M&A Science Live - Partner Before You Buy: The M&A Strategy Most Corp Dev Teams Skip
Corp dev teams spend months running process on targets they barely know. When the deal closes, integration is hard because the relationship never had time to develop. The answer isn’t more diligence — it’s earlier engagement.
Tomer Stavitsky has rebuilt corp dev functions from scratch at Intuitive Surgical, Pfizer, Ginkgo Bioworks, and now Omnicell. His approach: identify your most strategic targets, build a structured partnership with them first, and convert the ones that make sense when the time is right. It’s not soft strategy — it’s a system.
In this live interview, we’re going deep on how to build that system: how to tier your partners, how to maintain optionality without tipping your hand, and how to navigate the complexity that comes with PE-backed counterparties. We’ll draw on Tomer’s experience across Intuitive Surgical, Pfizer, and Ginkgo Bioworks to ground the framework in real deals.
Live Q&A at the end — bring your deal questions.
What You’ll Learn
How to build a partner-first acquisition framework from scratch, including market mapping and target tiering
How to keep 2–3 partners warm simultaneously without signaling which one is your real target
How to structure non-exclusive agreements that protect your optionality without making a partner feel like a backup
What to understand about a PE-backed partner’s exit timeline before you get too deep in the relationship
How to convert a partnership into an acquisition without losing trust or momentum
Whether the partner-first playbook travels across industries — and what needs to be rewired when it doesn’t
Who Should Attend
Corp dev leaders, strategy and ops practitioners supporting M&A, and executives building or rebuilding an acquisition function inside a company where deals are not yet systematic.
Speaker Bios
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.
Tomer Stavitsky, SVP and Chief Corporate Development Officer at Omnicell (NASDAQ: OMCL)
Tomer walked in and built the corp dev function from the ground up. Before Omnicell, he led corporate development at Intuitive Surgical, Pfizer, and Ginkgo Bioworks — giving him rare exposure to M&A across MedTech, pharma, and synthetic biology. His perspective on the partner-to-acquire model is grounded in having run it repeatedly across very different industries — not theory.
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
Will this session be recorded?
Yes. The recording and Structure Cards will be available in the M&A Science Intelligence Hub for members. Non-members can register to attend live.
What if I can't attend live?
Register anyway. The recording will be available through the Intelligence Hub. Intelligence Hub members get access before public release.
What is the M&A Science Intelligence Hub?
The Intelligence Hub is M&A Science's membership platform- Buyer-Led M&A™ playbooks, practitioner frameworks, downloadable artifacts, and early podcast access, all in one place. Built for deal leaders who need tools they can actually use. $995/year at mascience.com/membership.