Leading Product and Technology through an acquisition

Net4Things runs a portfolio of B2B and B2B2C connected-mobility products. I joined as Head of Product and moved up to Chief Product & Technology Officer, taking on both product and technology direction.

During that period the company entered an acquisition process.

A corporate deal consumes the same leadership time as the product: due diligence, counterpart conversations and material preparation sit alongside the roadmap, the customers and delivery.

And the Product and Technology side of a due diligence is not a narrow technical review: architecture, cybersecurity, portfolio, documentation, demos, organisation and ways of working all get examined. All of that has to be explained and backed with evidence, on a timeline the reviewed company does not set.

Head of Product → Chief Product & Technology Officer (CTPO): product and technology direction for the B2B/B2B2C portfolio, and responsibility for a large part of the Product and Technology due diligence.

The timeline of a corporate deal is not negotiable, and the team handling it is the same team delivering the product.

The review covered a wide scope — architecture, cybersecurity, portfolio, documentation, demos, organisation and ways of working — with two very different counterparts: executive and technical.

And the company had customers in live operation who take no part in the process and should not notice it.

Treat due diligence as a product exercise, not a technical audit. I personally covered a large part of the Product and Technology areas so that the explanation of the portfolio, the architecture, cybersecurity, documentation, organisation and ways of working was one coherent account rather than several scattered answers.

Prepare a single body of material for both counterparts. The executive and the technical conversations draw on the same content — documentation and demos — at different levels of detail, instead of building two narratives that can drift apart.

Do not freeze the product during the process. The usual alternative is to pause evolution to reduce risk; continuity was maintained because what was being examined was precisely a portfolio in live operation.

Take post-deal integration as part of the mandate rather than a handover. Operational continuity was planned from product and from ways of working, not only from the org chart.

Direct executive and technical engagement with the counterpart throughout the process, supported by portfolio documentation and demos.

In parallel, running the B2B/B2B2C portfolio: roadmap, delivery and customers.

After the deal, operational continuity and integration: keeping the product running and fitting it into a larger organisation.

The deal closed and the portfolio kept operating, with integration after the acquisition.

Practically all customers stayed after the deal. That is a defensible internal estimate, not an audited figure.

During the mandate, a new enterprise account was added with ≈€200k of estimated ARR.

As a signal of product continuity: Movistar Mobility records around 50,000 active users as of August 2026.

In a corporate deal, Product is not an area that gets audited: it is the area that has to explain why the portfolio is worth what it is said to be worth. Preparing that explanation — documentation, demos, ways of working — is ordinary product work, and it is what keeps due diligence from eating delivery.

What was direct responsibility and what was shared work.

Owned / accountable

Product and Technology direction for the B2B/B2B2C portfolio.

Led

A large part of the Product and Technology due diligence: architecture, cybersecurity, portfolio, documentation, demos, organisation and ways of working.

Partnered

Company leadership and the deal counterpart, in executive and technical conversations.

Contributed

Operational continuity and integration after the acquisition.