Valsoft Acquisitions: What It Buys and What It Pays, 2016-2025

Valsoft, a Montreal buyer of vertical market software founded in 2015, has made 129 software acquisitions from 2016 to 2025 in our records, half of them in the last three years, and keeps what it buys. Its prices sit at the low end of the market: 1.1x revenue on its five deals with a published price and revenue, about a third of the 3.4x median for private software as a whole (1,028 deals). It promises a letter of intent within a week and a closing within 45 days. It pays in cash, nearly all of it at closing.

Sam Youssef and Steph Manos founded Valsoft, and its website now lists more than 150 vertical market software companies. The companies it buys are small, with a median price of US$6.7M on the 14 deals that have one. Most of those prices fall in the two smallest size bands of our software valuation research, where deals sell at a median 1.7x revenue under $5M (96 deals) and 2.5x from $5M to $20M (351). Valsoft’s 1.1x sits below both.

Other buyers want the same companies Valsoft wants, software customers use every day for years. Their interest is what gives you room on price.

Valsoft Operating Groups and Portfolio Companies

Valsoft buys through seven operating groups, created in October 2025, and through a corporate M&A team led by Joseph Khoubbieh, its Chief Investment Officer. Each group, Valsoft says, finds its own deals in its own market, so an approach can come from a group or from corporate. Its website lists the groups and their leaders.

Aspire runs Valsoft’s travel and leisure software, the only group whose page names a market. When a group writes to you, ask which of its companies sit closest to yours. Every acquisition until the end of 2025 was made by Valsoft or by Aspire, and since January 2026 the groups have bought under their own names. Valsoft says each group provides governance, planning and benchmarking for the companies inside it, so the group that buys your company is the one you report to after closing.

How Many Companies Valsoft Acquires

From two deals in 2016 the pace has risen in steps. Valsoft made 20 acquisitions in the four years to 2019 and 109 from 2020 to 2025, 21 of them in 2025. Our ranking of software acquirers puts it among the ten most active buyers.

Valsoft has raised money to keep buying at that pace, starting with a minority stake Viking Global Investors bought in 2022. Coatue and Viking led $170M of growth funding in January 2024, which BetaKit reported as a mix of debt and equity. Portage Capital Solutions followed with $150M of growth equity that December. After that round The Globe and Mail put Valsoft’s valuation at more than $2bn and counted 60 M&A dealmakers on the team, there to spend the $320M investors had put in.

What Size of Company Valsoft Buys

Valsoft’s brochure for sellers says it is flexible on deal size within a revenue range of $3M to $50M and up. It describes three kinds of target. Growth companies bring in $1M to $10M a year, grow 20 percent or more and earn little EBITDA. Established businesses sell $3M to $50M a year with flat or slow growth, while market leaders of the same size earn meaningful EBITDA. For founder-run North American companies the brochure looks for revenue of $3M to $25M and EBITDA of $1M to $5M. Aspire Software publishes the same range as Valsoft.

Our database records an enterprise value for three Valsoft acquisitions, and for one of them, TDO, the listed seller disclosed the price as well. The annual accounts of Valsoft’s UK holding company report the price paid for each company it buys, which adds eleven more. That makes 14 acquisitions from 2019 to 2025 with a price, at a median of $6.7M, which at roughly 1x revenue means a company with about $6M in sales. For the top of Valsoft’s range, $25M to $50M of revenue, we have little beyond the brochure to go on. The largest priced deal, the takeover of a listed company, cost more than $25M.

What Valsoft Buys

Valsoft said in 2023 that it owned companies in almost 40 verticals, and the largest vertical in our records holds 15 percent of its deals.

Industrial, energy and manufacturing software leads, ahead of a group of niche verticals and of travel and hospitality. Travel covers software for car rental firms, hotels, golf courses and venues, the business Aspire Software runs today. The niche group runs from car dealerships and auto parts distributors to aviation, marinas, libraries, alarm monitoring and labor unions.

Valsoft describes what it looks for as mission-critical software with long-tenured customers, and it considers carve-outs from larger groups. Aspire’s criteria read the same way. Valsoft’s 2023 review counted eight verticals new to the portfolio that year, so a business in a niche Valsoft has yet to enter is within its reach.

Where Valsoft Buys

The United States leads by country, with 53 deals, followed by Canada with 19, the UK with 18 and Australia with six. Germany, the Netherlands and Spain have five each. North America accounts for 72 deals in all and Europe for 50.

