4 ms·
Exit Interview: Founders look back at acquisitions by Google, AOL, Microsoft
- soofaloofa 15y agoAnyone else feel that these quotes have been cherry-picked to support 37 signals business philosophy?
- solutionyogi 15y agoCompletely agree. Other than the quote about Grand Central ("At the end of the day, more users were definitely better off due to the acquisition."), all of them paint the acquisition in negative manner. But I guess it's not surprising. There are far more stories about acquisition gone wrong instead of acquisition gone right.
- jshen 15y agomediabistro "I consider myself lucky. That was not the case with our new owner. Alan Meckler is very much an entrepreneur and he told me early on he learned the hard way to listen to the instincts of the founding entrepreneur after an acquisition. "
- dagw 15y agoThere are far more stories about acquisition gone wrong instead of acquisition gone right. Don't you think that that might be due to the fact that stories where things simply worked out more or less as planned are very dull to tell and hear.
- ry0ohki 15y agoThat's the whole point, this series of articles isn't an unbiased documentary about acquisitions. 37Signals likes to "prove" that they are right with articles about their way of doing things. It wouldn't shock me at all if one day they sold their company and then wrote a post about the way they sold and who they sold it to was completely different then all these other cases, etc...
- jtbigwoo 15y ago* It wouldn't shock me at all if one day they sold their company...* They've already sold part of it (to Jeff Bezos) and they'll inevitably sell more of it when one of them gets old/bored/etc.
- ohashi 15y agoAnd the last line that things were condensed and edited. Condensed, ok, edited? wtf. It doesn't feel intellectually honest as a blog post.
- briggsbio 15y agoConsider the source. Jason Fried is very proud of 37 signals, and is very vocal about bootstrapping and not "building to sell." And rightly so. He's built 37 signals into an incredible company, in my opinion.
- jdp23 15y agoIt was a tough decision whether or not to sell Intrinsa to Microsoft back in 1999. I was the only one of the founders still at the company at the time, and the board was split. In retrospect, it couldn't have worked out any better. Combining our PREfix team with some really good people from Microsoft Research moved the technology forward a lot faster than we would have otherwise -- and tech transferring the stripped-down version of PREfast into Visual Studio put it in the hands of a lot of users across the world. At the same time, we found a good way to support our existing UNIX customers; and as expected, once we had validated the market segment, other competitors emerged, and Coverity has now taken things way farther than we ever did. From a career perspective, it worked out well for me and the others involved. One of the key things we did before deciding to sell was look a lot at the political environment we were getting into. An acquisition's success depends a lot on its champions' political fortunes and how the "not invented here" antibodies get dealt with. Also, we were working with some great people who we clicked well with. And the problem we were addressing was very strategic to the company, so we got a lot of attention. So these are all things I'd consider in any future acquisition situations.
- cmer 15y agoThis is getting old. Why is 37signals so bitter?
- spitfire 15y agoNot enough magazine covers.
- PedroCandeias 15y agoNormally I'd rant about 37s' rhetoric getting old. But with the Groupon IPO on the horizon and the overbearing feeling that there's some kind of startup bubble about to burst, I think I'll cut them a little slack this time.