David Hindley, VP of Corp Dev at Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK) This episode is sponsored by the M&A Science Academy, DealRoom, and FirmRoom.  To join our growing online community of M&A practitioners, visit https://www.mascience.com/academy. Don’t forget to use the code “podcast” at checkout.  Ready to take your M&A to the next level with software made to manage each stage of the deal process? See how DealRoom can facilitate your next deal at https://www.dealroom.net. FirmRoom provides 80% cost savings over VDRs that bill by page and delivers a far better user experience to boot. Sign up in under 2 minutes by going to https://www.firmroom.com Episode Timestamps 00:00 Intro 05:00 The Evolution of M&A Functions 06:48 Deal experience as a Banker vs. Corp Dev 15:04 Leading an evolving M&A function 16:13 How the strategy evolved  18:07 Scoring opportunities 19:28 Speeding up the evolution for efficiency 21:31 Working with functional leads 22:29 Aligning the functions 24:10 Business Units 25:08 Corporate Development structure 27:57 Accountability 29:11 Working with integration folks 32:41 Evolution of the governance model 33:56 Success metrics 35:42 Retaining deal learnings 37:04 The hiring process 40:19 Lessons learned 41:26 Craziest thing in M&A