Ask HN: I think my company might be selling. What should I be doing to prepare?

I worked for a tech startup for about 18 months before we were acquired. Things weren't looking too well and a larger company in a similar industry was looking to expand. Instead of building their own, they opted to acquire our IP and five person team. We had several meetings with the senior leadership of the acquiring company and from what they told us their company was a wonderful place to work with huge prospects of success in the short term. They offered each of us on the team a meager raise and large signing bonus, payable over 18 months. Fast forward a few months and I find myself working for a more bureaucratic and mismanagement company that I thought could exist. Our small team continued to operate as a stand alone unit for a while and were the only team meeting our deadlines consistently. Eventually employees on other teams started seeing that we were doing good work, had autonomy, etc and our team doubled and then tripled in size in the span of just a few weeks. Managers that had been with the company for a long time were brought in. New team members brought there own inefficient processes from other parts of the company and before long our team was missing deadlines and generally not being productive. Once our products had been succesfully integrated into their existing suite, I left. It was hard to watch such a productive team (which we truly were) get destroyed by people who thought they knew best just because they had a few years of middle management experience behind them. I feel like next time a company is interested in acquiring something I'm working on I'll have a much better sense of the type of questions to ask, e.g., what are your current and historical retention rates? Will be be able to continue working as we have and for how long? We were also told that the company had great remote work options, and they did. Our team just wasn't allowed to use them. All in all it was a interesting experience and I certainly learned a lot.

Any chance you could cut us in on some of those questions? :)

Legal advice would be useful, at least in conjunction with any other advice.

Some lawyers charge a flat fee for a one-off consultation about questions such as yours in connection with a potential separation employment, including the "small amount" of equity you've got, any potential agreements or restrictions you may be under, etc.

I have had this happen to me several times as well. This should be illegal

I think technically it is, but they count on the fact that it would cost twice as much to fight them in court than you could ever hope to get back.