After Valsoft’s first European acquisitions in 2018, Europe grew into a large share of the deal flow, with 36 of the 61 deals of 2021 to 2023. North America took the lead again in 2024 and 2025, with 29 of 40. Aspire Software looks for companies based in North America, Europe or Australia. Valsoft’s first Latin American deal, in Brazil, came in 2025.

What Valsoft Pays: Acquisition Multiples

Five Valsoft deals have both a published price and the target’s revenue, at a median of 1.1x.

Published prices are scarce, so we matched every one we could to the target’s revenue. They come from deals with a reported multiple, from the filings of a listed seller and a listed target, and from UK company registries. The takeover of a listed company and the carve-out of a business line from a listed group changed hands at 1.5x to 1.7x revenue. The three private companies, all in the UK, sold for 0.9x to 1.1x. Only three of the five have an EBITDA multiple, from 4.9x to 16.7x. Private software deals in our valuation research sell at a median of 3.4x revenue across 1,028 deals and 13.6x EBITDA across 382.

Our software valuation research puts deals under $5M at 1.7x revenue across 96 deals and those of $5M to $20M at 2.5x across 351. Large deals sell at 5x and more, which pulls the overall median up to 3.4x. With a median price of $6.7M, most of Valsoft’s priced deals sit in the two small bands, so size explains part of the gap.

In January 2024 The Globe described Valsoft’s targets as small, slow-growing but stable software businesses, and Valsoft says it bids hardest for companies whose customers stay for years, even where growth is modest. A company like that gets valued on today’s profit, and the buyers who pay up for growth spend their money elsewhere, which pulls the multiple lower again.

Valsoft pays close to one times revenue, at or just under the bottom of the one to two times sales The Globe reported it aims to pay. Two private UK companies with an EBITDA figure both went for about 1.1x revenue, although one turned about a fifth of its revenue into EBITDA and the other under a tenth, so the first cost 4.9x EBITDA and the second 16.7x. Two deals are a thin sample. Still, they fit a buyer that states its own range in multiples of sales, and they suggest your margin moves Valsoft’s price very little. The brochure does screen founder-run North American companies on profit, at $1M to $5M of EBITDA, so margin can decide whether Valsoft looks at you, while on this evidence revenue sets what it offers.

At a 20 percent margin, 1.1x revenue is 5.5x EBITDA, and at 30 percent it is 3.7x. The Globe put Valsoft’s own operating profit at about a quarter of revenue in 2024, so a company with similar margins bought at 1.1x revenue pays back its price from its own operating profit in about four years, which is the buyer’s return.

If your margins are good, a price set on revenue hands much of that profit to the buyer. Valsoft’s offer comes with cash at closing and a long-term home. Whether you give up the difference for them depends on who else is bidding.

How Valsoft Structures a Deal

The brochure sets out four steps. An introductory call leads to a first data request and an indication of interest. The letter of intent follows a second data request, and due diligence leads to the purchase agreement and closing. Valsoft promises a letter of intent with a valuation within a week and closes on more than 95 percent of the letters it signs. Its two timings differ, though. The steps allow 30 to 60 days of due diligence after the letter, while the same brochure promises closing within 45 days of it, so ask which timetable applies to your deal. Legal and accounting work is done in-house. Its general counsel told Canadian Lawyer that half of his legal team works on M&A.

Valsoft pays in cash, nearly all of it at closing. Its brochure promises cash at close free of post-closing contingencies. Aspire says it pays all cash from its own balance sheet. A January 2024 podcast episode on Valsoft reported that it had paid founders 100 percent of their proceeds in cash on every acquisition to that date. A small part of the price can still be deferred, though that money is cash too, paid later. On the three deals where a seller or Valsoft’s UK accounts split the price, 6 to 13 percent was deferred, and where the timing was stated, the deferred part fell due after about a year.

Valsoft buys all or most of a company. Its brochure says 100 percent or majority, and most deals are for the whole company, though in 2023 it bought a majority stake in Klopotek, a German provider of publishing software. Some deals are asset purchases, including carve-outs from larger groups, where the buyer takes the business and leaves the company behind.

Because the price is fixed and paid in cash, most of the negotiation beyond the headline number is about the deferred amount: its size, what it can be set against, when it is released and the warranties behind it. A private equity platform can offer a different trade, part of the equity rolled into the platform and sold again at its exit, as our guide to selling your business to a software roll-up describes.

