Talent Acquisitions • Hacker News Board

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#101

Post by gfodor » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 12:24 AM UTC

gwillen wrote: post #39

If I think you are inclined to accept a talent acquisition if offered, I _will not use your product_. Why would I? It's insane for me to trust my data to someone who's going to throw it away to make a buck. If you accept a talent acquisition, you will -- and should -- have a devil of a time getting customers at your next venture, having thrown away the customers from your previous one. Tread lightly.

From an outsiders perspective there is very little you can go on to decide if someone is "inclined to accept a talent acquisition." First, this is a flawed statement to begin with, because startups don't accept talent acquisitions in general, they accept a particular one. The decision is driven by the particular offer, the plan for the post-acquisition timeline, the details of the current trajectory of the business, the long-term benefits to the team, the rapport with the people they are going to be working with, and so on. It's not just about dollar signs and all acquisition offers are very, very different.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#102

Post by gfodor » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 12:28 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #55

I don't understand the point of talent acquisitions. Couldn't you spend half the amount of money you would have buying the company just giving the developers enormous signing bonuses to come work for you? Why buy out the original investors in the target company when it's the developers you want?

Consider the potential fallout of trying to do a "hostile acquihire" -- first, you will kill the relationships with the startups investors, second, you will put the founders in a position where they are screwing their investors. Who wants to go work for a company that undermines your business relationships?

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#103

Post by gfodor » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 12:29 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #97

drewcrawford wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You consider the position of the hirers, but you fail to consider the position of the investors and the founders. Why would they be incentivized to accept this offer? First: why would the investors of a company allow the team to be bought out from under them? A good investor will align the incentives so that the founders are incentivized to exit at the same time as the investor. Second: why would a founder of a succe…

If you want the employees, and not the assets of the company, who cares about the investors and founders? They're not parties to the transaction. How could they stop the team from being "bought out from under them?"

Usually the founders are key members of the talent being acquired.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#104

Post by rayiner » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 12:34 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #102

rayiner wrote: post #55

I don't understand the point of talent acquisitions. Couldn't you spend half the amount of money you would have buying the company just giving the developers enormous signing bonuses to come work for you? Why buy out the original investors in the target company when it's the developers you want?

Consider the potential fallout of trying to do a "hostile acquihire" -- first, you will kill the relationships with the startups investors, second, you will put the founders in a position where they are screwing their investors. Who wants to go work for a company that undermines your business relationships?

People do hostile acquisitions in other industries all the time. It's just business. Indeed, it's verging on anti-competitive to have some "gentlemen's protocol" as a way to keep investors happy. You're not buying anything the investors own (the good will and IP of the company), so why should they get paid?

My guess is that Google, etc, do this for anti-competitive reasons, as a way to keep engineer salaries from getting bid up. There seems to be a cultural stigma with paying much more to some engineers than others, which is why they don't just offer everyone at the target company a $250k signing bonus to come on board instead of cashing out the target company's investors.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#105

Post by jasonlotito » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 12:44 AM UTC

bvlaar wrote: post #34

tb303 wrote: post #12

So now that I've paid for instapaper for iPhone and iPad, I don't have to give Marco any more money. That means the only way he stays in business as the product grows (being that I am not a revenue source anymore) is by either a) figuring out an additional revenue stream from the data or b) discontinuing the apps I paid for and charging me for new ones. The same goes for sparrow. These one-time purchase apps don't ha…

Great point. I guess we can draw parallels to other purchases we make. When I purchase a car, I get the car I paid for in that current state, they wont 'update' it for free, nor do we as consumers expect that. The app industry has created a covenant of sorts that says, pay for the software, and we will update it for x period of time going forward. Which is great for consumers but to be frank, kind of a bad deal for d…

> When I purchase a car, I get the car I paid for in that current state, they wont 'update' it for free, nor do we as consumers expect that.

That's not entirely true. I buy a car knowing that if it needs repairs, I can repair it. Or at least go somewhere else to get it repaired. It will cost money, but so be it. I would not buy a car I had to rely on the manufacturer to fix. There are slow attempts at that in the industry, but by and large, cars are much more open than something like Sparrow ever was.

And yes, I consider carefully my choice in software the same way. I don't mind paying for software.

I also consider the business model. Does it make sense what they are doing? Does it make sense in the long term? Will they be around to support their own business?

The App Model doesn't make sense (and so I generally don't invest in it, at least for nothing critical).

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#106

Post by dilap » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 12:56 AM UTC

Well, sure, I paid $20 or whatever for Sparrow (twice, actually), and I get the impression that tons of other people did too, but it didn't make much difference, did it?

And it never will -- there are always going to be developers who are in it for the money and will leave you high-and-dry (which is heartbreaking, in a very-small-violen way, but fine).

My own takeaway is if you don't want your apps to disappear, use open source apps.

(Except for some reason, open-source apps seem to tend to be terrible, UI wise. Not sure why this is, though I have a couple half-baked theories.)

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#107

Post by socratic » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 1:02 AM UTC

Was the intent ever not to get talent acquired?

I'm very confused by all of the anger at Google and Facebook for acquiring these companies. The companies look like they were designed to get talent acquired in the first place! They both have very small teams (2--5), Sparrow at least appears to have taken very small amounts of funding (just seed a year or two ago), and I can't name a consumer desktop application (especially a really generic one like mail with tons of free competitors) that has become a major $1bn+ (or even $100m+) business in the last several years. There probably aren't enough eyeballs for ads, and App Stores have made consumer software cost expectations too cheap. What's more, Sparrow is pretty much designed to make Google's offering better.

Is this interpretation wrong? Could these small teams have built independent companies (rather than attractive teams for talent acquisition) on Mac desktop software in 2012?

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#108

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 1:02 AM UTC

jazzychad wrote: post #9

Well, congrats to Marco for having a successful and sustainable business where he has the option and leverage to decide what he wants to do when these offers come knocking. Most startup/bootstrapped companies are not in that position. Most end up failing and winding up with nothing, but there are some that will end up with these talent acquisition situations. Remember, both sides (the acquirers and the acquirees) hav…

[deleted]

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#109

Post by blantonl » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 1:16 AM UTC

socratic wrote: post #107

Was the intent ever not to get talent acquired? I'm very confused by all of the anger at Google and Facebook for acquiring these companies. The companies look like they were designed to get talent acquired in the first place! They both have very small teams (2--5), Sparrow at least appears to have taken very small amounts of funding (just seed a year or two ago), and I can't name a consumer desktop application (espec…

... and I can't name a consumer desktop application (especially a really generic one like mail with tons of free competitors) that has become a major $1bn+ (or even $100m+) business in the last several years.

Exactly. An "exit" can mean a lot of different things depending on the company, situation, financials etc.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#110

Post by mikeash » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 2:14 AM UTC

justauser wrote: post #64

mikeash wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what you mean? I think I have an idea, but I don't know if I'm thinking what you're thinking.

Sure, it wasn't meant to be snarky. I think a lot of folks simply have vastly different measurements for success. Some think it is binary meaning either total success or total failure. Others define multiple levels of success. Tie money and success together and the resulting discussions can be quite inflammatory. I've seen a few folks chime in here already that one of the reasons they work for themselves is that for…

Certainly people have different goals and ideas for what constitutes success. However, any company is for sale for the right offer. Conversely, any company looking to sell will turn down an offer that's bad enough. The owners may to even know what sort of offer they'll accept or reject until it's made. So, I don't know how you could add the proposed disclaimers, or how they would be useful.

I'm not sure how any of this relates to wedding rings, but I assume that's not too important anyway.