Pathfinders are changing the game

Every Pathfinder has carved their own positive path forward

Meet Frederik van der Schoot, Managing Partner of Oaklins and one of Ansarada's Pathfinders. With 60 deals in 18 months, Frederik and the team in the Netherlands are the M&A dealmakers of all dealmakers.

Get inspired by his Pathfinder journey as Managing Partner of Oaklins

“If companies want to get the best out of Oaklins, it’s important to start early,” said Frederik. “It has been a pathway coming to where you are and then you decide at one moment in time ‘I maybe want to sell my business’ It’s not a small thing. It’s a big thing. It’s a big achievement after years and years of blood, sweat and tears, and hard work. And you definitely want it to have the best outcome possible.”

“If you start early enough you can orientate yourself on the market and the opportunities. Selling a company can be a one-time sale to a strategic buyer at the one hand, it can also be like attracting a partner to accelerate growth toward the future.”

Mitigating risk out of the deal really helps to get the deal that you want Frederik van der Schoot, Oaklins 

“Technology in that sense is getting more and more important every day, and we actually see the pace of that accelerating,” said Frederik. “If you see what nowadays is possible, for example, in the VDR environment; in the past it was only used when the deal was actually live in the market. Now the whole system can accommodate in the whole preparation phase and getting all your information aligned, way before you start.”

“It helps you collect the right information in the right level and that helps you to mitigate risk out of a deal. Mitigating risk out of the deal really helps to get the deal that you want at the end of the day. It’s the tools that make life easier and finally make outcomes better. Over the past 18 months we ran around 60 transactions on the Ansarada platform with some great successes out there,” said Frederik. “We see more and more transactions at the upper end of the mid-market, never losing track on the lower end of the mid-market, that’s where we started, and the total brings us a lot of forwarding.”