Nate Lemmerman, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development at Cast & Crew This episode is sponsored by the M&A Science Academy, DealRoom, and FirmRoom.  To join our growing online community of M&A practitioners, visit www.mascience.com/academy. Don’t forget to use 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 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 www.firmroom.com Episode Timestamps 00:00 Intro 06:10 Building an M&A function from scratch 09:05 Steps to building an M&A muscle 12:17 The strategy 15:38 Process and execution structure 22:16 Critical things to consider before signing a deal 26:04 Hiring people for the M&A team 28:30 Building the diligence muscle 30:01 People alignment in M&A 32:20 Building the integration muscle 35:39 Best practices when doing deals 37:55 Craziest thing in M&A