First out the door, or the last one standing

Since my last note, I have been on the road more than off it. MoneyLIVE in London. Merchant Payment Ecosystem in Berlin. A short pause for the bank holidays — a few slower days with Sarah and the girls in Cascais — and then straight back onto flights.

It has been a full month. Also, in its quieter moments, a clarifying one.

What I keep coming back to is this: the most useful conversations I had over the past few weeks were not the ones on a panel or in a boardroom. They were the ones in hotel lobbies, on the walk back from dinner, on a call with someone who had no particular reason to ring. No mandate. No term sheet. No ask. Just two people comparing notes.

That sounds obvious when you write it down. It is less obvious when you are in the middle of a quarter.

The relationships that matter most when the moment comes are almost always the ones you built when the moment was not there yet.

Relationships in our industry tend to be forged under pressure. A process. A closing. A difficult call that either side could have walked away from. Those relationships have their place, and some of them endure.

But the ones that tend to shape outcomes are almost always the ones built slowly, without an agenda, over years. The introduction that lands on the right desk. The honest read on a buyer's motives. The call that reframes a question before you ask it.

You cannot manufacture that in six weeks when you suddenly need it.

The backdrop has shifted. Earlier this month, Anthropic released a preview of its new frontier model, Mythos, describing it as "a step change" and the most capable model the company has built to date. Whatever one makes of the broader AI cycle, the pace of capability release is doing something tangible to the M&A clock. Baker McKenzie estimates that AI adoption inside M&A workflows will move from roughly 16% today to around 80% within three years. Diligence timelines that used to run months are compressing. Acquirers are asking sharper questions about code quality, data posture, defensibility.

In most FinTech categories this year — payments, InsurTech, MGAs, embedded finance, wealth infrastructure — serious acquirers are already mapping the top three names in each segment. Not the top ten. The top three.

Being among those names is a materially different conversation from being the fourth, or the fifth, or the eighth.

First out the door, or the last one standing.

That is the choice being made this year, whether founders frame it that way or not.

And the founders who tend to be among the first three are rarely the ones who started building their relationships the week before. They are the ones who were in the lobby, on the walk back, on the call with no ask. Quietly. For years.

So as spring settles in and the calendar fills again, a small suggestion: look at your network with a different lens. Not who owes you a favour. Who you would be happy to call with no reason at all. Mine starts with a seven-year-old on Monday.

The work will still be there on Tuesday. The relationships you invest in now, without a transaction attached, are the ones that will be there when the transaction arrives.

The weeks ahead are a mix of home and away, with the on-the-road time mostly built around conversations on M&A and growth capital. If our paths cross, even briefly, it would be good to connect.

• April 27 — Home. Liliana turns seven. All other matters respectfully deferred.

• May 11–12 — London

• May 17 — Stablecon, Amsterdam

• June 1 — Money20/20, Amsterdam. If you're going, ping me.

• July 1–2 — iGB L!VE, London

If a strategic-exit transaction is on your mind this year, or you’re quietly pressure-testing readiness, I’m always open to a thoughtful conversation.

And — if you have read this far, consider it a quiet compliment. A few prior pieces that I think sit alongside today's thinking rather well:

• The 72-hour playbook for unsolicited acquisition inquiries

• Preparing for a 2026 Exit

• ICE 2026: Signals from the Payments Floor

Tom C. Schapira
Founder and CEO
Imagine Capital Group
E: [email protected]
Website http://www.imaginecapitalgroup.com

Securities Offered through Wellesley Hills Securities. Member FINRA/SIPC