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I can't really get past characterizing pandodaily (and Sarah Lacey especially) as a thinly disguised mouthpiece for the Venture Capital industry. In this case,

by ojbyrne 14y ago

I can't really get past characterizing pandodaily (and Sarah Lacey especially) as a thinly disguised mouthpiece for the Venture Capital industry. In this case, then, this can be summarized as "engineers are making too much money and have gotten too comfortable. And it's cutting into the (too much money, too comfortable) lifestyle that we, venture capitalists, enjoy.

tptacek 14y ago
That makes sense especially because the trend to acqui-hires is particularly insidious for investors, who essentially have to chalk those all up as failures (for many funds, simply breaking even on an investment can be, pro forma, a failure). The prospect of an acqui-hire obviously motivates entrepreneurs to tack towards offerings that will elicit acqui-hire interest. If you're an investor, you'd rather your portfolio companies swing for the fences and miss, rather than bunt.
- arohner 14y ago
  > you'd rather your portfolio companies swing for the fences and miss, rather than bunt. That implies a correlation between what you're working on, and whether you'll get acquihired. From what I've seen, the aquihiring companies will offer on anyone who can get to 'hello world' of startups. > the trend to acqui-hires is particularly insidious for investors Obviously, if you already have investors and you take the acquihire, there should be a long conversation w/ the investors first. At this point in the company, the acquihire is a signal that the startup won't work, or new investors won't join. Also, "I need my investors to make 2-3x" is a perfectly valid negotiation strategy. For angels, that's a decent return. (Of course, matters are different for VC). But the bar for taking an acquihire after a series A is much much higher.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I have seen the same thing: friends of mine at SFBA startups tell me they uniformly get offers from the earliest days of their companies. But I'm not sure what difference that makes. "Institutional" investors on the boards of unproven companies want those companies to take risks. Everybody's a risk taker in the first 6-9 months, when the runway seems 3 startups long. Nobody is taking those early offers. But later on, the acqui-hire market might make it easy for operators to subtly stop thinking so much about the risks investors want them to take, and more on optimizing their outcome over the next 4-6 months.
diego 14y ago
That's the reason I flagged this post. This is not hacker news or even journalism. It's just lobbying for an industry.
michaelt 14y ago
I did not get that impression. The article said said: The flywheel gains more steam, the more acqui-hires there are. [...] it sends the message to investors that there’s no risk in backing them. It doesn’t matter that investors rarely make anything from these deals, because frequently they don’t lose anything either, or they lose very little. Wouldn't a mouthpiece of the VC industry think it was good, not bad, that investors got their money back even after making bad investments?

by ojbyrne 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

That makes sense especially because the trend to acqui-hires is particularly insidious for investors, who essentially have to chalk those all up as failures (for many funds, simply breaking even on an investment can be, pro forma, a failure). The prospect of an acqui-hire obviously motivates entrepreneurs to tack towards offerings that will elicit acqui-hire interest. If you're an investor, you'd rather your portfolio companies swing for the fences and miss, rather than bunt.

arohner 14y ago
> you'd rather your portfolio companies swing for the fences and miss, rather than bunt. That implies a correlation between what you're working on, and whether you'll get acquihired. From what I've seen, the aquihiring companies will offer on anyone who can get to 'hello world' of startups. > the trend to acqui-hires is particularly insidious for investors Obviously, if you already have investors and you take the acquihire, there should be a long conversation w/ the investors first. At this point in the company, the acquihire is a signal that the startup won't work, or new investors won't join. Also, "I need my investors to make 2-3x" is a perfectly valid negotiation strategy. For angels, that's a decent return. (Of course, matters are different for VC). But the bar for taking an acquihire after a series A is much much higher.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I have seen the same thing: friends of mine at SFBA startups tell me they uniformly get offers from the earliest days of their companies. But I'm not sure what difference that makes. "Institutional" investors on the boards of unproven companies want those companies to take risks. Everybody's a risk taker in the first 6-9 months, when the runway seems 3 startups long. Nobody is taking those early offers. But later on, the acqui-hire market might make it easy for operators to subtly stop thinking so much about the risks investors want them to take, and more on optimizing their outcome over the next 4-6 months.

diego 14y ago

That's the reason I flagged this post. This is not hacker news or even journalism. It's just lobbying for an industry.

michaelt 14y ago

I did not get that impression. The article said said: The flywheel gains more steam, the more acqui-hires there are. [...] it sends the message to investors that there’s no risk in backing them. It doesn’t matter that investors rarely make anything from these deals, because frequently they don’t lose anything either, or they lose very little. Wouldn't a mouthpiece of the VC industry think it was good, not bad, that investors got their money back even after making bad investments?