I always wondered if Facebook would acquire Google Ventures companies. It looks like the answer is yes.
Not necessarily. Facebook may have just been driving up the price for Google.
Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
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Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two team-centric acquisitions that Google has made in recent years: Aardvark and Slide. Both were cases of products that were mostly ahead of their time or just-off re: product-market fit, and had genius teams. As far as I know, the majority of both teams are still at Google.
Max Levchin left Google and Aardvark was shut down. Google had Foursquare in house (called Dodgeball) but couldn't execute. Android is the best counter-example I can think of.
max levchin -> slide
max ventilla -> aardvark
Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#43I'd say the Milk Team won the bidding war!
The Milk shareholders won the bidding war. The Milk employees probably had their share options converted to Google share options. Not necessarily a bad deal, but hardly the payday that the buyout makes for the shareholders.
(Some companies have their share options vest immediately on a buyout to protect people against these kind of shenanigans. Not that it helped with a previous employer of mine since they ran out of money & when a buyer came along they required all the employees to waive that clause in the contract if we wanted the buyout to happen at all. Beggars can't be choosers and all that...)
Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#44Forgive 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?
Usually: millions to the investors and founders for their stock. Employee stock will be worth little due to investor preferences. The acquirer will pay hundreds of thousands to retain a few "key employees", and tens of thousands to the ordinary developers (similar to what they'd get as a hiring bonus). This is why it doesn't make sense to be a startup employee.
Your question about why developers can't capture more of their value is a good one. Obviously acquirers would prefer not to pay $1M signing bonuses if they can avoid it, but they also seem to be happier about paying off VCs than engineers.
Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#45Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#46$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.
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!
So talented that they couldn't build a product that netted profit...
Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#47All we are missing is a league where these players can be drafted and traded.
There's a weekend project for someone.
Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#48Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#49I really don't get it. If the people are so valuable, why pay extra for the company and the investors. Just offer all the employees $1 mill dollar hiring bonuses, and if they gave up on Oink (as it seems they did) they will join you.
Re: Winning A Bidding War With Facebook, Google Picks Up The Entire Milk Team
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Two team-centric acquisitions that Google has made in recent years: Aardvark and Slide. Both were cases of products that were mostly ahead of their time or just-off re: product-market fit, and had genius teams. As far as I know, the majority of both teams are still at Google.
What has become of the Slide properties that Google inherited? What do they do with Slide stuff now?