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Watching an acquirer ruin your company

startupwin.kelsus.com

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Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#141

Post by kylehotchkiss »

BMc2020 wrote: post #24
le-mark wrote: post #10

I’ve seen this twice. First time the PE firm installed their CEO who came in and immediately started talking about cleaning house. A bunch of developers left fearing a layoff. That was bad enough, but what he really meant was sales. He gutted the sales team and brought in his guys. Sales tanked, company growth stopped, hard. Features dwindled and bugs grew. This clown and his cronies were gone after two years and the…

Reminds me a a company I worked at, I can't say it's name, let's just say it rhymes with Dewlett Dackard. 1) Start with a $55 billion dollar company... 2) Hire a new CEO and cronies that are going to make miracles happen with with a very expensive acquisition of another company. 3) 18 months later the miracles have not happened. CEO and cronies are invited to leave with very generous golden parachutes. 4) Start with…

I recently purchased a Drinter from them. Wirecutter recommended it. I even signed up for Dewlett Dackard Plus since it sounded like a better deal than buying ink on its own.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#142

Post by yieldcrv »

HWR_14 wrote: post #137
yieldcrv wrote: post #96

Serious question: why do you care? For some of my trades I use capital to purchase shares on the stock market For some of my trades I have a 100% premine of shares and sell them at a higher price until I’m down to 20% left but only because I minted 500% more shares to sell to the PE guys Its no different to me, a trade is a trade

> For some of my trades I have a 100% premine of shares and sell them at a higher price until I’m down to 20% left but only because I minted 500% more shares to sell to the PE guys I didn't understand your example at all. Care to explain?

When you create a new company, you write down an arbitrary number of shares that it is made of, and give yourself 100% of them at $0.00.

From then on, the goal is to sell shares at > $0.00

But instead of selling any of those shares, when an investor comes you create a bunch more shares at $0.00 and sell them, dropping your percent of ownership to < 100% while not incurring a capital gains tax event.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#143

Post by duped »

It sounds like the acquirer was at much fault as the company. Launching a musical instrument at CES is dumb - you go to NAMM (winter and summer), AES, or even NAB - somewhere where early adopters are, and press that will showcase the product to them.

Requiring theory and practice to use an instrument isn't bad design. Compromising creative potential for potential market size just turns it into a toy, not something with staying power.

Killing the android version would have been fine. Music apps and tools have been great on iOS since well before Oboe dropped on Android to fix the latency issues. The poster seems to be as wrong a fit for this product as it was for the market.

All that said if you make a music tool and find an acquirer for any dollar amount you've succeeded. The market is teeny and people don't want to pay for new things.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#144

Post by mm007emko »

Phlarp wrote: post #119
cr__ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software engineers have been tricked into thinking they are part of the in club because they are paid well enough to have the lifestyle that the middle class had between ww2 and the 80s This, and additionally we've been tricked into feeling guilty about it as well.

And still too busy smelling our own farts to unionize.

Well, question is which part of the world you live in, of course. But I don't need to unionize. If I am not satisfied in my job I can switch. Each consecutive job hop past 15 years got me better pay, better benefits and sometimes a better job (sometimes it was equaly shitty as the prevous one but for better money). This does not happen for unionized workers.

Maybe in the future we will have to unionize. Definitely not now and not in Europe. And this is not a matter of pay, e.g. airline pilots are paid more than programmers here yet they are heavily unionized.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#145

Post by hansword »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #84
jmyeet wrote: post #13

As soon as someone hands you the check it's no longer "your" company and you should stop thinking of it as such. Only misery lies on that path. I see this on a smaller scale where ICs leave a company and take a copy of "their" code (ask Sergey Aleynikov [1] if that's a good idea). It's not yours. If you ever use it you could face legal consequences. And there's no code I've ever written that I wasn't convinced I coul…

Have you ever started a business before? Yes, you technically no longer own it once sold, but there's a huge amount of blood, sweat and tears that goes into building something from nothing - not to mention a sense of loyalty to your staff - and you genuinely do want to see it go into good hands and become managed well. I guess a somewhat leaky analogy would be like giving away a dog you raised to another family and f…

(a) if you want the dog to go to good hands, don't sell it. Spend time finding the best hands possible and give them the dog.

