# Acquisitions and Turnarounds Most acquisitions destroy value. Most turnarounds fail. The companies that succeed at these repeatedly have built something systematic — not just deal skill or operational heroics, but a machine that compounds through acquisition. This section covers both sides: the assessment discipline that separates good deals from bad, and the operational playbook for the first hundred days and beyond. These are domains where all the other sections converge — you need to read the numbers, set direction, run operations, make decisions, and lead people, often under time pressure and incomplete information. --- ## Where to start **[[The First Hundred Days]]** — The window when everything is possible and nothing is stable. What to focus on immediately post-close. **[[Harvest to Growth]]** — The integrated playbook for rebuilding a growth engine in a business that's been starved of investment. --- ## Acquisitions How to assess and integrate businesses that compound. **[[The First Hundred Days]]** — Post-close priorities: what to learn, what to protect, what to change. The window for establishing trust and tempo. **[[Synergies That Deliver]]** — Most synergy cases are fantasies. What actually drives value, and how to tell the difference. **[[Organic vs Acquired Growth]]** — Different growth sources have different economics. How to think about the mix. --- ## Turnarounds How to rebuild a business that's underperforming. **[[Harvest to Growth]]** — The complete playbook: find the constraint, protect what works, rebuild the engine. The synthesis of everything else applied to a struggling business. **[[Fresh Eyes]]** — The advantage of walking in without baggage. What new people see that old hands miss, and how to preserve that perspective. **[[The Identity Constraint]]** — The binding constraint in most turnarounds isn't operational — it's that the team doesn't believe change is possible. How to shift identity. --- ## Due diligence The metrics that matter when assessing a target. This draws heavily from [[Reading the Numbers]]. **[[Unit Economics]]** — Does adding customers create value or consume it? The foundation of whether a business model works. **[[Recurring Revenue]]** — How hard you have to run just to stand still. The baseline that determines everything. **[[Gross vs Net Retention]]** — The difference between a leaky bucket and a growing one. Churn versus expansion from existing customers. **[[Limits to Growth]]** — Every recurring revenue business has a ceiling. Where is it? **[[FCF Conversion]]** — Do profits become cash? Earnings are accounting. Cash is real. **[[EBITDA in Software]]** — What the headline numbers hide in software businesses. Why EBITDA needs adjustment. --- ## Case studies **[[Serial Acquirers|Acquirers]]** — 24 studies of companies that compound through M&A. How Danaher, Constellation, Heico, AMETEK, and others build systematic acquisition machines. --- ## Suggested reading order If you're working through this section systematically: **For acquisitions:** 1. [[The First Hundred Days]] — immediate priorities 2. [[Synergies That Deliver]] — what actually drives value 3. [[Organic vs Acquired Growth]] — growth source economics 4. Due diligence sequence: [[Unit Economics]] → [[Recurring Revenue]] → [[Gross vs Net Retention]] → [[FCF Conversion]] **For turnarounds:** 1. [[Harvest to Growth]] — the integrated playbook 2. [[Fresh Eyes]] — preserving outsider perspective 3. [[The Identity Constraint]] — shifting team beliefs 4. [[Hidden Bottleneck]] — finding the real constraint 5. [[Standards, Tempo, Focus]] — rebuilding operational discipline