hidden sources of cash in your business when you complete module 10 of The Value Builder System™. Get started free by getting your Value Builder Score.

Check out our full M&A Glossary

About Our Guest

Ganesh is a juggernaut of artificial intelligence ideation. His ability to connect with and work alongside executive leaders, data scientists and development teams alike makes him best suited to bring varied perspectives and solid technical insight into any enterprise problem. Mike is a recognized leader in the enterprise artificial intelligence space. With a PhD in Industrial Engineering and 20+ years of experience leading global business teams at LogicTools, ILOG and IBM, an adjunct professor at two masters programs at Northwestern University and the co-author of two books (Managerial Analytics and Supply Chain Network Design). Together, they founded Opex Analytics in 2013 and grew the company to success in the AI market prior to integrating with LLamasoft, now forming the industry’s premiere AI Powerhouse.