Friedberg argues traditional financial firms face a catch-22 in M&A: autonomy loses cross-sell leverage.
“And if they do that, they lose the leverage of their over their existing customer base, which is to cross sell digital services in.”
Friedberg says traditional firms trying to run acquired tech companies typically ruin them through M&A integration.
“And if they try and do that, then they step in and they try and run a tech company and the whole thing gets ruined and falls apart as we've seen in M and A over and over again in many different”
Friedberg sees massive M&A opportunity in genomics and gene editing as they fundamentally threaten big input companies.
“I do think that there's gonna be some big opportunities for the next transformation in agriculture in multiplex precision gene editing, and in metagenomics in the soil microbiome, even in breakthroughs in biologics or other platforms that can discover the next set, or the next range of biologics.”
Friedberg predicts wave of AI-native operators acquiring stale first-generation digital businesses to unlock AI opportunities.
“And when you take a look at those businesses as a modern day AI operator, you're like, what the hell? This thing is so underutilized.”