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I had a nearly same experience with you when my company was acquired by Tencent. Most of employees don't know what's going on, but there are some strangers around in the office, actually another separate office. Only HR and finance people deal with those people from acquirer, they reviewed company contracts and some other legal paperworks. I saw there are lots of paper in their dedicated office. We engineers are the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a few types of acquisition: - everyone gets rich (including employees with equity) - founders and investors get rich, nobody else gets shit - investors get good return, founders get a bit, nobody else gets shit - investors make mediocre return based on liquidation pref, nobody else gets shit - nobody gets shit (but people keep their jobs in the acquirer) In all but the first situation, you as an employee (e…
Even in the latter cases the acquirer don't want to buy an empty she'll of a company = an IP without any people to service it. So the acquirer will offer some golden handcuffs, usually some stock options with delayed vesting to motivate the acquired to stay.
Sometimes. Sometimes they're weirdly incompetent, treat everyone like shit, and then act surprised when half of the company leaves. Sometimes after that they'll offer a promise of a pittance bonus, and act surprised once again when yet another half of the company leaves after the meager bonus comes through.
What would you even do with the information?
What would you even do with the information?
There are always signs, and they are easy to rationalise in hind-sight. The danger is that there are signs for lots of things, so jumping to conclusions regarding the reason can be dangerous. For example, we recently got a contract with a company fanatical about security. They wanted additional special insurances, which in turn wanted additional company-wide security policies. This affected everyone, even though the…
The article mentions needing to sign some paperwork about equity in passing, but I think being asked to sign new paperwork (a new IP agreement, etc.) is a sign all on its own. Like the focus on security, it is suspicious if it happens without any other motivating reason.
One should be careful not to confuse an unknown reason with the non-existence of a reason. One of my prior companies suddenly became a target for digital espionage and I only knew about it happening at all because I worked closely with our security team. Others in the company had no idea except that security policies were suddenly changing.
I had a nearly same experience with you when my company was acquired by Tencent. Most of employees don't know what's going on, but there are some strangers around in the office, actually another separate office. Only HR and finance people deal with those people from acquirer, they reviewed company contracts and some other legal paperworks. I saw there are lots of paper in their dedicated office. We engineers are the…
What would have happened if you hadn't signed the NDA?
> A few days before the Twitter deal was announced, the CEO of MoPub summoned a bunch of us to the office on a Sunday. Nothing like that had ever happened before. At the meeting, he told us about the acquisition (this was when I learned!) and explained that he needed us to sign some paperwork about our equity before the agreement could be finalized. This sounds dodgy as fuck! If this ever happens to you, please don't…
If you own equity hopefully they'd have told you about the acquisition beforehand as a shareholder! But that said it's not unusual to have to do paperwork, for example you can have "offer of first refusal" on the sale of shares which gives you the right to buy the shares being offered for sale, over the person making the current offer, so companies will get people to sign a contract waiving that right as part of the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you own equity hopefully they'd have told you about the acquisition beforehand as a shareholder! But that said it's not unusual to have to do paperwork, for example you can have "offer of first refusal" on the sale of shares which gives you the right to buy the shares being offered for sale, over the person making the current offer, so companies will get people to sign a contract waiving that right as part of the…
Right, and if they call you in on a Sunday completely blindsided "just to sign some papers" you may regret waiving your right to buy the shares - a right that the acquirer, at least, seems to value. You shouldn't be signing it without an attempt to figure out what that right is worth.
Don't let false urgency ever pressure you to do otherwise.
If they need your signature, they can wait to get it. If they don't need your signature then they shouldn't have a problem anyway.
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Why are those people leaving before the acquisition? Shouldn't they expect to have some kind of upside in a change of control event?
Depending on the acquisition, I think. When my former US company was acquired by a huge Chinese company, it was not clear if my service would be part of the deal too. A lot of higher managers escaped the ship just weeks before they announced that it would be sold to another huge Indian company.