About A Little Tech Blog
A Little Tech Blog is an outlet where Brandon Hightower documents and shares some of his tech-related experiences as well as some of the themes and trends he observes within consumer technology.
About Brandon Hightower
Brandon Hightower has spent nearly 15 years in San Francisco at the crossroads of technology and finance, advising companies at critical stages of their lifecycle. He was most recently a Managing Director at boutique investment bank Qatalyst Partners.
Brandon began his technology investment banking career as a generalist and quickly gravitated toward the consumer internet, fintech and software verticals, though he also had broad exposure to the communications, clean tech and semiconductor verticals. Brandon’s focus areas are eCommerce marketplaces, social, travel fintech and enterprise software with an eCommerce bent. Prior to working for Qatalyst Brandon worked with the team at GCA Savvian advising on a number of technology mergers and acquisitions transactions.
Brandon has advised on dozens of completed M&A and financing assignments for a variety of technology companies, representing more than $62 billion in transaction volume. Notable assignments include Afterpay’s sale to Block ($29 billion), Intuit’s acquisition of Credit Karma ($7.1 billion), the sale of vacation rental marketplace HomeAway to Expedia ($3.9 billion), the sale of eCommerce software provider Magento to Adobe ($1.75 billion), the sale of online travel service Orbitz to Expedia ($1.7 billion), the sale of Glassdoor to Recruit ($1.2 billion), and the sale of eBay Enterprise to Permira and Sterling Partners ($925 million). In addition, Brandon assisted gaming company Bungie, creators of the legendary Halo video game franchise, on its sale of a minority stake to Chinese internet and gaming company NetEase.
Brandon began his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Transaction Services group, where he worked on assignments such as Symantec’s $1.25Bn purchase of VeriSign and review of HomeAway’s pre-IPO stock option valuation.
Brandon graduated from Brigham Young University where he earned his undergraduate degree in Business Management with a Finance emphasis, where he also served as a finance department teachers’ assistant and taught labs and recitation sessions for hundreds of finance students.
At age 19, Brandon devoted two years to serve a full-time volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints where he proselyted among and performed community service in Denver and Northern Colorado. Brandon is very active in his faith and believes every day is an opportunity to be a better person than the day before.
Brandon is an Eagle Scout, avid news reader, basketball enthusiast, cyclist, pizza afficionado, follower of politics and has interned on Capitol Hill with both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) from his home state of Indiana.
Brandon is happily married to his wife, Laura, who is a nurse and certified lactation consultant by profession, and they are the proud parents of two boys and three girls. Brandon currently resides just south of Salt Lake City, Utah.