In June 2024, SoundHound AI — a publicly traded company on NASDAQ — announced the acquisition of Allset, a restaurant pre-ordering platform. Allset brought with it technology, a seasoned team, and a portfolio of 7,000 partner restaurants, including Joe & The Juice and Charley's Cheesesteaks. For SoundHound, it was a strategic move toward building a voice commerce ecosystem — a system where ordering food by voice becomes as natural as searching on Google.
Maria Katsan, who became COO of Allset in 2021 and led the company through scaling, fundraising, and preparing for acquisition, now serves as Business Operations Lead at SoundHound. In the fall of 2024, she shared her perspective on what makes an acquisition successful from an operational standpoint — and why the real preparation starts long before a buyer enters the picture.
Building Value
When Maria joined Allset in 2019, it was an early-stage startup. By 2021, when she stepped into the COO role, the company had raised $26 million from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Flashpoint, and the EBRD, and had grown to a team of 100.
But that was just the starting line.
"The real work starts when you need to turn those resources into something that scales," Maria explains. "Not just solving today's problems, but creating processes that are stable, measurable, and can grow without me. That's what makes a company attractive to a buyer — not the idea, but the ability to execute."
She built operational systems that made the company predictable. Clear ownership for every task. Goals that cascaded from company metrics down to individual work. A culture where problems got fixed once, not repeatedly. These weren't just internal improvements — they became part of Allset's value proposition.
"When SoundHound looked at us, they weren't just evaluating a product," says Maria. "They saw a team that understood how to build and scale restaurant operations. The technology was one thing. But knowing how to apply it — that was the real asset."
Working with Investors as M&A Preparation
Preparing for an acquisition starts long before the first conversation with a buyer. In fact, it starts with the very first funding round. When a company raises capital from top-tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz or EBRD, it undergoes due diligence — a process that mirrors what happens during a sale, only with higher stakes.
"Every funding round is practice for the real thing," Maria says. "Investors look into contracts, financials, IP rights, metrics. If you can't answer their questions clearly and quickly, you lose credibility. And credibility is the foundation of any deal."
Maria led Allset's preparation for each funding round — ensuring contracts were in order, building financial reports that made the business model clear, crafting investor presentations, and coordinating between the team, legal counsel, and funds.
"Investors noted the transparency of our processes and our discipline in hitting goals," she recalls. "We didn't hide our problems — we showed that we understood them and had a plan to fix them. That built trust — and that trust played a big role later in our negotiations with SoundHound."
That foundation mattered. When SoundHound came looking, Allset wasn't scrambling to get its house in order — it was already built.
Why SoundHound Chose Allset
By the time talks began, Allset had four things SoundHound wanted.
First — the technology. Allset's food pre-ordering platform worked with thousands of restaurants. It integrated with their POS systems, handled payments, and managed order pickup logistics. This wasn't just an app — it was infrastructure, ready to scale.
Second — the partner network. 7,000 restaurants nationwide, including major chains like Joe & The Juice and Charley's Cheesesteaks. For SoundHound, which was building a voice commerce ecosystem, this represented an existing distribution channel.
Third — the team. A group of people who deeply understood the restaurant industry, who knew how to work with operators, build a marketplace, and solve challenges at the intersection of tech and business. SoundHound wasn't just looking for code — they were looking for know-how.
Fourth — culture and processes. A company that could adapt quickly, operate under changing conditions, and stay focused on outcomes.
"One of the deal conditions was retaining the team," Maria shares. "SoundHound knew that Allset's value wasn't just in the code. It was in the people who knew how to apply that code to real-world business. And everyone who wanted to keep working on the product made the transition to SoundHound."
The Operational Side of M&A
Maria coordinated the entire due diligence process. Hundreds of documents — five years' worth of restaurant contracts, licenses, quarterly financials, IP rights, employment agreements, regulatory compliance. Every document scrutinized by legal teams on both sides. Every metric needing an explanation.
"Usually, it takes a whole team — finance, legal, ops," Maria explains. "I was coordinating it all: gathering documents, structuring data, fielding buyer questions, keeping our team in sync with lawyers and SoundHound. Every day brought new requests. A restaurant contract from 2019. An explanation for a Q3 metrics spike. Proof that the IP was actually ours."
And while that was happening — negotiations. SoundHound needed to understand how Allset would fit into their voice commerce strategy, how integration would work, and what would happen to the product and team post-deal.
"The buyer has to believe in the team, in the vision, in the integration plan," Maria says. "Perfect paperwork doesn't close deals. We spent just as much time building trust with SoundHound as we did preparing documents. In the end, that made the difference."
Lessons Learned: What Makes a Company M&A-Ready
Maria sees three things that matter most.
First — operational discipline. The company has to be transparent from the inside. Clear metrics. Processes that work without heroics. Up-to-date documentation.
"If you don't have that, due diligence becomes a nightmare," she says. "You're scrambling to find contracts, reconstruct decision histories, explain dips in metrics. Time runs out — and the buyer loses patience."
Second — culture and team. Buyers don't just evaluate the business — they evaluate the people. Will they stay after the deal? Can they work together? Is there trust?
"When all the key people agreed to move to SoundHound, it was a sign we'd built more than just a business," Maria says. "We'd built a team that believed in the product and wanted to keep building."
Third — strategic value. An acquisition doesn't happen just because a company is performing well. It happens because the company solves a specific problem for the buyer. For SoundHound, Allset was a way to scale voice commerce in the restaurant industry. Technology, partners, team — all aligned with their strategic vision.
"We weren't just selling a business," Maria explains. "We were showing how Allset could accelerate SoundHound's roadmap. That's a different conversation. Not 'buy us because we're good,' but 'here's how we help you achieve your goals faster.'"
A New Chapter
The deal closed in June 2024. The closing of the acquisition will bring additional restaurant relationships, engineering skills, and marketplace know-how to SoundHound AI as it builds towards its vision of a voice commerce ecosystem that enables consumers to access goods and services through natural conversation.
For Maria, it was a different game entirely. From COO of a startup to Business Operations Lead at a NASDAQ-listed company. Different processes. Different responsibilities. In a public company, every number must match forecasts. Every metric passes through financial analysts and lands in shareholder reports.
"It's a different league," Maria says. "In a startup, you can pivot fast and experiment. In a public company, everything is stricter — processes, compliance, regulatory standards. But it's also an opportunity to operate at a level where systems must be flawless”. Now, in late 2024, Maria is focused on building operational systems for SoundHound — a company scaling globally and shaping the future of voice commerce. She helps define strategy, leads cross-functional projects, and builds processes for vendor management..
"This isn't about how to sell a startup," Maria says. "It's about building something valuable — for users, for partners, for the team. Do that, and when the right buyer shows up, the deal closes itself."
By Gerald Miller
