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FE International has appointed Marina Vizdoaga as Partner, adding senior buyside and valuation experience to its team across software, data, and AI deal execution. She joins at a moment when founders going to market face the deepest buyer scrutiny in a decade, and the appointment is a direct response to it.
Vizdoaga brings more than ten years across capital allocation, institutional valuation, and deal execution, much of it spent underwriting and closing deals from the buyer’s side of the table. That is the perspective the firm is adding for its clients: someone who has sat across from founders in a transaction and knows exactly what buyers test before they sign. FE International has guided more than 1,500 transactions worth over $50 billion since 2010, with a 94.1 percent success rate.
Who Marina Vizdoaga is
Most recently, Vizdoaga served as Vice President of Investments at LTV SaaS Growth Fund, where she led acquisitions of founder-led software businesses and oversaw portfolio governance. Her work centered on the questions buyers weigh most heavily today: revenue durability, pricing power, and structural risk. Her judgment on capital deployment featured in coverage of the fund’s $35 million ThriveCart investment.
Earlier in her career she worked in Valuation and Capital Markets at BDO USA, advising on institutional valuations across complex and contested transactions. Her depth runs through software, data, and AI economics specifically, including how cost structure, infrastructure dependency, and data ownership shape what a business is worth. She serves on the Advisory Board of Florida International University’s Master of Science in Finance program, where she earned her degree, and is a member of 100 Women in Finance and the Financial Women’s Association.
What her appointment means for FE International clients
The value of a buyside operator on the sell side is timing. An advisor who has underwritten deals from the buyer’s chair knows where diligence will push, and can prepare a business for those questions before the first buyer call rather than reacting to them mid-process. For founders, that means sharper positioning, cleaner underwriting, and a process built to hold up under scrutiny.
“Marina sits at a rare intersection of buyside discipline and founder-side advocacy,” said Thomas Smale, Founder and CEO of FE International. “She has personally underwritten and closed deals on the institutional side of the table, and that perspective is exactly what founders need when they go to market today. Buyers are sharper, diligence is deeper, and process design now decides outcomes. Marina brings all three to our clients.”
“FE International has built one of the strongest founder-side advisory practices in the market, and the depth of the platform is why I joined,” said Vizdoaga. “Founders going to market today face the deepest buyer scrutiny of the past decade. Positioning, underwriting, and process design now determine outcomes, and founders deserve advisors who can sit on both sides of the table before the process starts.”
Why this hire, and why now
The appointment lands against a strong but demanding market. Global M&A rose 40 percent to $4.9 trillion in 2025, the second-highest total on record, and roughly 80 percent of corporate and private equity leaders expect to match or exceed that pace this year. Capital is available and buyers are competing. What has changed is rigor, not appetite.
Technology sits at the center of that activity, with tech-oriented businesses taking a steadily larger share of total deal value, and AI sits at the center of technology. In 2025, nearly half of all technology deals carried an AI component, up from about one in four the year before.
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Source: Bain & Company, M&A Report 2026
With AI in so many targets, buyers rebuilt diligence around it. They now treat the diligence phase as the place to test AI’s real effect on a business, scrutinizing data ownership, model dependencies, and unit economics alongside the financials. The discipline is real: one in five strategic acquirers report walking away from a deal over what they found about AI’s impact on the target. For founders, that is not a reason to worry. It is a reason to prepare, and it is exactly the environment Marina was hired to work in.
How FE International helps founders exit
FE International is built for the full range of founder exits. For businesses valued at roughly $1 million and above, its full-service advisory runs the entire process, from valuation and positioning through buyer outreach, diligence, and negotiation, backed by a network of more than 80,000 qualified buyers and due diligence experience across 6,000-plus businesses. For businesses under $1 million, the self-serve M&A Platform gives founders direct control of valuation, listing, buyer discovery, and deal management. The two channels are complementary, and every business that reaches the market carries the credibility of FE International’s diligence standards.
Marina Vizdoaga’s appointment reflects where founder-side advisory is heading. As buyers grow sharper and diligence grows deeper, the advantage goes to founders who prepare, position well, and run a competitive process. FE International is deepening its senior team to make sure its clients have exactly that edge.
If you are considering a sale, the first step costs nothing. Request a free, confidential valuation to learn what your business is worth and what a buyer will examine. For more on where the technology deal market is heading, read FE International’s analysis of AI M&A trends in 2026.