Most tech companies get M&As wrong: Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora

For Arora, the purchase price of a deal is merely an “irrelevant artifact”, and what matters more is what the acquirer can build from it. “If it's going to work, it's going to work phenomenally well, or you're going to screw it up. It's not what you paid; it's what you're able to do with it,” he said, citing Facebook’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube as examples of expensive acquisitions that paid off in a huge way.