Michael Crawford

Michael S. Crawford is the founder and managing principal of The Merger Expert, Inc., a Portland, Oregon–based firm that works exclusively on sell-side mergers and acquisitions for privately-held, middle-market companies. By his own account he has been active in M&A since 1983, and states he has accumulated "over 41,000 hours of M&A experience." His LinkedIn and data-aggregator profiles list earlier roles at Integrated Measurement Systems, Inc. and American Network, Inc.

Crawford describes an unusual career arc for a seller's advocate: for the first ~12 years of his career (with roughly ten years of accounting behind him, beginning in 1983) he was employed by large corporations as a buy-side professional — performing business analysis, valuations, and strategic analysis of acquisition targets, and, in his words, was "well-paid to beat down prices for the companies we looked at acquiring." He credits that insider experience with teaching him how sellers were routinely under-represented in one-on-one negotiations.

In late 1994, he left corporate work and founded The Merger Expert specifically to represent sellers. He built the firm around above-industry-norm marketing documents and a repeatable, structured sale process designed to create multi-buyer bidding wars and drive above-average sale prices. The firm positions itself as a full-time, M&A-only practice — "not a consulting firm doing M&A on the side" — and assembles a supporting team for sellers that includes technical writers, CPAs, attorneys, and wealth-management professionals.

• Not a capital allocator / angel investor — Crawford's firm is a *sell-side transaction advisor*. It does not appear to make equity investments in startups.
• Client profile: privately/closely-held businesses with $5–75 million in revenue whose owners want to sell at maximum price.
• Core value proposition (in his words): "We *only* do merger and acquisition work… It's called Relentless Focused Action!"
• Alignment / fees: works on a success basis — "No results means … no payday for me," aligning the firm's compensation with achieving a high sale price for the seller.
• Method: structured, competitive-bidding sale process intended to produce multiple buyers and "dramatically higher offers," backed by professionally produced marketing/valuation materials.
• Stated caution to sellers: he warns owners to "beware of anyone who states 'they have buyers'… run!", framing that as an industry bait-and-switch tactic.