What Happens After Closing

Valsoft describes acquired businesses as keeping their leadership and market focus while gaining capital, operational support and shared technology. Aspire says every company keeps running from its existing office, while the group looks after the big picture and leaves day-to-day decisions with the business. The brochure adds quarterly meetings of portfolio managers, a central marketing team and in-house M&A help with add-on deals, cross-selling and international expansion.

Valsoft runs an AI Labs unit under a Chief AI Officer, builds AI platforms in-house and shares the infrastructure across its companies. By December 2024 its payments unit, Valpay, served 10 to 15 portfolio companies, according to The Globe.

Leadership after a sale varies from deal to deal. When Valsoft bought Thermeon, a UK provider of car rental software, in 2018, its whole management team stayed. At Klopotek in 2023 the founder stepped down and a new chief executive took over. Aspire describes its role as ensuring a smooth leadership transition, and the terms of the handover are part of the negotiation.

Valsoft usually keeps what it buys. The brochure describes an indefinite hold and a permanent home. Aspire calls itself permanent equity. Still, by December 2024 Valsoft had divested two companies, The Globe reported. In January 2024 Firmament, a private equity firm, took a majority of Navitrans, a Belgian logistics software business Valsoft had bought in 2020, and Valsoft kept a minority. Komexo, a Dutch business bought in 2022, passed to Smart Manufacturing Group in October 2024. Two exits in ten years of buying is a small number. Both are worth asking about before you sign.

Who Competes with Valsoft for Your Company

The Globe and Mail reports that Valsoft is modeled on Constellation Software. Constellation also buys at the low end of the market. Other buyers want the same companies, from permanent owners that pay more to private equity platforms that pay several times as much.

On private companies, Valsoft paid a median of about 1.1x and Constellation 1.7x, the lowest prices in the table. Both hold what they buy for the long term. Banyan, another permanent owner, paid 2.4x, so a permanent home can come at a higher price. The private equity platforms pay three to five times, and their owners sell the platform, with your company inside it, at their own exit. Bring these buyers into one process and you can weigh a higher price against a permanent owner with every offer in front of you.

Is This a Good Time to Sell to Valsoft?

Yes, if customers in your niche rely on your software every day, stay for years and pay you mostly recurring revenue. Valsoft raised $320M in two rounds in 2024, and since October 2025 each of its seven groups has looked for its own deals, so more teams inside Valsoft can now make you an offer. The buyers that compete with it want the same profile.

More buyers now ask how a business will stand up to AI. Software valuations fell in early 2026 as AI coding agents cast doubt on parts of a sector that, in our view, was already priced too high. In our March 2026 webinar on SaaS valuations we said that the businesses holding up best were smaller, focused on one industry and essential to their customers’ daily work, and that some deals were disqualified on the AI question alone. Valsoft builds AI centrally, in its AI Labs unit. It will ask that question knowing the subject, so have your answer ready before the first conversation. If AI could eat into what your product does, sell before buyers start pricing that in.

The case for selling is strongest for a founder with most of their wealth in one software business, who carries that risk alone. An owner of more than 150 businesses spreads it across all of them. For an owner whose business is growing and who can carry the risk, keeping the company is a good option too. The latest prices are in our software valuation multiples research.

If Valsoft wants your business, the price you get depends on how you run the sale. If you sell to Valsoft alone, expect about 1x revenue in return for speed and certainty. With Valsoft as one of several buyers with a real reason to want your company, you choose between the best offers. A competitive process takes longer than Valsoft’s week, and that time is what it costs to learn what the other buyers would pay. Talk to us before you answer Valsoft or sign a letter of intent.

About Aventis Advisors

Aventis Advisors is an M&A advisor for technology and IT companies with an enterprise value of €5M to €100M. We run global competitive sale processes, drawing on a database of 300,000 financial and strategic investors, so you choose between the best offers for your company. We take on a limited number of mandates each year.

Contact us for a confidential conversation about your company.

Methodology

We count completed acquisitions of control announced from 2016 to 2025 by Valsoft or Aspire Software, software deals only: 129 in all. Valsoft also buys IT services firms, which sit outside the count, and deals a company made before Valsoft bought it are left out. The list combines Mergermarket with Valsoft’s releases and filings. Criteria and terms come from those releases, Valsoft’s brochure for sellers and the pages of its operating groups; funding, valuation and Valsoft’s own financials come from press reports. Prices come from our database, UK company registries, a listed seller and a listed target, converted at annual average exchange rates; all amounts on this page are in US dollars. The private software medians come from our software valuation multiples research.