(b) as you might see, your analogy is not very good.

(c) if you find you care about the money, sell it to the highest bidder. be happy with the money.

(d) if you find you care about the fate of the company, perhaps not sell it? or if you do, sell it to someone who also does? or if you don't, at least realise it was your failure to find such a buyer.

(e) if you expect an acquirer to care about what they acquired beyond how to make money from it, you are a romantic, a fool, or both... and I want to buy your company for cheap.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#146

Post by killingtime74 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #84
jmyeet wrote: post #13

As soon as someone hands you the check it's no longer "your" company and you should stop thinking of it as such. Only misery lies on that path. I see this on a smaller scale where ICs leave a company and take a copy of "their" code (ask Sergey Aleynikov [1] if that's a good idea). It's not yours. If you ever use it you could face legal consequences. And there's no code I've ever written that I wasn't convinced I coul…

Have you ever started a business before? Yes, you technically no longer own it once sold, but there's a huge amount of blood, sweat and tears that goes into building something from nothing - not to mention a sense of loyalty to your staff - and you genuinely do want to see it go into good hands and become managed well. I guess a somewhat leaky analogy would be like giving away a dog you raised to another family and f…

I empathise and think the only solution is to either not sell (only sell a non controlling stake?) or vet the buyer very carefully

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#147

Post by vanviegen »

HWR_14 wrote: post #127
TameAntelope wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being willing to throw away work is the single most effective way I've seen at running an engineering org, both in terms of promoting innovation and in being able to quickly adapt to evolving customer needs as they get revealed. If your morale is harmed by throwing away work, that's something you should work on.

It depends on why you throw the work away. If it's because of issues that should have been apparent with minimal planning, it's disheartening. Obviously, throwing away work is important in general. But consider a project to do taxes that gets thrown away because legal says it's a law taxes be done by hand, that an accountant said used the wrong tax code or that marketing comes back and says it has to be a desktop app…

Creating the 'typing numbers on a phone' version of the app is relatively trivial, so probably worth doing first. You only want to do the AI version if you're really sure that you need it, or you can afford it and it doesn't delay more important things.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#148

Post by varjag »

ratww wrote: post #54
Ologn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fred Brooks encountered a similar problem as a project manager at IBM in the early 1960s, working on the software for the System/360. In 1975 he wrote The Mythical Man Month about the experience. He said "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later". The increased communication needed was one reason. About half a century later, most businesses have still not learned these lessons.

I once on a company where a CEO did that 3 times in a row to an engineering team, and mentioned wanting that team to be 4x its current size in two years. In an interview, he mentioned The Mythical Man Month as one of his favourite books.

Just like there's a bunch of politicians complaining about 1984 who clearly have never opened "1984" too.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#149

Post by mm007emko »

sverhagen wrote: post #90
quickthrower2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word to the wise: start looking for a new job when that clock starts ticking. You may decide to stay but great to have something else to parachute into as an option. Second thing: you can change jobs as often as you want. I am for loyalty but you can’t know what a job will be like until you work it.

This may be good advise, but I hate it. Personally, I couldn't put my heart into the job hunt, while at the same time giving my best at the current job. In other words: just the step of starting to search for a job is for me synonymous to accepting defeat at the current job.

Loyalty is demanded by employers from employees, especially when unpaid overtimes are demanded. However when it's employers turn to reciprocally show loyalty to the employees it usually doesn't work. You aren't getting bonuses for your last year's unpaid overtimes when the company starts getting profit from your job. You need to beg for unpaid time off when you need to do anything at your home despite working many unpaid overtimes. You aren't getting salary rise for your hard work. You are being treated as disloyal replaceable resource. You need to be on a job hunt constantly.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#150

Post by thaumasiotes »

labster wrote: post #123
ls15 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"9 WOMEN CAN'T DELIVER A BABY IN A MONTH"

So how many women do we need, like 15? Maybe a Scrum master who knows the Lamaze method?

If you hire enough women, one of them will produce a baby within a month.
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