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Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

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Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#21

Post by skciva »

countvonbalzac wrote: post #5

Instagram ($1 billion), WhatsApp ($19 billion)

Obviously we'll never know but I'd love to see an alternate timeline where those acquisitions didn't happen.

Instagram specifically has just become another ad infested shopping app for me these days.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#24

Post by jjoonathan »

fredguth wrote: post #9
InTheArena wrote: post #4

NeXT with Apple is a pretty solid canonical case. In that situation, it really became a reverse acquisition with Steve Jobs regaining control of Apple. We've done a number of acquisitions - and most seem to have done well. A big portion of that is recognizing that you are not only acquiring the company - it's IP and people - but also it's culture. If you don't want that culture - if it's not better then yours, you do…

I like the example, but can you say that NeXT was a large acquisition for Apple? How big was NeXT compared to Apple? Does size matter in this analysis? I believe so. I don't know much about this particular acquisition, but I always assumed that buying NeXT was the price to get Jobs back.

Aren't half the UI classes in OSX still prefixed with "NS" for NextStep?

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#25

Post by xnx »

tpmx wrote: post #15
taylorwc wrote: post #11

Pixar acquisition by Disney comes to mind

Strong disagreement. The acquisition happened in 2006. The last few great Pixar movies were in the pipeline already (Ratatouille - 2007, WALL-E - 2008, Up - 2009).

Counterpoint: Inside Out, Soul

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#26

Post by stagger87 »

This happens all the time. It is essentially the business strategy of many (not all!) conglomerates. Scoop up successful companies and let them keep running as they are, sometimes with even greater success due to things like access to money and peers. I've worked for a few subsidiaries through the acquisition process, and aside from some accountants showing up once a year, everything remained the same.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#28

Post by curiousllama »

OP - Of your 5 criteria, 2 will change by the very nature of what it is to be acquired. The other 3 are essentially 1 (how excited are we about this change?)

Culture: there's different people around, now. So culture necessarily changes.

Flexibility: bigger companies are less flexible because there are simply more people. Even if every individual is more flexible, it doesn't matter.

Enthusiasm, spirit, and happiness - are these not synonyms, in this context? And if they are, are they not reactions to external factors (culture & flexibility)?

I would suggest your question may be tautological: big companies will always ruin small companies from the perspective of someone who likes small companies because the small company became big.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#29

Post by kerblang »

While not answering the question, I think a lot of companies are acquired in a state of immaturity and then comes the problem of succeeding as actual grownups. Everyone blames the acquirer but it's not that simple. I work with a group that still has leftover ego-execution mismatch and it's tiresome.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#30

Post by chubot »

InTheArena wrote: post #4

NeXT with Apple is a pretty solid canonical case. In that situation, it really became a reverse acquisition with Steve Jobs regaining control of Apple. We've done a number of acquisitions - and most seem to have done well. A big portion of that is recognizing that you are not only acquiring the company - it's IP and people - but also it's culture. If you don't want that culture - if it's not better then yours, you do…

The crazy thing is that Disney -> Pixar was also pretty much a reverse acquisition, so Steve was involved in 2 of those. At the time of acquisition his wife was the largest Disney shareholder, so she had more shares than anyone in the Disney family

Seems like Pixar is doing well and Disney is taking influence from them

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