Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team

Post by dpritchett » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:34 PM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #6

pawosty wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just incredible. Milk made one application , gave it away for free, summarily shut it down, and sold for $15 - $30 million. I understand these guys are very talented, and that Google was buying the talent more than the product, but that's quite a price for some gifted people!

> quite a price for some gifted people! Every time I saw this happen in the 90s the result was the same: Small team shows up in big company after big $$, gets frustrated with big company BS, doesn't really care and runs down the game clock until vesting is nearly complete, leaves without fanfare. I'm sure there must be counter examples, please let me know some if you have them.

Post by jpdoctor » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

geuis wrote: post #9

jpdoctor wrote: post #2

$2-4M/person, just for the people. Boy does this sound like the telecom bubble, and the internet bubble before that. The music is playing, find a chair.

No. Suppose these 8 guys are paid $150k a year on average. Engineers, good ones at least, bring in more than they cost. In some cases like Instagram and Facebook, the ratio of users to engineers is in the millions. Google is similar. When you also bring into account the caché of someone like Rose, the lifetime earnings from that team probably well exceeds what was spent to aquire them.

Post by Ryan_Shmotkin » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:51 PM UTC

jtreminio wrote: post #7

Forgive me for not knowing this, but when an acquisition like this happens that is solely for the talent, do the developers themselves get any part of those millions, or does it all simply go to the company owner? If it does all go to the owner, what would stop the developers from banding together and leaving all at once so they could pick up those millions directly, instead?

Post by anon808 » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:55 PM UTC

veguss wrote: post #5

brosephius wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep...why go through the normal interview process to work at Google when you can get acqui-hired, get paid the same, but get a million-dollar "signing bonus"?

Don't hate the player, hate the game my friend.

Post by Zakuzaa » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:59 PM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #2

$2-4M/person, just for the people. Boy does this sound like the telecom bubble, and the internet bubble before that. The music is playing, find a chair.