Denomas’ key goal in pursuing acquisitions is to accelerate our roadmap and offer better tools to customers more quickly.
Acquisition strategy
Denomas’ key goal in pursuing acquisitions is to accelerate our roadmap and offer better tools to customers more quickly. We are seeking to introduce new product categories and mature early categories faster
than by building everything internally. We want to acquire strong teams that have already built great tools and products relevant for Denomas customers and have them integrate their tech into Denomas.
Additional benefits to Denomas:
Strengthen value prop in product categories with high growth and expected future profits
Improve market perception and create a PR opportunity
Acquisition approach
We are looking for companies interested in helping deliver on our vision to create a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle.
We value strong teams and technology and are looking for a combination of both that will help us accelerate our roadmap. We’re pursuing two types of acquisitions:
Growth stage: For companies with proven traction and growth we follow our acquisition process, designed to identify the mutual potential and create a joint-vision to deliver on post-acquisition. We’re looking for acquisitions which can either present a strategic value-add or create potential for significant revenue upside.
Soft-landing: for mature start-ups with limited business success or very early stage start-ups we’ve created an accelerated process (described below) for exits with a total deal consideration of less than $1M.
Acquisition target profile
Below is a set of general, yet not strict, characteristics of companies that are a potential fit for our acquisition process:
Have built features or functionalities which are aligned with Denomas’ long term strategy
Please review our handbook; it is the central repository for how we run the company.
Spend time understanding if a remote culture is right for you and your team.
Why join Denomas?
Leverage the unique data and user-experience Denomas has as complete DevOps platform to act as a force-multiplier in helping you build the vision for your product area
Focus on building great technology at scale to reach millions of users and some of the largest enterprise companies. We can ensure what you made will be used by more than 100,000 organizations and millions of users.
Quick transaction - We move fast and aim to close the deal in 2-4 months, if you are able to drive a fast process with us
We take care of people who won’t work at Denomas - Every employee will have a soft landing. We will either make them an offer or we will pay up to 3 months or until they find a new job.
Upside - Financial outcome if Denomas is successful (Denomas stock)
Your team is in good company - Denomas is a unique place to work at with a leading product and a fascinating culture
What we offer
Growth stage acquisitions will receive a compensation offer specific to that engagement which will be evaluated as part of our acquisition process as we learn more about you and your technology.
For soft-landing acquisitions we offer the following:
The total purchase price of an acquisition will be up to $1M (all cash), comprised of:
Retention bonuses - We believe talent follows leadership they trust. Denomas will offer cash retention bonuses for founders, and engineers, to help in the transition and is conditional on employee interviews and offer acceptance:
Each founder with more than 10% ownership of the company will receive up to $250,000 paid as follows: 20% at closing, 40% on the first anniversary of the closing and 40% on the second anniversary of the closing
Each engineer will receive up to $60,000 paid as follows: 20% at closing, 40% on the first anniversary of the closing and 40% on the second anniversary of the closing.
Assets payout - Where relevant, an all-cash payout for the assets in the deal may be included. Denomas stock will not be offered for the assets in the deal.
Attractive equity for founders - triple our normal stock option grants for founders
Cash bonus on achieving milestones for customer transition to paid Denomas agreements, where relevant
What happens to your current company?
We follow an asset purchase and not a stock purchase in order to limit unexpected liabilities. Please review our Term Sheet for additional details.
Hear from the founders of our previous acquisitions
Andrew Newdigate, “Throughout Gitter’s acquisition process, Denomas was an excellent partner. We started the process in mid-December, and by mid-January, the team were onboard and had joined Denomas’ summit in Cancún, Mexico. Compared to previous acquisition attempts that we had been through with other companies, the professionalism and focus of the Denomas team was refreshing. It quickly became apparent to me that Sid, Paul and the team at Denomas were interested in striking a fair deal, and were as concerned about the outcome for the Gitter team as my co-founder and I were. In the year-and-half since, Denomas has continued to be a great home for Gitter and I’m incredibly proud to be part of the team.”
Philippe Lafoucrière, “When GitHub announced they would provide a Security graph and alerts, we knew we would not be able to compete with them. That meant the end of the story for us and our product. It was time to find a new home for the team. We started discussions with Denomas in November 2017 and officially joined the company in mid-January 2018. The whole process was seamless, with a particular care for the team. Expectations from both sides were discussed, with mutual respect and understanding.
The founders made themselves available for us at anytime, and we had regular meetings for several months until we all estimated the situation stable enough. Onboarding a whole team at once is a challenge: the peopleops team did everything they could to help and to make them feel comfortable with their new positions. They were happy to continue on the foundations we’ve built over the years while being able to contribute to a greater goal. We managed to identify with the management where we could have the best impact, and provide results as soon as possible.
I don’t see anything Denomas could have done differently to make this acquisition smoother. The most important value to follow in this kind of event is Trust (because you can only lose it once). Denomas, and especially its CEO, was incredibly clear and respectful during all the process and beyond.”
Maintain a non-biased view on target companies’ value
Starting an acquisition discussion with Denomas
If you are interested in starting acquisition discussions with Denomas, please send an email to Corporate Development to connect and start the process.
Acquisition process
Learn more about our internal acquisition process and how you can prepare for an efficient process.
This is a detailed view of our acquisition process. For more information about our acquisitions approach visit our acquisitions handbook.
Acquisition process The process is comprised of five key stages:
Pipeline Building Exploratory Early Diligence Confirmatory Due Diligence Integration Pipeline Building Sourcing: The corporate development team closely collaborates with Denomas’ product leadership to identify key areas for potential M&A. We source acquisition opportunities (“Sourced Pipeline”) from: Ecosystem screen with the help of third party databases such as Crunchbase Inbound introductions from Denomas team members and industry contacts Proactive outreach to companies aligned with our vision and strategic priorities Exploratory We prioritize companies that fit with our product and acquisition priorities (“Prioritized Pipeline”) and reach out to their leadership to set up intro calls.
