When Revolutionary Security was acquired by Accenture in 2020, CEO Rich Mahler wasn't really looking to sell, but it the company was getting flooded with inbound requests.
"Everybody wanted to give us money or acquire us," Mahler says. "I was getting probably five, six a week of just outreach. As a privately held company, my management team said, 'We think we know we're worth so why don't we get representation now and if nothing else we'll come away with an evaluation.'"
At that point, the company was based in the U.S. but serving large multinational companies and was looking at its own global expansion — considering field offices throughout Europe and elsewhere. That could take a long time to get those up and running and require significant capital. That also played into the rationalization for the acquisition.
The company retained an investment banker in November 2019 and had a list of potential options by January, after a first round of fireside chats. Mahler says the company pretty quickly honed in on Accenture as the right fit both for capabilities and culture.
"That was really important to us as a service company, making sure that the culture was a good fit for our people and our people would have continued growth opportunities," says Mahler, who is now managing a director with Accenture.
They met with the management team and hammered out the details of the deal, closing the first week April 2020. Even so, the integration during the pandemic, he says, went well.
"I'll give the Accenture lot of credit there. They buy a lot of companies — it's a key component of the growth strategy across the entire business, not just security," he says. "Really excellent job starting first on the people and all the HR integration, which is the most significant piece. And then each piece that comes with that — the legal support, the financial support, the IT integration — they really do have it down to a to a well-honed machine where you get the best of the big company capability but keep your culture and keep what made you special to keep you growing as well."
One of the areas of due diligence that Accenture performed on Revolutionary was cyber diligence. Mahler says that process went relatively smooth because many of the company's clients, as part of their standard process for onboarding a new vendor, have performed similar diligence.
"We've done that dozens and dozens of times for our clients," he says. "We had all the documentation, everything ready to go, just like our finances and everything else."
Mahler spoke at the Philadelphia Smart Business Dealmakers Conference about the company's sale to Accenture. Hit play to catch the full interview.
