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

Post by leoncaet » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

chubot wrote: post #30

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

Post by cm2012 » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #34

xnx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Inside Out, Soul

Inside out was good, but not great, IMO. Counter-counterpoints: Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University, The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Coco, Onward, Luca, Turning Red, Lightyear. The (not very original) point is: You can no longer count on a Pixar movie being excellent.

Post by paulgb » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

RubberShoes wrote: post #23

Google acquiring YouTube "In the Plex" by Steven Levy goes into great detail on how YouTube could not survive its growth without the infrastructure and ad technologies Google brought to the platform.

Post by psim1 » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

curiousllama wrote: post #28

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 -…

Post by BryantD » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

groovybits wrote: post #40

BryantD wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that Marvel is another example, although a complex one. Marvel Comics has changed very little in terms of culture; Ike Perlmutter runs it very much the way he ran it when it was independent. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been great for Marvel but is no longer under Marvel Comics proper (it's part of the studio group now). As long as we're doing Disney acquisitions, Lucasfilm is also still pretty indepen…

Lucasfilm, perhaps. LucasArts (now known as Lucasfilm Games)... tell that to the games that were put on hold and then eventually cancelled upon acquisition.