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> As soon as Sphero completed the acquisition, bringing Kelsus in as an app developer, two things happened: 1) Sphero told us they needed fully revamped iOS and Android apps six months later with no schedule wiggle room. 2) Sphero spent the first two of those six months organizing a team on their side and hashing out requirements for the new apps. This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I've ever…
Is this the, "rolling robot turtle" Sphero?
FFS, if it’s a good idea do it again. I built a satisfying career on a couple of those. Good ideas are for squishing obsessively into the fuzzy pumper until you get an iteration worth sticking in the oven.
I'm a bit confused in the metaphors but maybe the meaning mostly comes through :) My thought on trying it again though is that IP rights could be tied up in the old entity.
yeah, been there. if they aren’t making the leader of the acquired company into VP or higher, it is unlikely that the product will succeed. before acquisition you are an important innovator that has much to teach. after acquisition you are a crazy person who only wants to spend money.
Do they have a drug to treat this condition yet? Maybe that’s what has been missing from my life.
Sounds like: If you own the company and you decide to close a product line, you're pivoting and being a good owner. If you sell your company to someone and the acquirer closes a product line, they're ruining your company.
> As soon as Sphero completed the acquisition, bringing Kelsus in as an app developer, two things happened: 1) Sphero told us they needed fully revamped iOS and Android apps six months later with no schedule wiggle room. 2) Sphero spent the first two of those six months organizing a team on their side and hashing out requirements for the new apps. This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I've ever…
> and the death spiral begins. The death spiral becomes visible, really. The gun had already been fired, the body just hadn’t hit the ground yet. I must say these failure modes are much worse than the ones I’ve experienced, which maybe I should be grateful for, I’d have to think about this. Generally I’ve seen a slower burn, where the remaining fiscal year plays out with soothing tones and promises of not changing th…
I think it's safe to assume that if your company is acquired, it will be "ruined". Even in the best case, where the product/service stays alive and some of the original team is still working on it, it's going to be somebody else calling the shots and taking it in all sorts of unexpected directions.
Maybe GitHub is different enough? I know FAANG acquisitions are mostly different (but not always[0]), but it seems GitHub started a new focus on features around the time Microsoft was in talks for an acquisition[1]. Even if this you attribute this feature focus to the increased downtime, the features probably outweigh the downtime in terms of value provided to their cloud/enterprise customers. Also, they've kept thei…
> As soon as Sphero completed the acquisition, bringing Kelsus in as an app developer, two things happened: 1) Sphero told us they needed fully revamped iOS and Android apps six months later with no schedule wiggle room. 2) Sphero spent the first two of those six months organizing a team on their side and hashing out requirements for the new apps. This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I've ever…
Management panics when they realize they won't make the self imposed deadline and start throwing bodies at the problem.
In our case, we went from 2 teams to 8 over night. The very few engineers who actually were capable of shipping features became swamped dealing with the fallout.
To make things worse, they keep scheduling multi-day, 8hr "planning" sessions that all key devs must attend so they can better "understand the remaining work"
Honest question, does anyone have some examples of an acquired company thriving post-acquisition? It seems like they just all burn out or stop doing cool things. I’m thinking of examples like Nest and Tumblr, but I haven’t noticed any where I think “wow, they’re really doing amazing things now after being acquired”. I get that many are acqui-hires or done for the IP portfolio, or as favors to founders or other invest…
YouTube, Instagram, Github, Android, Slack, Heroku (until recently), etc. And those are just the ones that were left to their own devices.
There's also a ton that have lost their brand, but melted into the parent company. It's not obvious from the outside, but the tech (and team behind it) goes on to become a vital feature. Like, look at any acquisition by Stripe.
Lastly, companies sell because things are going really well or they're going really badly. This company was closer to the latter, and that has a much smaller success rate – but teams often get continued employment, some get promotions, people make money, etc.
> As soon as Sphero completed the acquisition, bringing Kelsus in as an app developer, two things happened: 1) Sphero told us they needed fully revamped iOS and Android apps six months later with no schedule wiggle room. 2) Sphero spent the first two of those six months organizing a team on their side and hashing out requirements for the new apps. This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I've ever…
Agreed, and while it's become fashionable to trash on "agile", this sort of thing is why I still prefer it to alternatives. Basically "what do you want next?".
"Hey we don't really need to make any decision ever or even know what we are doing. That's the great thing about agile!"