The Mandate
Medical technology is sold on evidence. The companies that clear premium valuations enter a process with the clinical, regulatory and commercial record already assembled, framed the way an acquirer’s board will read it.
Windsor Drake represents founders and owners of medical device, diagnostics and healthcare technology companies in a sale, recapitalization or minority transaction. The firm represents founder-led companies with enterprise values of $5 million to $300 million, and takes fewer than twenty mandates a year so each one gets senior attention from first meeting through close.
The firm’s medical technology work is advised by Thom Gunderson, whose four decades in the sector span the companies, the capital markets and the boardrooms of the medical device industry.
What Buyers Pay For
Medical technology buyers do not pay for claims. They pay for evidence: clinical, commercial and competitive. The work of a sell-side process is assembling that evidence before the first buyer conversation, not during diligence.
Clinical evidence and product differentiation
Buyers discount features and underwrite evidence. A durable clinical or regulatory position moves an acquirer’s model; a claimed advantage the market can compete away does not. Sellers who assemble the record before the process keep control of the narrative. Sellers who assemble it during diligence lose price.
The strategic buyer landscape
The major strategics run standing corporate development pipelines with known gaps. A process is won in buyer prioritization, before the first outreach: which acquirers have the gap this company fills, and how they justify a premium internally.
The public-market valuation lens
Private medical technology sellers are ultimately priced against public comparables, because that is how a strategic acquirer’s board frames the decision. Knowing which metrics carry that argument, and which are ignored, shapes how the company is positioned from the first page of the materials.
Medical technology buyers do not pay for claims. They pay for evidence: clinical, commercial and competitive.
Senior Advisory
Thom Gunderson, a former Managing Director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray who covered medical technology in the public markets from 1992 to 2016, serves as Senior Advisor on Windsor Drake’s medical technology engagements. He is an independent director of Merit Medical Systems (NASDAQ: MMSI) and TransMedics Group (NASDAQ: TMDX), and spent thirteen years inside the industry at American Medical Systems before his markets career.
He pressure-tests the equity story before a buyer does: distinguishing durable product and clinical advantages from features buyers will discount, assessing strategic buyer fit, and preparing management for the questions that surface in buyer review and diligence. His board service and biography are matters of public record in proxy statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, linked from his profile.
How the Firm Runs a Sale
Windsor Drake runs a documented sell-side process across six gated phases over roughly nine months, presenting each company to a curated universe of 150 to 300 qualified acquirers. The process is described in full in How We Run a Sale.
Owners of medical technology companies contact Windsor Drake at very different points: holding an unsolicited offer, a year out from a process, or simply wanting to understand what a buyer would find. Every conversation is confidential and carries no obligation.
