BroadSoft Secrets Unveiled: Napkin Acquisition

By Michael Tessler, Managing Partner

Part of BroadSoft’s success were the many acquisitions we negotiated with and closed. Many of you ask about some of the secrets around those acquisitions. To be honest, without the many companies we acquired, we would not have been able to grow the BroadSoft many people know and love today. We truly did build the company through a combination of organic efforts and growth via acquisition.

We were very proud of the many great teams and leaders that joined the organization via acquisitions. These teams added their unique experiences and expertise. Joining multiple teams together allowed us to form a unique BroadSoft culture that allowed the company to grow and scale.

While normal acquisitions take months to negotiate and close, we had one acquisition that I believe was the fastest negotiation in the history of typical M&As. Let’s go back to the year of 2013. At this time, we realized that we wanted to grow our broadcloud business faster, better. To do this we needed to understand the selling motions to SMBs and how digital would change the industry.

We had our eye on a company in Germany, Placetel, run and operated by an acquaintance of mine, Peter Nowack. Many years before this, Scott and I met Peter when he was a senior executive at T-Systems, the large enterprise arm of DT.

Placetel seemed to have been growing quickly and innovating with a new model. They were focused on fully digital selling to small businesses. We wanted to better understand this model to see if we could learn and share this knowledge with our service provider partners. We were already running a go-to-market program, Powered by BroadSoft, with our partners and needed to find a way to accelerate our sell-through (a key metric in growing the business).

We had been considering the acquisition for a while, and I finally decided it was the right time to make the acquisition. I called Peter and said I was flying to Germany for only one reason: to cut a deal. In fact, I flew out the week of July 4th, 2013. Upon arrival, Peter and I met at his favorite restaurant for lunch and we talked for hours (and drank a little wine — Peter knows his wines). Finally, I grabbed a napkin and drew out the deal that I was willing to do. The picture attached to this article is the actual deal that we agreed to.

We shook hands in agreement. With the napkin, I left Germany and flew back to DC. When I returned to the BroadSoft office, I met with Mary Ellen (our corporate counsel) and handed her the napkin. She looked at the napkin and then at me not understanding what exactly I just handed her. I explained my trip to Peter and what we agreed to. She thought I was crazy flying to Germany over the July 4th holiday and negotiating a deal on a napkin. I still remember the look!

This was the fastest negotiation ever yet, at the same time, the start of a great relationship between Peter’s team and the BroadSoft team. Peter became an important part of the executive team and we smartly left him alone to run his business and continue to grow. Our partners from around the world all wanted to talk to Peter and his team to learn how they figured out a fully digital model in 2013.

I want to thank the Placetel team for their innovation and for continuing to innovate with new reseller models, adding mobile partnerships, adding unified communication and many more. Although a small team, they were a very effective team.

P.S. Email us at info@truenorthadvisory.us if you would like to get access to the actual “napkin” acquisition image. Also, you can see the deal as part of their Placetel website: