Off Mandate | Deal Walkaways: When to Kill a Deal
No scripts. No presentations. No polished “best practices.”
Scott Hile, Jeremy Segal, and Siran Tanielyan have closed a combined 115+ transactions. In this Off Mandate, they're breaking down the walk-away decision from different seats: the strategy and integration perspective and the sourcing and pipeline perspective.
They'll cover where walk-aways actually happen (it's not just diligence), how teams rationalize bad deals after the thesis has already drifted, and what it takes organizationally to pull the trigger when the pressure is telling you to push through.
Think of it like eavesdropping on a conversation between friends who've been in the trenches — except it's recorded so other practitioners can learn from it too.
The goal: real debate, real disagreements, real lessons. Not polished talking points.
What You'll Hear Debated
What's your actual philosophy on when to walk — and where does conventional wisdom get it wrong?
Where in the process do most walk-aways happen versus where they should happen?
If you can't use your acquisition thesis to prioritize diligence, do you even have a thesis?
What does deal fever look like from the inside — and how do you recognize it in yourself?
Sunk cost logic: the $400K in diligence doesn't justify the $250M close. So why do teams keep acting like it does?
What do bankers do to keep a deal alive past the point it should die — and how do you recognize it when you're the buyer?
Where does process create real walk-away discipline — and where does it just create cover for bad decisions?
The walk-away call as a career risk — who actually has the standing to make it?
How the Audience Participates
Q&A box: Drop your scenario or question anytime. Best format: what you're dealing with → what's stuck → what you need to decide.
Raise your hand: We'll bring select audience members on to speak directly.
Priority goes to: Specific, real situations over general questions. We want to help you solve something, not just talk about it.
About the Co-Hosts
Kison Patel – Founder, M&A Science | Chairman, DealRoom
Kison built DealRoom to ~$10M ARR and has led M&A execution across hundreds of transactions. He founded M&A Science to extract and share the patterns strong buyers use to win deals, turning practitioner experience into searchable, reusable intelligence.
Scott Hile - VP Corporate Development & Strategic Growth at Enviva
Scott has closed 80+ M&A transactions across energy, industrial, and specialty materials markets — and built the corp dev function to run them at more than one company. At Enviva, he developed the M&A, drop-down, and integration methodology from the ground up, including a $175MM acquisition and $460MM in drop-down transactions. Before that, he built a proprietary M&A process at Milliken that was adopted company-wide. He comes to this conversation with a legal background, a practitioner's instinct for thesis discipline, and a clear point of view on exactly when a walk-away stops being optional.
Jeremy Segal - EVP of Corporate Development at Progress
Jeremy is EVP of Corporate Development at Progress, where he leads all M&A sourcing, execution, and integration. He's closed 35+ acquisitions and investments totaling more than $8B in aggregate value — first across 16 years at Akamai Technologies, then at LogMeIn, and now at Progress. His orientation is upstream: proactive deal flow, disciplined qualification, and using the LOI as a strategic tool before pressure builds. For Jeremy, the walk-away conversation often happens before most teams have a thesis to drift from.
Matt Arsenault - VP of Corporate Development and Strategic Alliances at Jamf
Matt Arsenault is VP of Corporate Development and Strategic Alliances at Jamf, the leading Apple enterprise solutions company. A CPA and CFA with an MBA from Wharton, he's run M&A from the finance seat across high-velocity tech environments — including 30+ due diligence exercises and 15 acquisitions at Dell EMC. His lens on walk-aways is grounded in what diligence actually surfaces: when the numbers stop supporting the thesis, and whether the team is willing to act on what they're seeing.
Siran Tanielyan - SVP of Corporate Development at Paramount
Siran Tanielyan is SVP of Corporate Development at Paramount, where she's led M&A and corporate development for over 11 years. Before moving to the buy side, she spent 8 years at UBS Investment Bank covering media, communications, and internet — which means she's seen the sell-side playbook from the inside. She brings a rare dual perspective to this conversation: what advisors do to keep deals alive, and what it takes to resist that pressure when you're the operator who has to live with the outcome.
Recording & Participation Guidelines
This session will be recorded for the M&A Science member library.
Disclaimer: Everyone participates in an individual capacity, not on behalf of any company. This discussion is for educational purposes only and does not represent legal, financial, or professional advice.
Please don’t share confidential or sensitive company information. (Keep scenarios real, but keep details clean.)
Member Access
M&A Science members get:
Full session recording access inside the Membership library
Session takeaways (key insights organized for practitioners)
Access to the broader M&A Science member library (plays, templates, and real-world frameworks)
If you want access: Become an M&A Scientist. Join the community of the best practitioners in M&A.
→ Membership: $995/year → mascience.com/membership
FAQs
Who is this for?
Corp dev professionals and deal leaders who've run acquisitions and want to hear how their peers actually handle the hard stuff. This is not an intro-level session — the format assumes deal experience.
Is this a webinar?
No. Off Mandate is an unscripted roundtable series. No slides, no presentations, no moderated Q&A format. It's a debate between practitioners. Kison facilitates; the guests drive it.
Will the recording be available?
Yes, recordings are available to M&A Science members in the Intelligence Hub. The off-record segment is live-only and will not be published.
How do I submit a question?
Submit your question at registration. Kison reviews submissions and may bring selected questions into the conversation live.
Is this free?
This event is free for Intelligence Hub members. Membership is $995/year at mascience.com/membership.