The impact of M&A on society and communication during the merger as a key to success

In today's episode we will talk about M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions, or in Portuguese, “Mergers and Acquisitions”) and how it impacts the lives of companies. To this end, we invited two professionals in the field to debate this topic. Guilherme Tossulino, M&A Director at Softplan and Pierre Schurmann, Founder and CEO of nuvini.

Check out a little more about this chat below!

Guest trajectory

Pierre has been in the world of startups and technology since 1996. He has been a founder and investor in several companies throughout his career. In 2019, Pierre founded nuvini, a company focused on M&A.

nuvini is a Saas B2B (Software as a Service for Business to Business) company that operates in three strategic verticals through companies that are leaders in their segments. Its purpose is to transform the history of small and medium-sized companies through more accessible cloud technologies.

Guilherme has worked at Softplan for almost six years. Since then, he has worked on several fronts related to investments and acquisitions. For approximately a year, Guilherme has been in charge of the M&A department. 

Communication as an essential step in M&A

In most cases, it is difficult to make all individuals involved aware of everything that is happening in a company merger process. 

Most of the companies that nuvini acquires are smaller companies. Therefore, during the M&A process Pierre makes it clear that in interactions he always asks people to clear up any doubts they have. It's a big change, so it's necessary to highlight all the confusion and lack of understanding. Showing what will change and what will remain the same is extremely important.

The communication process is the key to generating positive results. If a person involved in the project does not understand something very well, a part of the strategy will present some error in the result. Therefore, clarifying doubts is essential.

The impact of company mergers on the Software ecosystem

It is true that when there is a joining of forces between companies, this generates a great impact on the Brazilian Software ecosystem, since each one has its own essence, regardless of whether it is small, medium or large. 

There are currently more than 600 people who are part of nuvini. As Pierre mentions, it is a community that causes effects. When one company acquires another, a situation that occurs that is similar to Valley practices is the sharing of learning and different knowledge about a certain area. 

The moment you bring two or three companies together, you have a set of possibilities for new ideas, as each of them already had its own “recipe for the cake” that was working. 

Sharing each idea among them is the best option to establish how the merger will happen. Furthermore, this allows for the dissemination of new information that an individual within a company, for example, did not previously have access to learn more about. 

M&A Challenges

An essential aspect to be analyzed for the company to stay on track is trying to understand from a cultural point of view how people are connected to the business. There are many cultural clashes during M&A simply because individuals have different cultures. 

During the conversation, Pierre points out that cultures may be different, but it is essential that values ​​are close, as in the long term the companies participating in the M&A are unable to build something together.

Did you like these reflections? Listen to the full chat. In it we talk about other issues related to this social project linked to technology.