A deal team spends three months on financial diligence. Then two weeks on technology. The financial statement was audited. The codebase they just bought was not. That asymmetry is the most expensive habit in technology M&A, and it is getting worse.
On a $5M EBITDA base, the gap between a pure-service exit and a platform exit is, at the midpoint, roughly $25M in proceeds to the same shareholders selling the same business. The decision that opens or closes that gap is usually made years before anyone retains a banker.