Fair point. I’m not sure if they did, or simply believed the benefits (financial and otherwise) of being bought outweighed the loss of company culture. They at

Fair point. I’m not sure if they did, or simply believed the benefits (financial and otherwise) of being bought outweighed the loss of company culture. They at least seemed to, in my experience. JWZ — or maybe Spolsky — wrote about (a more general case of) this. You can either grow fast, or maintain company culture. You can’t do both. Being bought by a larger company is just one case of growing really fast all at once.