Industry Expertise Always Said. Rarely Delivered.
Founded in 2021, Bravery Group (Bravery) was purpose-built for M&A, performance improvement and capital advisory across analytics, digital marketing, advertising and commerce companies. Bravery was quickly recognized for its depth of understanding of the martech and AdTech industries, its ability to define strategic synergies and deliver industry defining valuations. Such pertinent insights require the knowledge that come from being a global industry practice lead with decades of category experience delivering enterprise digital strategy, agency operations, agency leadership and participating in strategic exits.
Bravery is the most contemporary advisory in the industry. Our approach to M&A and capital advisory incorporates the value of ecosystems, partnerships and strategic alliances. This leads to a valuation that satisfies the sell-side, global enterprise partners and buy-side requirements for transactions. Bravery’s model entails a seamless, proven process that achieves the key objectives of timely, focused and efficient transactions that deliver premium values.
There are over 9,000 marketing technology firms and thousands more services businesses that make up the marcomm ecosystem. Frankly, it’s impossible for external actors such as investment banks to provide meaningful context or strategic M&A advice beyond transaction particulars in this fragmented of a market. Bravery was founded to ensure business owners of digital marketing and analytics companies ultimately realize the true monetary value of the firm they built. We go beyond solid, fundamental M&A advice and provide deep industry expertise that fully considers the business context, marketplace alignment and future potential of the business. Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s hard to talk strategic value if you don’t understand the industry.
We understand what you’ve built. While the digital ecosystem is incredibly large and complex, our colleagues spent decades delivering enterprise solutions within the large global agency holding companies, boutique specialty agencies and systems integrators. As operators, strategists and leaders, the knowledge within Bravery is unparalleled. It’s this understanding of Martech and AdTech that defines our value proposition. Whether your company is focused on Marketing Automation, DSPs, CDPs, DMPs, Campaign Management, SEO, Analytics, Display and Programmatic, Search and Social Media, Loyalty, Advocacy or other solutions and platforms, we understand the market, the ecosystem and the synergies achieved by the Buyer. It’s this understanding that affords Bravery the ability to identify, align and execute on targeted strategies that deliver premium value. We recognize that above all else, we are your trusted advisor with the responsibility of ensuring a highly successful, strategic outcome for your business.
Our process is built on understanding the unique aspects of the businesses we advise, the markets they serve, the ecosystem they operate within and their competitive differentiation. These insights, coupled with the value of understanding why Buy Side organizations would want to acquire the business, provides a depth of insight regarding post acquisition synergies. It’s these synergies that drive future value and premium valuations.
Businesses that operate within the digital landscape can’t operate within a vacuum. Whether as value added resellers, strategic partners, alliance partners or simply through the use of enterprise software solutions, companies are dependent on the ecosystem in which they deliver their services and specifically their IP. Bravery focuses on the value of the ecosystem in understanding the unique capabilities, market positioning and differentiation that drives value in a transaction.
We don’t believe in the “legacy” models utilized by Corporate Development. We understand the issues, opportunities for devaluing an earnout, the methods used to add overhead and other factors that make attaining an earnout difficult, if not impossible. Bravery’s process is designed to eliminate Buy Side parties that are not interested in the post-acquisition synergies and joint value proposition. We recognize the value of an acquisition is in the strategic contribution to the acquirer, which is derived through IP development, client retention and growth, quality of solutions, innovation, creativity and outcomes. Traditional / legacy earnout metrics have been heavily weighted on utilization, realization, net margin, etc., which we believe should be the outcome, not the means to achievement. While it’s a different approach, it serves to maximize the benefits associated with the desired outcomes of a strategic acquisition.
Bravery provides Extended Sell-Side Advisory Services in that we assist our clients with a comprehensive analysis of the state of the business and preparedness to “go-to-market.” This process determines whether a business is market ready and whether the performance of the business will achieve a premium valuation. Bravery is built on the foundation of honesty, integrity and trust and as such we believe it’s our responsibility to provide a thorough evaluation of a business leveraging industry knowledge and competitive benchmarks to determine if changes are necessary that will provide for higher valuations at a later date. Bravery’s industry and category knowledge, coupled with depth of performance, IP and solution delivery capabilities differentiates our offerings from traditional investment banks.
It’s why 70-80% of them fail (HBR). Bravery provides the perfect combination of strategic insights, support, and expertise in the M&A process. We serve as an in-house M&A team.
