Iconic, an AI-powered advisory firm based in Fairfax, recently purchased Integral Capital Advisors, a boutique investment bank in Redondo Beach. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Erik Salazar, founder and chief executive of Iconic and Eric Coonrod, the founder and managing partner of Integral, plan to revolutionize the process for mergers and acquisitions. Coonrod will serve as managing director and senior vice president of Iconic, where he will head the execution of transactions and manage deal flows.
By streamlining the process of matching buyers to sellers through Iconic’s software and data systems, Salazar said his team aims to shorten the timeline of transactions from the current time frame of about nine to 18 months to three to six months.
“Where many things fall apart is spending inordinate amounts of time with the wrong sets of buyers and sellers. You want to match the right buyer with the right seller. And there is an art to it, but we believe that we’ve begun to really get deep into turning that art into a science,” Salazar said.
In addition to the proper matching of companies, Coonrod highlighted Iconic’s technology in leveraging data to study common roadblocks to deals being completed.
“Time kills all deals,” Coonrod said.
Examining the data, finding the most common reasons a deal falls through and getting ahead of those interruptions will increase the likelihood of swift and successful transactions, he added.
While Salazar believes that utilizing AI can lead to a more efficient M&A process, he still said “there are expertise and a human element that cannot be replaced.” That’s where Integral comes in.
“(Integral is) forward thinking, they’re innovative, but they also have a deep expertise across multiple sectors and a desire to really connect with the owners of these businesses, as well as the buyers of these businesses, and manage those relationships, and really create trust,” Salazar said.
“For us, that was a huge allure to partnering with them,” he added.
Salazar and Coonrod first began working together a little over a year ago when Integral served as an adviser to Iconic. After the two realized they both shared a vision to cut out inefficiencies within the M&A realm and that their teams worked well together, the decision to partner up was easy, they said.
“You can take the good stuff about banking – the hype, the complex modeling, the structure and the negotiations – that a person has to do, but also (recognize) a lot of the stuff can be done automatically and faster with technology (which is Iconic’s) expertise,” Coonrod said.
