When you’re a first-time founder evaluating an acquisition, almost everything about the experience is new. But when mission and culture are aligned, merging resources could be the perfect path forward.

Just ask Prahasith Veluvolu, the Founder and CEO of education technology company Mimir. The cloud-based software company headquartered in Indianapolis just acquired their first company.

Prahasith Veluvolu, Founder & CEO of Mimir

Mimir’s technology scales and automates the evaluation of computer science students and professionals. Adding to the already powerful suite of tools designed to help students and instructors, Mimir acquired Chicago-based Omnipointment. The acquisition will allow Mimir to add features from Charter, a group project tool that allows computer science students at a collegiate level to arrange times to collaborate on assignments and provides instructors with rich data for assessing team performance.

The company’s expanding into areas beyond the classroom, as well. Along with the acquisition, Mimir announced the launch of a new product. Mimir Interview is designed to help recruiters and hiring managers interview for a variety of coding languages and skills in a controlled environment.

We had a chance to catch up with Veluvolu, and he offered his perspective on the acquisition process and advice for first-time founders.

What are your thoughts on the acquisition and what it means for Mimir?

It's an extremely exciting day for the entire team. I never thought we would be working through a merger and acquisition deal so early in Mimir's journey. Integrating Omnipointment's products into Mimir Classroom will allow us to help manage and automate more of the computer science classroom. What I am more excited about is working with the Omnipointment team. Vinesh, their CEO, will be leading our curriculum team; which will be tasked with producing free learning content for all instructors and students on Mimir Classroom. By doing so, we hope to allow students to save hundreds of dollars on textbooks.

What was the acquisition experience like?

The entire process has (thankfully) been straightforward. Vinesh and I met about two years ago at a hackathon called Boilermake. With both of us being young founders in the EdTech space, we quickly got to know each other and stayed in touch. About two months ago we began discussing ways we could work together and pooling resources was clearly the best path forward. It took us about a week to come to terms on a deal after that. Our awesome legal teams took over from there.

What advice would you share with entrepreneurs who are looking at an acquisition?

When it comes to acquiring a company, it's important to align both leadership teams to the same mission and culture. Assets of a company are one thing, but the team that is joining you is 100x more important. If they aren't happy with the massive change their company has just undergone, they'll most likely leave as soon as they possibly can.