20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2019
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rob Salvagno is VP of Corporate Development and Cisco Investments at Cisco, where he is responsible for leading all M&A efforts as well as managing Cisco’s strategic venture capital which invests hundreds of millions of dollars annually. At Cisco, Rob led the $1.2 billion acquisition of Meraki, one of the most successful platform acquisitions in Cisco’s history, and the $3.7 billion acquisition of AppDynamics, cementing Cisco’s place in the business intelligence, analytics and IT operations market. Most recently, Rob engineered the $2.3 billion acquisition of Duo, the leading provider of unified access security and multi-factor authentication delivered through the cloud. Prior to the world of M&A, Rob was a technology investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Rob made his way from investment banking to leading the M&A and venture activity for one of the world's largest tech players of the last decade?
2.) How do M&A teams like to get to know startups that they could invest in or acquire? How does Rob like to work with the venture ecosystem? How does Rob think on Paul Graham's comment of "do not talk to corp dev"? What are the nuances here? How does it differ for consumer vs enterprise?
3.) How does Rob define true success when it comes to M&A evaluation? Should corp dev be strategy first or transaction first? What have been Rob's biggest lessons on successful integration? Where do so many go wrong with integration post M&A? What questions can be asked ahead of time to know if integration and culture will be a fit?
4.) How does Rob reflect on his own price sensitivity today? How does Rob feel about the multiples enterprise companies are currently trading at? What have Rob's most successful acquisitions taught him about price and price sensitivity? How does Rob deal with the inherent conflict of investing and also acquiring companies? How does he communicate that to the companies he invests in?
5.) What does the acquisition-decision making process look like at Cisco? How does it differ on a deal by deal basis? What do Cisco do to allow them to move so much faster than any other M&A teams? What have been Rob's lessons on the importance of speed in winning the best transactions?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Rob’s Fave Book: The Poisonwood Bible
Rob’s Most Recent Acquisitions: CloudCherry, Voicea
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rob on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 20-minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and this is our last episode of 2019. |
| 0:04.6 | As the year closes, I've been reading tons of predictions for 2020, and much of them discuss |
| 0:09.2 | the exit environment. An area art ecosystem really doesn't cover that much, largely being M&A, |
| 0:14.7 | and I'm looking forward to changing that in 2020, and I want to start that today. And so with that, |
| 0:19.4 | I'm thrilled to welcome Rob Salvanyo, VP of |
| 0:21.7 | corporate development and Cisco investments at Cisco, where he's responsible for leading all M&A |
| 0:26.2 | efforts, as well as managing Cisco's strategic venture capital, which invests hundreds of |
| 0:30.4 | millions of dollars annually. At Cisco, Rob led the 1.2 billion acquisition of Maraki, one of the most |
| 0:35.6 | successful platform acquisitions in Cisco's history, and also the $3.7 billion acquisition of Maraki, one of the most successful platform acquisitions in Cisco's history, |
| 0:38.4 | and also the $3.7 billion acquisition of App Dynamics, cementing Cisco's place in the business |
| 0:43.7 | intelligence, analytics, and IT operations market. And if that wasn't enough, most recently, |
| 0:48.5 | Rob engineered the $2.3 billion acquisition of Duo, the leading provider of unified access |
| 0:53.7 | security and |
| 0:54.5 | multi-factor authentication delivered through the cloud. I'd also want to say that a huge thank |
| 0:58.6 | you to David Ulovic at Andreessen, both for the fantastic intro and for the questions today. David, |
| 1:03.5 | I so appreciate that and mehito's on me to thank you. But before we dive into the show today, |
| 1:07.8 | I'm sure you've heard me talk about it before, but my word, this is a product I love, Carter. |
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| 1:18.0 | Go to carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off, and with more than 800,000 employees and |
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| 1:32.5 | and work with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants. Go to carter.com forward slash |
... |
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