Partner Before You Buy: The Pre-Acquisition Strategy Corp Dev Teams Skip

Tomer Stavitsky is SVP and Chief Corporate Development Officer at Omnicell (NASDAQ: OMCL)

Corp dev teams treat M&A and partnerships as separate tracks, but Tomer Stavitsky looks at them holistically. In this episode, he breaks down the partner-first approach: an acquisition framework for situations where the target isn't ready, the PE owner isn't selling, or your integration capacity isn't there. He walks us through structuring the partnership, keeping the acquisition thesis alive through execution, negotiating and defending a right of first refusal, and managing the three-way stakeholder dynamic without signaling the wrong things at the wrong time.

What You'll Learn

• When partner-first is the right call and when it isn't
• How to keep the acquisition thesis alive through the partnership execution phase
• Managing the three-way dynamic between target leadership, the PE owner, and your own organization
• How to negotiate a right of first refusal and what happens when it gets tested
• Why teams pull the trigger too early and how to protect the process from internal pressure
• Applying partner-first to AI-era targets without getting caught in the hype cycle

If you're working through a partner-first deal, the M&A Science membership has frameworks and tools built for exactly this kind of situation. Learn more at mascience.com/membership.

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This episode is sponsored by DealRoom

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Episode Chapters

[00:00] Introduction: Tomer Stavitsky's Background and the End-to-End Corp Dev View

[08:04] Building or Rebuilding a Corp Dev Function

[16:01] What Is the Partner-First Approach and When Does It Apply

[21:10] Mapping the Market and Deciding Who Stays on the Watch List

[24:13] Managing Multiple Targets Without Over-Committing

[27:48] Using Exclusivity as a Strategic and Protective Tool

[35:00] Managing the Three-Party Dynamic: Target Leadership, PE Owner, and Your Own Org

[37:58] The Real Story: How a Partnership Became an Acquisition (Including the Competitive ROFR Moment)

[42:41] The Most Common Mistake in Converting a Partnership to an Acquisition

[44:32] Applying Partner-First to AI-Era Targets

[49:21] What's the Craziest Thing You've Seen in M&A?