FE International, Inc.

FE International, Inc. FE International is an award-winning global M&A advisor of SaaS, e-commerce and content businesses.

FE International is an award-winning global M&A advisor of technology businesses.

- Financial Times’ Fastest Growing Companies in the Americas (2020-2023)
- Inc 5000 US (2019-2023)
- Inc 5000 EU (2018)
- BBB A+ Rating It has completed acquisitions for thousands of founders, owners and acquirers, and is the preeminent valuation thought leader in the industry. Its team includes experts in exit plan

ning, valuation, accounting, legal and more. Founded in 2010, FE is known for its extensive network of pre-qualified international investors. With headquarters in New York and regional offices in Miami, San Francisco and London, FE is an international company serving clients worldwide. It was named one of The Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies in 2021 and 2020 by The Financial Times and is also a two-time Inc. 5000 company.


- 94.1% sales success rate
- Over 1,000 successful acquisitions
- Over $1B in lifetime acquisitions
- Extensive global network of 80,000+ pre-qualified technology investors


Get in touch today for a free consultation and valuation!

Most founders find out what their SaaS business is really worth far too late.They anchor to a figure from an article or ...
08/25/2026

Most founders find out what their SaaS business is really worth far too late.

They anchor to a figure from an article or a conference talk. Then a buyer prices the business on something else entirely.

That gap is where deals stall.

Buyers look at retention, growth quality, and margin before almost anything else. Each of those can be improved in the months before you go to market, which means your multiple is not fixed.

Our new guide breaks down what private buyers are paying for in 2026, how public and private markets pulled apart this year, and what separates a premium exit from a discounted one.

https://www.feinternational.com/blog/saas-valuation-multiples

Your buyer isn't paying for the business you built.They're paying for the business that runs after you leave.That gap is...
08/21/2026

Your buyer isn't paying for the business you built.

They're paying for the business that runs after you leave.

That gap is the single largest avoidable discount in lower and middle-market tech M&A. It shows up in four places:

→ The multiple
→ How much of the price is cash at close vs earnout
→ How long you're locked in post-close
→ How many buyers will even bid

The last three matter more than founders expect, because they decide how much of the headline number you actually receive.

Buyers don't ask if you're essential. They run the absence test.

What happens if you're unreachable for 30 days? Then 90?

And they don't ask you. They ask your team.

Then they cross-check the answer:
→Who at your company has your top accounts spoken to this year
→ Who else logs opportunities in the CRM
→ Who else has deployed to production
→ Which vendor deals exist on a handshake
→ Who approves pricing, refunds and hiring

Here's the part most founders miss. This is one of the few diligence findings you can fix before going to market. Not by saying the business runs without you, but by producing the artifacts that prove it. A dated runbook. A signed account-ownership map. Six months of decisions you weren't in the room for.

If you're 6 to 24 months out, you have enough runway to change the answer.

Full guide has the five-area self-assessment and the 12-month plan:
https://www.feinternational.com/blog/key-person-risk-business-sale

Most founders find out they picked the wrong M&A advisor in month three.Never in the pitch. The pitch is always good.It ...
08/19/2026

Most founders find out they picked the wrong M&A advisor in month three.

Never in the pitch. The pitch is always good.

It happens in the first difficult negotiation.

A buyer pushes back on your number. You look for the senior person who won the mandate and they are not on the call. The valuation that felt exciting in the first meeting has quietly turned into a conversation about what is realistic. There is nowhere else to go.

None of that arrives out of nowhere.

Every one of those outcomes was visible in the first meeting, sitting inside an answer that sounded fine at the time.

We wrote down the questions that surface it early, what a strong answer sounds like in each case, and the red flag hiding behind a weak one.

Worth reading before you sit down with anyone:

https://www.feinternational.com/blog/how-to-choose-an-ma-advisor

Everyone assumed AI shopping would crush the small guys.Last quarter on Shopify, 75% of AI-driven orders came from outsi...
08/11/2026

Everyone assumed AI shopping would crush the small guys.

Last quarter on Shopify, 75% of AI-driven orders came from outside the top 100 product categories.

It is doing the opposite.

AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores tripled year over year. New buyers arriving through AI channels came in at nearly twice the rate of other channels.

Still a small slice of total volume. Nobody is pretending otherwise. But the direction is not ambiguous.

Here is why it matters, and it is simpler than most people make it.

Agents do not browse. They read.

They never see your storefront, your design, or your brand. They see your product data. Clean pricing, inventory, and fulfilment information means you show up. Messy data means you do not exist.

Which is why this stopped being a technical detail and became a valuation question.

Buyers are now asking about it in diligence. Any app that helps a merchant get found and bought by an agent sits in one of the most actively bid corners of commerce software right now.

The apps getting the strongest offers this year are the ones that make a merchant visible to a customer who will never look at their website.

We covered the full 2026 marketplace apps M&A picture: what buyers pay, what they check, and how to get ready.

Read more: https://www.feinternational.com/blog/marketplace-apps-ma-2026

Your churn number does not survive due diligence.A buyer recalculates it from your raw billing data, and their version c...
08/07/2026

Your churn number does not survive due diligence.
A buyer recalculates it from your raw billing data, and their version comes back worse.

Not because you lied. Because one percentage hides four things.

1. Who you lost, not how many

Twenty customers at $200 a month is not the same event as one customer at $48,000 a year.

Same churn rate. Very different business.

2. Whether the average is being carried

A few loyal old accounts can prop up a blended number while every recent group of signups quietly leaks.

Buyers group customers by signup month for exactly this reason.

3. Cancelled, or card declined

One is a product problem. One is a billing problem.

They get priced very differently, and most founders report them as one number.

