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It is not easy for a smaller tech company (often happy with their relatively lean stack) to integrate into a big company and its stack if integration was ever a

It is not easy for a smaller tech company (often happy with their relatively lean stack) to integrate into a big company and its stack if integration was ever a goal (not sure it was). The hassle factor in a big company is 2x to do something, and you often have 1/2 the drive / vision / motivation. I do wonder though, do folks not have super clear plans for these acquisitions? They sometimes stagnate surprisingly. We used a smallish product (maybe 5K/year) they get acquired, they dropped a key feature and replaced it with a paid but not compatible / worse feature, then reached out with a sales person to talk about why we weren't using it and rolled our own replacement. I mean, huh? Of all the strategies this was going to be it? Instagram a notable exception here.

nickstinemates 4y ago
As with a lot of things (having done my fair share of acquisitions and also having been acquired multiple times) the plan and reality are two completely different beasts. Oftentimes, getting the deal done is such a rush to the finish line, mixed with celebration, that making all of these grand plans a reality is someone else's problem, time to go fix the next thing. It's not logical or rational; in reality, the euphoria of closing means the real work has just begun. One of the hardest things to do is maintain momentum after a major accomplishment - either by buying the company you so coveted, or by selling the company you built.
underwater 4y ago
I've been through an acquisition like you mention and I was shocked at how little planning our acquiring company (a big one) had done to make it successful. Once the legal and finance stuff was done there was almost zero process and structure set up to ensure we would succeed. Everything was ad hoc. We ended up in a bureaucratic environment with unrealistic expectations, trying to integrate with undocumented in-house systems, unclear goals, and almost zero support. Instagram was an outlier as far as acquisitions go. They had 16 employees and massive momentum. Facebook was highly motivated to make the integration happen. They cherry picked strong engineers to join the Instagram team and drastically increase their engineering capacity.
- jeltz 4y ago
  I also imagine that integrating 16 people company is much easier than integrating a medium sized company like Heroku.

nickstinemates 4y ago

As with a lot of things (having done my fair share of acquisitions and also having been acquired multiple times) the plan and reality are two completely different beasts. Oftentimes, getting the deal done is such a rush to the finish line, mixed with celebration, that making all of these grand plans a reality is someone else's problem, time to go fix the next thing. It's not logical or rational; in reality, the euphoria of closing means the real work has just begun. One of the hardest things to do is maintain momentum after a major accomplishment - either by buying the company you so coveted, or by selling the company you built.

underwater 4y ago

I've been through an acquisition like you mention and I was shocked at how little planning our acquiring company (a big one) had done to make it successful. Once the legal and finance stuff was done there was almost zero process and structure set up to ensure we would succeed. Everything was ad hoc. We ended up in a bureaucratic environment with unrealistic expectations, trying to integrate with undocumented in-house systems, unclear goals, and almost zero support. Instagram was an outlier as far as acquisitions go. They had 16 employees and massive momentum. Facebook was highly motivated to make the integration happen. They cherry picked strong engineers to join the Instagram team and drastically increase their engineering capacity.

jeltz 4y ago
I also imagine that integrating 16 people company is much easier than integrating a medium sized company like Heroku.