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> 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
by 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 agoI 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.