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> Mr Cook told the shareholders meeting that the acquisitions are mostly aimed at acquiring technology and talent What’s the median acquisition size? Heck, wha
by curiousllama 6y ago
> Mr Cook told the shareholders meeting that the acquisitions are mostly aimed at acquiring technology and talent
What’s the median acquisition size? Heck, what’s the 75th percentile?
I’d bet most of these acquisitions are of lifestyle businesses with few/no paths to scale. Probably just aimed at the tech teams or execs.
Nothing much to see here
- ketamine__ 6y agoIt's mostly about talent but nobody wants to embarrass the entrepreneurs?
- zepto 6y agoWhy is it embarrassing? They obviously did well enough to be worth acquiring.
- umanwizard 6y agoAn acqui-hire is typically considered a failure for VC-backed startups. (Not that one should necessarily be embarrassed for “failing” in this way, but that’s just the reality).
- ryandrake 6y agoI could think of worse things than getting acqui-hired by a FAANG and made a Director or something in the company. Not sure that's much of a failure honestly!
- pseudalopex 6y agoSuccess to you. Failure to the investors.
- Sebb767 6y agoIt's certainly better than going insolvent, but it also implies that you company has failed to reach the usual hockey-stick growth targets and that your IP is "worthless" enough to be bought as overhead for hiring someone. So, while not a total failure, it's really not a compliment.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI think, from reading the back and forth here, that there seem to be a number of different types of acqui-hires and as such we can't really be sure to what extent the acqui-hire represents a failure.
- veenusav 6y agoSee the example of Tesla 2013. Apple is not hiring to keep the startup or the innovation. But for the up or even worst:for the talent. Its like selling your house to the scrap guy
- veenusav 6y agoTypo "for the IP or talent"
- zepto 6y agoYeah - I mean I guess you can make it sound bad. But a ‘pivot’ is essentially the same thing - in terms of what gets scrapped. I see an acquihire as the market actually validating your company value even if you haven’t pivoted into a hockey stick product.
- yanslookup 6y agoHow is it validating? In an acquihire situation the company gets bought and then everything but the people is flushed down the toilet. You used to be working on AI powered eye glasses that could tell when fruit is perfectly ripe but now you work on an in house travel expense system the Apple sales people use to log their Uber bills.
- zepto 6y ago> You used to be working on AI powered eye glasses that could tell when fruit is perfectly ripe but now you work on an in house travel expense system the Apple sales people use to log their Uber bills. Is it that realistic? Why would anyone take such a deal? Why would Apple expect those employees to stay, and given this why would they pay a premium? My sense was that generally teams are hired because they have proven that they are competent in something specific that Apple wants to do, even if the actual code isn’t used directly.
- ojbyrne 6y agoSometimes aquihires are just execs at big companies helping their VC or angel friends save face and keep the deal pipeline open.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoWhen a lifestyle business is bought-out, assuming the employees are also significant equity stakeholders, do they typically get compensated for the loss of expected lifetime earnings - and/or a contractual right to buy back their IP from Apple, given that an acqui-hire is not guaranteed to be in the employees’ best-interests - or be long-lasting? Just asking - because if my company were to be acqui-hired I have serious doubts about my ability to stay at Apple specifically - given (for example) their prohibition on most of their FTE SWEs having a personal GitHub account or doing any kind of moonlighting. What does Apple do when they really want to acqui-hire a company but the people they want don’t want to work at Apple without special-exemptions from the normal rules?
- fpo 6y agoThey wouldn't extend an offer to you in this case. Acqui-hires have no upside for employees and barely any for founders. Some small return to investors to sign off on the acquihire. Usually most people still have to interview for their jobs.
- humbledrone 6y agoAcquihires do often have employee upside, in the form of large stock-based compensation grants or bonus payouts, typically spread over a vesting period of several years. There's no point in the acquihire if you don't retain the employees, and relative to the cost to acquire the company these payouts aren't huge. You're right that often people do have to interview to remain employed (and thus to receive these benefits).
- biztos 6y ago> do have to interview to remain employed Would that be a full-on interview as if they were applying for a job, or just some kind of "cultural fit" screening? It seems contradictory to me: if the hire is important enough to spend a lot of money on (even via an earn-out) then why alienate them with uncertainty about the offer? I guess the assumption is they don't have a better offer? But if a few key employees get together then don't they have the ability to scuttle the whole deal? "Keep doing this thing that Apple was willing to buy, but on better terms, and look for a new buyer" sounds like a pretty good alternative to "take Apple's earn-out on Apple's terms with nonzero risk of getting nothing."