Get the M&A Game Before Tomorrow's Launch!

So I reached out to Sam Riley, the CEO of Ansarada, after all the excitement on WSO over their M&A game, and he graciously agreed to the following interview. On top of that, he also gave me a link to share with you guys where you can get the game today before its official launch tomorrow. I've posted the link at the end of the interview. I didn't think to ask, but it looks like it's only for iOS at the moment. I'll clarify that and get back to you guys. Without further ado:

Eddie: What was the inspiration behind the game? Is it more to get people interested in M&A, or more to develop a community of current finance and M&A professionals?

Sam: It was to develop a community of professionals and obviously raise the awareness of Ansarada in a way that differentiates us from competitors. Also, as you know M&A and in particular tasks associated with due diligence and data rooms are often performed by Analysts and those tasks and responsibilities can be long, tedious, stressful and not at all fun. The game was designed to give people that work on deals a way to be a dealmaker and do the deals without. An escape from reality that appeals to the fun and competitive nature of bankers.

Another reasons for a game was we saw it as a way to put ansarada in front of people regularly, not just when they are on a deal using our product. M&A deals typically go minimum 6 months but more typically 9 and any deals we don’t win means that that Analyst who perhaps sourced a quote form us but got forced to use something else won’t really interact with us much until that deal we missed out on is finished. If we can get a following for the game we will continue to invest in features and functions that the M&A community want to see in the game. The first release is to just get something out there that hopefully attracts some passionate people in the industry we can partner with to improve it and make it an essential thing you have to play if you’re serious about M&A.

Eddie: What insights are you hoping to gain from player statistics and such?

Sam: One other reason for the game was to analyse how people play it and get insights we can share. Some things we will look at are:

Do people choose advisors or go it alone? Does this vary by their industry they work in and job title?

What are the most popular industry sectors? Where do people start dealing in?

How much do people buy vs merge vs sell. What method to grow your empire do people gravitate to.

How much on average do people play per day? When do they typically play and for how long in each session?

What CEO traits/skills to people build up most - drive? Creativity or things like deception skills?

Basically stats that give insights into banker behaviour we can turn into a cool infographic to share around the M&A community. Also to share with the players to show how they stack up against their peers on these type of things.

Eddie: Describe game play for us. What are the factors that play into each decision that needs to be made, and how does the game flow?

Sam: The game starts with a phone call from an angel investors PA who says you’ve been noted for your great work on a recent deal and he wants to back you to go out on your own and start building an M&A empire with $20m capital to start. You give your enterprise a name, choose/customise your avatar, decide the CEO traits you want to start with (creativity, drive, leadership etc) and also the industry sector you want to start in (industry sectors are the same as banking - healthcare, FIG, Industrials etc). When thats done you see a press release telling the world to watch out and your sector rival calls and tells you that you haven’t got a chance and they will be glad to burn you. You then start by browsing businesses to buy based on some simple financial stats, you select one to bid on and choose you team of bankers, lawyers, accountants and of course a data room! You can choose between 1 star to 5 star advisors to suit the size of the deal or you can go it alone and take the risk. If you choose advisors they give you a report that gives recommendations of what tactics to use in the negotiation with the opposing CEO, also they can boost the effectiveness of your tactics plus give helpful advice and valuation recommendations during the negotiation. You then enter the negotiation with the opposing CEO with the goal of revealing what the real stats are behind things like revenue, profit, management team effectiveness etc. To do this you choose tactics like flattering them, bullying, haggling etc. These either work or don’t work and also affect the opposing CEO’s mood, which also affects how likely they are to accept your offer. NOTE: At this stage the opposing CEO is a computer but we hope to build in a way to play against other real people.

When you are confident in a price to pay you can bid and select the amount you want to pay, this may be accepted or rejected. You get three attempts to get an acceptance and then afterwards you are graded on how much under or over the actual value of the business you paid.

The game rewards the right behaviour and thinking, the smart use of advisors and the traits you build up in your CEO have an effect too. If you play badly then there are events in the game that can come back to bite you for your bad behaviour - like a cash hit for overvalued assets of a previous acquisition because you never chose advisors to conduct DD.

As you build your portfolio and time ticks on the profits of those companies get added to your capital. This is essentially how you grow your empire.

You also start with your Headquarters being a single brick building with a cheap car out front. As you build your empire it grows to a glass skyscraper complete with speedboat out front, limo and a chopper on the roof.

The game design is short play/long play, meaning you can play it for 3 minutes and complete one acquisition or merge a business or two and then leave it. To finish the entire game is longer as you need to unlock all the industry sectors, defeat your sector rivals and build up your experience points to unlock rewards and the ability to add skills to your CEO.

There is also a leaderboard and one we will publish to LinkedIn (the Leader boards only list the fake company names people choose to deal under NOT their actual name or email!)

Other features are performance graphs of how your doing in each sector and overall. There are also challenges and rewards along the way for things like ‘completing your 5th company sale’ etc.

Eddie: How does a player "win" or "lose"? Can you get stuck with a really crappy deal and bust out? In other words, is it a zero-sum game like Wall Street?

Sam: Yes you can bust out but just like Wall Street you can start again. As mentioned above you get rewarded or penalized for certain behaviour or thinking in the game. It may not immediately reward or punish you but it will happen! Even when you are putting an offer on a company your sector rival can jump in and outbid you and leave you the choice to counteroffer above theirs or walk away. Just like real M&A though you will still be left with costs of due diligence and other advisor fees.

Eddie: How many users are you hoping to sign up in the first week, month, etc?

Sam: Our ‘Big ass ad’ as one of your community members called it has generated over 1,000 pre registrations who will get emailed their bonus $20m capital code tomorrow so they can start with $40m. We are hoping to get 5,000 in the first month and then see what the feedback is to quickly go back to developing and tweaking it. Beyond that we really don’t know - were breaking new ground and it is a bit of a risk that we hope doesn’t end up with egg on our face. We are putting our balls out there a bit and thats always scary but the team here is pumped and excited!

Eddie: I know it's probably a work in progress. Is there anything you might be building into future updates?

Sam: There is no debt engine but thats an element we will look to build in.

There is no deep sophisticated modelling or analytical searching for companies. We would like to build a simple modelling engine that lets you run senarios and analysis on business to uncover smart ways of bidding on it - which the game would reward you for.

When merging it is based purely on size and financials but we would love to expand that so that merging complementary industries or companies with the same product but operating in different geographies is smart and yields better merger results.

You can’t shop using your capital for toys and other things to pimp out your headquarters but we would like to make this possible and also allow players to show off their sick HQ’s publicly and get liked for it.

Eddie: Sounds fantastic, Sam. Is there any way WSO monkeys can get an early look at it?

Sam: Why not? They can download the app and start playing right here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/m-a-game/id786950928?ls=1&mt=8