4. What happens if your biggest customer leaves

The buyer runs that version of the model too.

You never see it.

None of this is unusual. It is standard practice on every deal.

The only variable is whether you got there first.

A churn problem you explain is a conversation. A churn problem they discover is a discount.

Read more: https://www.feinternational.com/blog/saas-churn-rate-benchmark

Seven questions a buyer will ask about your marketplace app.Answer them out loud.Count how many you get through without ...
08/04/2026

Seven questions a buyer will ask about your marketplace app.
Answer them out loud.
Count how many you get through without guessing.

1. What share of your listings actually transact?

2. What is your net take rate after pass-through, not the commission you advertise?

3. Where does your retention curve flatten, by cohort?

4. What is your LTV to CAC channel by channel, not blended?

5. How many of your matched pairs transact once on the platform and never again?

6. How much of your revenue is exposed to a single app store commission schedule?

7. What happens to your demand when discovery moves to AI agents?

If you improvise on any of these, a buyer does not walk.

They price the uncertainty instead, and the price of uncertainty is a discount that never appears as a line item.

Every one of those questions has a right answer and a wrong answer in 2026.

We wrote all seven up, with the data behind each, the multiple ranges by app type, and a worked valuation from gross volume down to enterprise value.

Worth reading before someone asks you question two.

https://www.feinternational.com/blog/marketplace-app-valuation

Google paid $32 billion for Wiz.Palo Alto Networks paid $25 billion for CyberArk.Neither was the biggest story in cybers...
07/28/2026

Google paid $32 billion for Wiz.

Palo Alto Networks paid $25 billion for CyberArk.

Neither was the biggest story in cybersecurity M&A this year.

The bigger story is what happens underneath the megadeals.

Every platform acquisition at the top leaves a gap.

→ A missing capability
→ A regulated market the buyer cannot enter yet
→ A team with skills that take years to hire

So the buyers go hunting for tuck-ins.

That is where founders of small and mid-sized security businesses sit right now.

Three forces are holding the market open:

✓ Compliance regimes that made security spending non-negotiable
✓ AI, which 94% of leaders call the top driver of change in cybersecurity
✓ Platform consolidation, with strategics and sponsors competing at every deal size

The spread between a prepared cybersecurity business and an unprepared one is measured in full turns of EBITDA.

Not decimal points.

We broke down the whole picture in our 2026 cybersecurity M&A analysis:

→ What buyers are actually paying, by business model
→ The five buyer types and how each one values you differently
→ The diligence checklist to start a year before you transact
→ Where the next wave of targets is forming

Read it here: https://www.feinternational.com/blog/cybersecurity-ma

If you own a cybersecurity business, this is the strongest seller's market the sector has recorded.

Worth knowing what yours is worth.

There is a window open in tech M&A right now.Most founders will read about it after it closes.The first half of 2026 set...
07/23/2026

There is a window open in tech M&A right now.

Most founders will read about it after it closes.

The first half of 2026 set an all-time record for deal value. But the record is not the story. The story is who the market is rewarding, and how much.

Buyers concentrated capital on the businesses they want most. Financing opened wide. Diligence got faster and smarter at the same time. And prepared businesses are commanding premium attention in every vertical.

Our Mid-Year 2026 Tech M&A Report maps the whole picture across SaaS, AI, cybersecurity, fintech, ecommerce, edtech, and agencies.

Inside:

→ The buyer behavior shift that redefined what "ready" means
→ Which verticals are pulling the strongest bids into the second half
→ Why the IPO calendar could be the sleeper story of 2026
→ What to do in the next 90 days if a deal is on your mind

Full report: https://www.feinternational.com/blog/tech-ma-mid-year-2026-report

Two Shopify brands.Identical profit.One sells for $500,000 more.The difference is not revenue.It is not the product.It i...
07/16/2026

Two Shopify brands.
Identical profit.
One sells for $500,000 more.

The difference is not revenue.
It is not the product.

It is the multiple a buyer is willing to pay.

Buyers in 2026 are not paying less for ecommerce brands.

They are paying more selectively.

→ Owner-operated brands: 2.0x to 4.0x earnings this year
→ The well-prepared ones: 4.0x to 6.0x

On $500,000 of earnings, moving from 3x to 4x is an extra $500,000 in your pocket.

Same business. Better preparation.

What buyers actually pay up for:

✓ Repeat customers, not one-time orders
✓ Margins that hold steady across 24 months
✓ No single channel carrying more than 70% of revenue
✓ A business that runs a full week without the owner

And new for 2026:

✓ A catalog that surfaces when AI does the shopping

None of this shows up overnight.

It takes 12 to 24 months to become credible in your numbers.

The founders exiting well in 2027 are doing the work now.

Our complete 2026 guide to Shopify and DTC brand valuation is live:

→ Benchmark multiples
→ A worked valuation example
→ The exact metrics buyers price

Most founders find out what their brand was worth after they sell it.

The guide is for the ones who want to know before: https://www.feinternational.com/blog/shopify-ecommerce-brand-valuation

Some tech businesses sell for 24x revenue.Others in the same market sell for 5x.The difference is not how fast they grow...
07/14/2026

Some tech businesses sell for 24x revenue.

Others in the same market sell for 5x.

The difference is not how fast they grow.

Most founders are optimizing for the wrong number.

McKinsey found the metric that separates them.

It is the same one buyers underwrite first in 2026.

And it decides how much of your valuation ceiling you actually collect.

Our new guide covers it in full:

→ The metrics that move tech multiples up or down
→ What buyers test first in diligence
→ How sellers protect the price before going to market

Full guide: https://www.feinternational.com/blog/quality-of-earnings-tech-ma

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