Best Tech PE Deals Ever?
What are some historic software PE deals? Interested in ones that either were hugely profitable or had rock solid business models
Trending Content - Private Equity Forum
| +89 | Nothing to do at work & bored to hell | 9 | 2d |
| +67 | Do people over-index on 'moats' | 22 | 2d |
| +54 | Predicted Net Worth in Trodden Finance Path by 60? | 20 | 2d |
| +44 | Biggest (avoidable) failures in PE Investments? | 25 | 2d |
| +24 | What do you think of PE Value Creation Careers in 2026? | 7 | 1d |
| +19 | LT Career Path after MF PE Associate Program? | 5 | 17h |
| +17 | Is the lifestyle really better? | 13 | 3h |
| +16 | Honest opinions needed about lateraling | 5 | 1d |
| +12 | NY LMM PE Recruiting | 3 | 3d |
| +12 | How to approach Buyside Recruiting | 3 | 6d |
Career Resources
Thoma/Ellie Mae
How tf did they flip them for 3x in ~1 year?? Sheesh.
For sure one of the most impressive large cap tech deals ever and one of my favorite case studies.
How Thoma Bravo Grew Ellie Mae from $3.7B to $11B in 18 Months
0% rates
From a global lens, KKR/Visma - has 21x’d since the time of investment ($1B entry price).
Best deal should be judged on a sliding scale of ROIC and IRR (to adjust for time scale). Visma is for sure one of the best performing large cap tech assets but KKR did not make even remotely close to a 21x on their investment. They acquired ~77% in 2010, sold off chunks to Cinven and Hg (who already owned ~18%) in 2014 so they all became minority investors with ~31% apiece, then sold out the rest of their stake in 2017 to Hg, GIC, and a few other large allocators who did direct co-invests. According to Reuters they got a 3.2x on that last stake sale so we can probably assume they made less on the earlier sales in 2014. The real winner of the group is for sure Hg. That said, there are a lot of tech deals in the $1b+ EV range done by firms like Thoma/Vista/Silver Lake that have way better IRR and MOIC than the Visma/KKR deal.
Silver Lake / Dell
Absolute baller move by Michael Dell
Vista / Transfirst, Marketo, PowerSchool. Absurd returns on all 3
Not an LBO but facebooks acquisition of instagram
Love this one. Following the strategic acquisition theme, Google acquired Android for $50m. Now it has 70%+ global market share for smart phone OS and the Google Play store alone generated $45b+ revenue last year.
Not a private equity, and not software, and not a deal, but in 2004 I got a BOGO on a lamb schwarma from a street meat cart in Philly.
100% return, insane man. Congrats.
I don’t believe you
Who advised on that deal?
Thoma/Mailgun comes to mind, I think it was ~9x return in 2 years (if they sold prior to Sinch's stock tanking)
TA / ZoomInfo is another good one.
https://www.pehub.com/how-ta-turned-90m-into-6-12bn-on-zoominfo/
Has to be top 3 best MOIC mid-large cap PE tech deals ever if not #1.
Came here for this. Heard it was by far the best deal TA has ever done.
This deal, sourced by an assoc, made the managing Partner on the deal a billionaire.
Vista Equity Partners' acquisition of Marketo: Acquired for $1.79 billion in 2016 and sold to Adobe for $4.75 billion in 2018.
Warburg Pincus / Crowdstrike
https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/crowdstri…
Elon Musk / Twitter
Every Broadcom acquisition
Thoma Bravo - Deltek (acquired for ~1bn sold for nearly 3Bn to Roper Technologies)
Apollo - LyondellBasell (Apollo profited ~9.6Bn)
Elliott and Veritas / Athenahealth (acquired for $5.7B and sold to Bain Cap and H&F for $17B 3 years later)
+1 to this. Athenahealth also seems very popular amongt PE-backed healthcare companies during that time period. Not entirely sure why though (used to work at a company that used it and one of my relatives who owns a medical practice was asked to switch to athenahealth if they agreed to be acquired by the buyer, a PE firm).
TA / Discover.Org (now ZoomInfo) is the largest MOIC I’ve heard of for an LBO
What was it?
Just search on google it’s the first article mentioning the multiple
bump
Sit sint sequi blanditiis voluptatem ex minus quasi. Dignissimos eos soluta ab.
Quisquam eligendi aliquid autem eaque. Aliquam omnis molestias modi reprehenderit error quisquam. Quia dolor modi at ex accusantium eos ad libero. Odit ea voluptas distinctio earum beatae. Alias dolores natus repellat est inventore laborum dolor.
Sequi dolorem non enim quis expedita aut. Ea et quia aperiam ut. Sed temporibus commodi at et aut facere odio. Necessitatibus quasi autem sunt fuga distinctio exercitationem.
Possimus deleniti harum corrupti et ea fuga vitae. Qui quos eveniet illum rerum animi facilis quas sint. Neque cupiditate reiciendis qui doloribus non.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Aliquid consequuntur saepe animi dolores ipsa quisquam. Dolore vel id quasi. Cum molestiae qui repudiandae est mollitia quod laudantium. Dolores at quibusdam commodi in voluptas voluptatem porro. Exercitationem rerum nisi aspernatur vero enim omnis quidem neque.