Would you have done anything differently leading up to the IPO, now that you're on the other side?

Would have used a higher qualified M&A strategy partner. A more proven, trusted transition first, then transform approach/processes. Less drinking from a fire hose.

I’ve learned that I can do this quickly if needed, but if I were to do it over again I would take a little more time and get better alignment with the business on all initiatives. I would also allot more time for the data migration efforts and enablement piece, as well as add to the systems’ DevOps process and sprint management before kicking off these Initiatives. But another important thing I learned is that even though we delivered a lot on the system side, leading up to the IPO, we were only devoting about 10% of resources to the system architecture and technology. We focused on implementing and automating the systems, and those are working fine, but what happens to our existing technical debt? Now after the IPO, we’re all struggling to work like a public company because the data integrity and the systems are not 100% there. So if I have another chance to do this in the future, I'm always going to keep at least 20% to 30% of the team focusing on the systems’ technical debt along with the digital transformation initiatives.