Mastering Mergers and Acquisitions: Navigating Growth and Ownership for WBEs
On August 14, 2025, WBEC-West hosted the Colorado Forum Mastering Mergers & Acquisitions: Navigating Growth and Ownership for WBEs at Denver Public Schools. The session featured Paige Goss, Founder and CEO of Point Solutions Security, and Nicole Marsh, Founding Partner at IMPRINT Events Group. Both women have scaled multimillion-dollar companies and navigated acquisitions, mergers, and equity transactions.
Their stories reinforced what we consistently see in our work as non-equity business partners: M&A can be a catalyst for growth and a pathway to exit, but only if approached with discipline, realism, and long-term strategy. Too many women founders receive valuations based on emotion or inflated by brokers seeking commission. Those numbers collapse in due diligence. Real value is created years before a deal, in how the business is structured, led, and prepared to run without the owner at the center.
Why Women Entrepreneurs Explore M&A
For women-owned businesses, mergers and acquisitions are more than financial transactions. They are a way to accelerate scale, diversify services, and strengthen ownership. Motivations shared during the forum included:
Acquiring clients and market presence: Paige acquired a Colorado firm to gain 25 years of reputation, long-standing customer relationships, and a stronger local footprint.
Expanding capabilities and reach: Nicole merged with companies to pursue larger contracts and enter new geographies that would have taken years to access organically.
Vertical integration: Owners recognized that buying vendors could immediately improve profitability by internalizing services they were already purchasing externally.
Equity swaps for growth: Rather than cash, equity was sometimes exchanged for consulting or preferred vendor relationships. Done well, this preserves cash flow and builds capability. Done poorly, it dilutes ownership without lasting benefit.
Lessons That Define Successful M&A
1. Work Yourself Out of the Business Before You Sell
This was one of the most powerful lessons from both Paige and Nicole. Buyers do not want to acquire a company whose success depends entirely on the founder’s relationships or presence. Building leadership teams, sales pipelines, and systems that can operate independently takes years, not months. Owners who wait until they are ready to sell are already too late.
2. Growth Can Be Acquired or Built Organically
M&A allows founders to bypass the slow path of incremental growth. A merger or acquisition can add millions in revenue, new markets, and expanded service lines overnight. The risk lies in cultural and operational alignment. Without careful due diligence, integration can destroy as much value as it creates.
3. Valuation Must Be Rooted in Transferable Value
We see many founders who believe their companies are worth far more than the market will bear, often encouraged by brokers. True valuation rests on transferable value: recurring revenue, diversified client concentration, strong margins, documented contracts, and systems that do not rely on the owner. Emotional attachment has no place in a negotiation.
4. Walking Away is Sometimes the Best Decision
Not every deal should close. Paige shared how she walked away from a multi-million dollar acquisition after completing due diligence because it no longer aligned with her company’s trajectory. Deals often collapse and then resurface. Founders must be prepared to say no, protect their company, and learn from the process.
5. Deals Take Time, Often Years
From first conversations to integration, even mid-sized transactions can take six to eighteen months. More complex deals may stretch into years. Owners must prepare for the operational, financial, and emotional demands of long processes, and build resilience into their leadership teams while negotiations unfold.
Enterprise Value Growth as the Foundation for M&A
A business that is healthy and scalable will always command higher valuations. Enterprise value is not only about current revenue; it is about the strength and sustainability of the entire company. Founders who want to maximize outcomes from a sale or acquisition must focus on:
Recurring revenue models (MRR or long-term contracts) that create predictability and reduce reliance on one-time sales.
Clean financials with forward projections that give buyers confidence in both past performance and future growth.
Sustainable leadership and teams that demonstrate the company can run independently of the founder.
Efficient processes and documented systems that allow for seamless integration and reduce risk for buyers.
Diversified client base and service offerings that mitigate dependency on a small number of customers or contracts.
Enterprise value is created long before a deal is signed. Owners who build these fundamentals into their business see not only stronger valuations, but also smoother negotiations, greater leverage with buyers, and higher likelihood of closing.
Insights from Non-Equity Business Partners
As non-equity business partners, we step into companies as co-CEOs, strategists, and implementers. We do not advise from the sidelines, we build and execute alongside founders. From that vantage point, here are the practices that consistently separate successful transactions from failed ones:
Begin preparing years in advance. Exit readiness is not a project, it is a process.
Evaluate equity swaps carefully. They can accelerate growth but must be structured with discipline to avoid regret.
Keep a clean financial house. Contracts, compliance records, and financial statements must be organized and verifiable.
Prioritize cultural alignment. Numbers matter, but cultural fit drives retention, integration, and long-term performance.
Choose partners who do the work with you. The right strategic partner is not just an advisor, but an embedded operator who shares accountability.
Takeaway from the WBEC-West Forum
The stories of Paige and Nicole brought into sharp focus the realities of M&A for women-owned businesses. The path to scale or exit is not about chasing inflated valuations or waiting for the perfect offer. It is about building a company that runs without you, knowing your numbers, strengthening enterprise value, and being disciplined about deal structure.
For women founders, M&A can be a powerful tool for growth and legacy. With the right preparation and the right partners in place, it becomes not just a transaction, but a transformation.
Ready to see where your business stands? Take the Health and Value Assessment to uncover the true drivers of your enterprise value and identify the steps that will strengthen your position for growth or exit.
