What I Learned From Deals That Fell Apart

Just because a deal closes doesn’t mean a happy ending is in store. Some deals unravel months — or even years — later.

I’ve seen it happen with partnerships that looked perfect on paper, only to reveal fundamental misalignment once the real work began. I’ve seen investments that seemed strategic at the time but became expensive distractions. Sometimes it wasn’t anyone’s fault — priorities changed, markets moved, people evolved.

And sometimes (most times!), the red flags were there from the beginning — we just didn’t want to see them.

These experiences are painful, but they’ve taught me some of the most valuable lessons in my career. The deals that hold up over time aren’t just the ones with clean terms or airtight contracts. They’re the ones built on clarity, alignment, and a shared understanding of how things will work when circumstances inevitably change.

The hard part isn’t closing a deal. It’s maintaining one. That means staying ahead of shifting control rights, understanding what’s buried in old side letters, or knowing when your waterfall math quietly stopped reflecting reality.

That’s why we built Aracor the way we did

Not just to help you close — but to help you manage the deals you already have. Aracor maps control, rights, obligations, risks — across time, across entities, across relationships. Because the real test of a deal isn’t day one. It’s day 1,000.

If you’ve had a deal unravel after the fact — what did you learn from it? What would you build differently next time?

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