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Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

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Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#101

Post by fotoblur »

_greim_ wrote: post #61
jusben1369 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo needs talent to succeed. Yahoo, in general, cannot compete with Google, Facebook or smaller startups for talent. They're better off now than they were prior to Marissa but they're still a definite second best. So they are buying talent to stock the shelves with first rate devs and leaders - mostly in mobile. At some point - say in 6 - 18 more months - talent may come to work for them to work with some of these…

Bear with me while I ask a dumb question. Why pay $70M to acquire a startup just for their engineering and technical talent? What's the going rate for a really good engineer nowadays, $150K? Why not just offer $180K? That difference adds up to a lot less than $70M.

My thoughts exactly. I'll broadcast this to Yahoo right now. Im a desirable hire in the Bay Area, who is working at a 200M+/year profitable company and on mobile. Give me a $1 million signing bonus and Ill leave my current team, and deliver those experiences and successes right onto your lap. The real issue here is this is a reward to investors for there failures. There is some other part of this story were just not privy to. It's a VC back deal. Apple only paid for Color's 20 engineers for $5M.

Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#102

Post by nandemo »

nly wrote: post #68
_greim_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear with me while I ask a dumb question. Why pay $70M to acquire a startup just for their engineering and technical talent? What's the going rate for a really good engineer nowadays, $150K? Why not just offer $180K? That difference adds up to a lot less than $70M.

because when you're on $150K, and enjoy your work, you won't jump ship to work with a dinosaur like Yahoo just for a pay rise?

I must be missing something. So Joe works as an employee at Somethingly earning 150k and won't jump ship to Yahoo for a pay rise. But after Yahoo acquires Somethingly -- and likely shuts down its product -- Joe will choose to keep working at Yahoo because...? Given that Joe presumably didn't have a say in the acquisition, what are the (non-monetary) merits of post-acquisition Yahoo over pre-acquisition Yahoo?

Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#104

Post by arsenerei »

nostrademons wrote: post #85
arsenerei wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you pronounce acqhire? ack-HIRE?

I pronounce it "Acqui-hire", and I've sometimes seen it spelled that way, but "acquihire" looks wrong to me in print.

ackqua-hire? Or a-choir-hire? I wish I were joking, but I've never seen the pronunciation printed anywhere.

Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#105

Post by nostrademons »

arsenerei wrote: post #104
nostrademons wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pronounce it "Acqui-hire", and I've sometimes seen it spelled that way, but "acquihire" looks wrong to me in print.

ackqua-hire? Or a-choir-hire? I wish I were joking, but I've never seen the pronunciation printed anywhere.

"Acqui" as in "acquiesce", then "hire" in place of the "esce".

Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#106

Post by wikiburner »

hkmurakami wrote: post #86
hga wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my. Yahoo has lots of problems with execution, we shouldn't be surprised if due diligence is another example, especially when they think they're in the 11th hour.

well considering Yahoo doesn't power their own search engine, maybe they're okay with teams who are adept at creating great UI and UX wrappers around 3rd party licensed technology.

I thought they were dropping/had dropped Bing? Is that not accurate?

Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#107

Post by stevenwei »

nostrademons wrote: post #84
darkarmani wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not offer $200K and require proof of currently working at X?

There are two parts to getting good employees: finding them and getting them to work for you . Many startup employees, by themselves, will not work for Yahoo for $200K/year. Many startup employees will work for Yahoo for $150K/year if all their favorite coworkers are working for Yahoo and they get to work on a product they're familiar with. The only way to bring them over is to bring them over as a block. Many people…

Many startup employees will work for Yahoo for $150K/year if all their favorite coworkers are working for Yahoo and they get to work on a product they're familiar with.

That seems at odds with the fact that most of these companies products are immediately shut down when the acquisition is announced.

Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#108

Post by arsenerei »

nostrademons wrote: post #105
arsenerei wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ackqua-hire? Or a-choir-hire? I wish I were joking, but I've never seen the pronunciation printed anywhere.

"Acqui" as in "acquiesce", then "hire" in place of the "esce".

I can finally hear it, thank you!

Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#109

Post by [deleted] »

capkutay wrote: post #54
badclient wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For How much money Rockmelt raised says little about how good of a deal Yahoo received. The reverse may be true: Yahoo may have had to pay way more than the real value simply to ensure a return to the investors, not because it valued the company at the price paid.

raising $40 million...the investors most likely just made their money back at best. Maybe 2x for the early investors?

[deleted]

Re: Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st

#110

Post by nostrademons »

stevenwei wrote: post #107
nostrademons wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two parts to getting good employees: finding them and getting them to work for you . Many startup employees, by themselves, will not work for Yahoo for $200K/year. Many startup employees will work for Yahoo for $150K/year if all their favorite coworkers are working for Yahoo and they get to work on a product they're familiar with. The only way to bring them over is to bring them over as a block. Many people…

Many startup employees will work for Yahoo for $150K/year if all their favorite coworkers are working for Yahoo and they get to work on a product they're familiar with. That seems at odds with the fact that most of these companies products are immediately shut down when the acquisition is announced.

Shutting down the product is often not part of the deal. Many founders will deliberately choose an acquirer that offers less money but promises to keep the product alive.

It's often a bait-and-switch tactic on the part of the acquirer. Once the deal is complete, the acquirer owns everything, product and all, and has no legal obligation to keep it open and active. If you wait a month or two after the deal closes to announce this, then many of the employees already have large sunk costs in the employer - they've possibly relocated, they've signed up for health insurance again, they don't want to have a tenure of 1-2 months on their resume, they've learned some of the acquirer's systems, they've made contacts in their new employer - and so you can keep them even if it's not a choice they would've made initially.

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