It’s important to approach the buyer universe creatively and strategically, and to have a strong acquisition rationale for any individual buyer. Our ability to develop a strong acquisition thesis for a less-than-obvious buyer enabled us to create an optimal outcome for Jetlore.

Founded by Stanford comp sci Ph. D. candidates, Jetlore uses AI to solve marketing technology challenges for e-commerce or e-retail companies.

Jetlore’s founders wanted to sell the company at a compelling valuation but they also wanted to find a home where it would continue to grow.

We approached a broad set of prospective buyers, including financial sponsors (private equity and venture capital) and strategics acquirers. We successfully generated interest, but believed that we would maximize both deal certainty and valuation by expanding the search and approaching a broader audience of less-than-obvious buyers. It would require extra work and a strong thesis, but would ultimately result in connecting Jetlore with the ideal buyer who believed in the company’s value and long-term growth potential.

We knew that it was difficult for payment processors to differentiate themselves, so we positioned Jetlore’s software as a way to help them connect and build stickier relationships with their end customers. We approached a few payment processors, including PayPal’s corporate development team. We pitched our belief that Jetlore’s technology could help PayPal add value for users and stand out in the commoditized payments space. This was a problem they wanted to solve, and the rest is history.

PayPal won the deal with the highest bid and ultimately made Jetlore’s artificial intelligence and machine learning technology a cornerstone of the PayPal platform. The three founders were all offered attractive roles within PayPal to lead the legacy Jetlore business as well as other leadership opportunities.