Hamid Rizvi on Building a Corp Dev Engine: Sourcing, Team-Building, and Integration

This week, I sat down with Rizvi Financial founder and CEO Hamid Rizvi to talk about his career in corporate development, and why he left to start his own M&A advisory firm.

I first got to know Hamid when we overlapped at Constellation Software, and we’ve worked together in the years since. His perspective is one I’ve wanted to get in front of this audience for some time.

I started in a financial leadership program at TELUS, a large Canadian telecom, and ended up in corporate development. From there, my path looked like this:

• TELUS: I worked on deals across telecom, IT, and healthcare. I then led M&A for the international division, acquiring outsourcing companies in countries like India and Ireland
• Startups: I moved into finance and operating roles, where I saw the business from the operator side. An incredible learning experience that made me a much better investor
• Constellation Software: Constellation has acquired and held over 1,000 vertical market software businesses, making it one of the most active acquirers of founder-led businesses in the world. As VP of M&A, I led M&A for one of the portfolios and closed deals ranging from $1M to $700M
• Rizvi Financial: Today I work with founder-led businesses in the $3M to $30M revenue range to increase their value ahead of a sale. I also work with corporate development teams to build and run their acquisition programs, from team design and sourcing through to integration

At TELUS, I saw how acquisitions can move a large company into entirely new markets, from IT services to healthcare. I also learned that the hardest part of a deal is often internal. It has to fit the strategy, have a business leader willing to own it, and survive several layers of approval.

At startups, I sat on the other side of the table. When you are responsible for cash and payroll, you see very quickly which numbers actually drive decisions. That made me a better buyer, because I understand what a founder is living through.

At Constellation, I learned discipline. The default answer is no. You price to your return, not to what the seller expects, and you do it repeatedly, so the process matters more than any single deal.

I went independent because I saw a gap. Large companies have that discipline in-house. Founder-led businesses and smaller acquirers usually do not.

Start with the deal profile, not the org chart. How many deals do you want to close each year, and at what size?

If you are doing a few large deals, bankers will bring you most of the opportunities, and your bottleneck is execution and integration. If you are doing many small deals, bankers will likely not cover that market, and your bottleneck is sourcing. Most teams underestimate how much effort that takes.

Early on, one person usually covers sourcing, execution, and integration. Your first hire should be a strong generalist who can build a model, run diligence, and hold a credible conversation with a founder. Your second hire should go wherever the work is getting stuck.

I recommend keeping judgment in-house: strategy, investment decisions, and relationships with the companies you buy. You can outsource work that is lumpy or specialized. For smaller deals, that often includes sourcing, until your volume justifies a full-time team.

Most teams build execution strength first, because it feels the most technical. Sourcing and integration are usually where the gaps remain. We have helped clients with both while they build that muscle in-house.

The constraint is rarely capital or appetite. It is deal flow, especially below $30M, where most good businesses never run a formal sale process. There is also an immense amount of competition now, especially in the lower middle market due to increasing interest in “entrepreneurship through acquisition”.

A real sourcing engine has four parts:

1. 1A clear buy box - Size, geography, product and customer fit, valuation range. If you cannot say what you will not buy, you will waste time on everything
2. 2A wide universe - Map every company that could fit, not just the ones you have heard of
3. 3Persistent outreach - Most owners are not selling today. The goal is to be the first call when they are, which means staying in touch over years, not months
4. 4A tight filter - Qualify quickly and spend your time only on companies that fit

Cast a wide net, but filter tightly. A pipeline full of meetings feels productive, but if those companies will never fit the buy box, it is busy work.

The first conversation matters most. Do not lead with “are you for sale?” Lead with genuine interest in the business. Founders want to talk about how they started, what they are proud of, and what is hard right now. Be clear about who you are and why you are calling.

The goal of the first call is not a deal. It is a second call. Most founders sell because of a life event, and when that moment comes, they call the person that built some trust.

It depends on who is buying. For a financial buyer, much of the return is locked in at entry. Price, structure, and financing are within your control, and operating improvements are generally upside. That is why financial buyers focus diligence on the quality of earnings: add-backs, working capital, and how much of the business depends on the owner.

For a strategic buyer, it is usually the opposite. Strategics usually pay more because they expect synergies, and those synergies only appear if integration delivers them. The most common failure I see is paying a strategic price and then integrating like a financial buyer.

That is why integration should be tied directly to the value creation case. Every synergy in the deal model needs a plan, a timeline, and an owner. That owner should be a leader in the business, not corp dev. Corp dev and an integration manager can support and manage the process, but the business owns the outcome. Bring that leader in during diligence, so the person accountable for the results helps shape the deal they are inheriting.

Most of the deals I have seen underperform did not have a bad thesis. They had no one in the business who owned the result, or lacked an integration manager to project manage the various streams.