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Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

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Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

#41

Post by 2d8a875f-39a2-4 »

Some more:

General cost cutting without any other visible reasons. Cut backs on travel, social budgets, contractors, any other expenses that can be trimmed to make the financials look sexier.

Departments like Finance, Legal, Risk/Compliance and HR are overworked and distracted. These people, at least some of them, get involved after the execs but before everyone else. As someone else said this can start with the CFO but it'll spread to whole teams of paralegals and accountants before you are told about it.

Speaking of HR, do they suddenly want everyone to sign contract addendums or "compliance papers" or whatever? Asking you to fill out a "skills inventory"? Everyone got to get background checks?

Sales teams rushing to finish deals (to sexy up financials) and clear their comp (before the new boss brings new rules). I guess this isn't really that different from BAU.

As has been pointed out these things can all have other causes. But all together, all at the same time, without any stated reason....

Unfortunately ICs are often the least plugged in politically and end up the last to know. The compensation is being retained, unlike everyone else above who heard it through the grapevine before you.

Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

#42

Post by 2d8a875f-39a2-4 »

2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote: post #41

Some more: General cost cutting without any other visible reasons. Cut backs on travel, social budgets, contractors, any other expenses that can be trimmed to make the financials look sexier. Departments like Finance, Legal, Risk/Compliance and HR are overworked and distracted. These people, at least some of them, get involved after the execs but before everyone else. As someone else said this can start with the CFO…

Yeah I forgot a couple:

Insider trading. It happens.

Unusual executive travel. The CEO, CFO and VP of Legal spending a week of "workshops with a customer" in Hong Kong?

Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

#43

Post by lozenge »

bruce343434 wrote: post #36
bruce511 wrote: post #13

There are always signs, and they are easy to rationalise in hind-sight. The danger is that there are signs for lots of things, so jumping to conclusions regarding the reason can be dangerous. For example, we recently got a contract with a company fanatical about security. They wanted additional special insurances, which in turn wanted additional company-wide security policies. This affected everyone, even though the…

That security point stood out to me as well. First of all, who intentionally writes code to contain SQL injection vulnerabilities anno 2024? Or knows about it and doesn't fix it? Is it really that weird that someone fixes it?

Sometimes there's clearly no risk but an automated tool flags it anyway? Requiring a creative and meaningless "fix".

Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

#44

Post by phamilton »

pianoben wrote: post #9
itsdrewmiller wrote: post #5

These all seem accurate and I'd add even moreso than security (which can be prioritized for other reasons) a focus on buttoning up open source licensing / IP ownership is a dead giveaway that a sale is close. Also the hiring and retention thing is probably less about distraction and more about not taking on additional expenses in the middle of due diligence - generally the acquirer will want to have more of a say in…

100% - OSS IP licensing is exclusively the provenance of public companies, companies about to go public, and companies about to be purchased.

FWIW, I've had to track down licensing and proof of IP assignment for fundraising rounds too.

Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

#46

Post by bjackman »

bruce511 wrote: post #13

There are always signs, and they are easy to rationalise in hind-sight. The danger is that there are signs for lots of things, so jumping to conclusions regarding the reason can be dangerous. For example, we recently got a contract with a company fanatical about security. They wanted additional special insurances, which in turn wanted additional company-wide security policies. This affected everyone, even though the…

It seems unwise to make life choices based on even the sure fact that your employer is in acquisition talks? Probably even if you are a founder personally carrying out acquisition talks?

I guess the exception might be the decision to wait a couple of months before making some other decision!

Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

#47

Post by dmurray »

> A few days before the Twitter deal was announced, the CEO of MoPub summoned a bunch of us to the office on a Sunday. Nothing like that had ever happened before. At the meeting, he told us about the acquisition (this was when I learned!) and explained that he needed us to sign some paperwork about our equity before the agreement could be finalized.

This sounds dodgy as fuck! If this ever happens to you, please don't sign the paperwork without running it past a lawyer. It's definitely not there to grant you more rights.

Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

#48

Post by pavel_lishin »

> Moreover, it’s a little awkward to be selling candidates on your cool, fast-moving startup when you know that you’re about to gobbled up by a larger company.

Anecdotally, plenty of companies are still running their hiring pipeline even when someone - including HR - knows that they're about to be acquired, and nearly everyone who doesn't have a signed offer in hand (and sometimes, not even them) is going to be either completely ghosted, or get apologetic letters from a different company's HR department.

Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)

#49

Post by meheleventyone »

dmurray wrote: post #47

> A few days before the Twitter deal was announced, the CEO of MoPub summoned a bunch of us to the office on a Sunday. Nothing like that had ever happened before. At the meeting, he told us about the acquisition (this was when I learned!) and explained that he needed us to sign some paperwork about our equity before the agreement could be finalized. This sounds dodgy as fuck! If this ever happens to you, please don't…

If you own equity hopefully they'd have told you about the acquisition beforehand as a shareholder! But that said it's not unusual to have to do paperwork, for example you can have "offer of first refusal" on the sale of shares which gives you the right to buy the shares being offered for sale, over the person making the current offer, so companies will get people to sign a contract waiving that right as part of the sale process. Sometimes you'll be transferring shares from the old company to shares in the acquiring company and so on. Those latter things you should run past a lawyer anyway!
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