Private equity will only own about 20% of the company, only 20% of the stock was public to begin with. Why is everyone singing songs of doom and gloom?
Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
51–60 of 414 posts
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#52[dead]
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#53Has the trend of PE owning things increased in the last decade? Has PE gotten more money in the past years so that they can hoover up companies?
Absolutely, especially healthcare. Nearly everything PE touches gets worse. The only ones that benefit are those that work for PE companies (and esp. the partners).
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#54Has the trend of PE owning things increased in the last decade? Has PE gotten more money in the past years so that they can hoover up companies?
IPOs have been declining for a while, which leaves private sale as a more attractive alternative.
Here's an article from last year, but if you search "IPO drought" in a news search engine you can find a lot of more recent articles https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/02/0...
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#55This makes the Google registrar change even worse. I need to get my act together and transfer my .dev domain. :/
This was my visceral reaction as well, but does it really make the change worse?
There are tons of business that are private that are doing great. I host with OVH they are private, lots of the businesses I have worked for have been private.
Candidly without the pressure of "this quarter" it might be a good thing for Squarespace.
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#56It must be nice for the founder to pocket $2 billion in cash from selling his company. For users, on the other hand, I'll hardly trust a PE firm with a SaaS product. There's just too much incentive to jack up prices to service the debt taken to acquire Squarespace, and cut costs on customer support and building new features.
Soon, most of the engineering and support will be over in India. I'd make a joke about innovation, but not sure how innovative Square has been the last five years.
> I'd make a joke about innovation, but not sure how innovative Square has been the last five years.
Honestly, isn't that a great match for PE?
Once a company has run its innovation sprint, convert it to keep-the-lights-on and cut costs.
In return, PE gets to buy a revenue stream.
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's just too much incentive to jack up prices to service the debt taken to acquire Squarespace, and cut costs on customer support and building new features. So what's the best ownership structure? Public companies have their issues (short-term thinking), acquisitions have their issues (getting closed down)... I mean, cutting costs and upping prices isn't awesome for the customer, but do you have more faith in a…
What evidence do you have that the new owners are interested in making Squarespace profitable or sustainable? PE firms are the "selling the car for scrap" of business acquisitions.
They're trying to buy it and probably do some rationalizing to increase profitability. Classic PE play.
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#58It must be nice for the founder to pocket $2 billion in cash from selling his company. For users, on the other hand, I'll hardly trust a PE firm with a SaaS product. There's just too much incentive to jack up prices to service the debt taken to acquire Squarespace, and cut costs on customer support and building new features.
Soon, most of the engineering and support will be over in India. I'd make a joke about innovation, but not sure how innovative Square has been the last five years.
Squarespace, very different company, though they do compete to an extent.
I’ve seen a lot of changes from Square, though half of them were bad.
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#59It must be nice for the founder to pocket $2 billion in cash from selling his company. For users, on the other hand, I'll hardly trust a PE firm with a SaaS product. There's just too much incentive to jack up prices to service the debt taken to acquire Squarespace, and cut costs on customer support and building new features.
Soon, most of the engineering and support will be over in India. I'd make a joke about innovation, but not sure how innovative Square has been the last five years.
Squarespace.
Different company than Square.
Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
#60The gold rush is over - private equity is going to squeeze every little drop from the companies that have been built and we will move on to Web 3.0 - which will be just like web 1.0 - self-hosting, link directories, newsletters, and guestbooks.