An acquisition is always a failure
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An acquisition is always a failure
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Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#2Jake is brilliant, but this isn't always the case: What about Google's acquisition of Android? What about Apple's acquisition of NeXT? What about Microsoft buying 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products? What about Lenovo's acquisition of the ThinkPad?
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#3No, no, a thousand times no. This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry, but you lost me at:
The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders.
Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali Lama, not Zoroaster or the Easter Bunny or President Obama or the sterno bum at the corner of 3rd and Main, not Sergey Brin, not Kevin Rose, but NOBODY has any standing to tell me what my "proper ambition is." Why? Because "fuck you", that's why. You don't know me, my life, my past, my future, my dreams, my fears, my hopes, my goals or a goddamned other thing about me. Don't f%!#ng try to tell me what I ought to aspire to.
Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD. The other option is to stay independent and maybe, maybe eventually IPO. It's easy to sit on the sidelines and say "Go for the IPO, don't sell, selling is a failure". But you know what... maybe I need the money right now to do some things I always wanted to do. Maybe I want to buy my aging mother a new house, and I don't want to wait for a bloody IPO, I want to do it now. Maybe I have a family member who needs special medical care, or - fuck it - maybe I just want to cash out, fly to Scotland, and spend the rest of my life looking for a 6' tall, redheaded supermodel with a Scottish accent to marry.
In any case, no, you don't get to tell me that I failed, if I choose to pursue what matters to me.
Look, I get the point... I agree that - in general - entrepreneurs would want to stay independent, and would prefer to wait. I don't relish the idea of building a company and then selling it... but life is more complicated than that. And life is a series of tradeoffs and a constant balancing act between doing what is best for us right now versus what is best for the future. One is not a failure for making a rational, reasoned decision to favor one set of priorities over another.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#4The title is too strong and this post is too black and white. Succeed forever and become a giant or fail? Not very inspiring. I like his views on visionaries and how an acquisition usually removes the real vision from the company but other than that, this is just a very subjective piece.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#5Pretty easy position to take once you've already earned your own "fuck you" money.
I do sometimes wonder why these sorts of acquisitions remain so prevalent though when minus a few notable exceptions the life cycle tends to consist of a company paying many millions or even a cool billion for some tech in a stack they don't even use (only to kill it soon after) plus a handful of employees that tend to stick around barely engaged until just long enough to unlock whatever golden handcuffs they have on.
Seems like way more often than not they are failures more on the side of the acquiring party though I guess there may be some valid (though ultimately unfortunate and cynical) reasons for participating like nipping a potential future competitor in the bud.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#6I'm going to guess that Jake will take a lot of flak here for this article, but the truth is: I agree with him, for a certain version of "success".
There are folks who will pursue money, and then an acquisition looks like a nice validation and exit. Great. No prob there.
But there are a bunch of folks who are satisfied when they are building, and any other mode feels like something is missing in life. My advice to this (my) cohort: Don't fight it, just accept that you're always going to need a project to obsess over. Odds are that project will be a failure but not as much as anything else that is not so much a "project" as "going to work in the morning."
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#7Pretty easy position to take once you've already earned your own "fuck you" money. I do sometimes wonder why these sorts of acquisitions remain so prevalent though when minus a few notable exceptions the life cycle tends to consist of a company paying many millions or even a cool billion for some tech in a stack they don't even use (only to kill it soon after) plus a handful of employees that tend to stick around bar…
I'd wager that most acquisitions work out fine, you just rarely hear about it, because "this is a sensible acquisition that is highly likely to work out fine" is not usually newsworthy.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#8I'm going to guess that Jake will take a lot of flak here for this article, but the truth is: I agree with him, for a certain version of "success". There are folks who will pursue money, and then an acquisition looks like a nice validation and exit. Great. No prob there. But there are a bunch of folks who are satisfied when they are building , and any other mode feels like something is missing in life. My advice to t…
Agreed (despite my response above). I know that if I built a company and then sold it for $10,000,000, that I would - indeed - feel some regret over that. But assuming it was the decision I needed to make in order to do other things that mattered to me, then the thing is... once I "cash out" of one company, I'm free to turn around and start another one! Maybe I want to take a break, do the Scotland thing, veg out for a year, and come back refreshed and re-energized and ready to rock. And guess what? Now I have the seed capital to start my new company and don't have to worry about figuring out how I'm going to finance the initial phases! Win-win.
And I am pretty sure that, in my own case, this is exactly what would happen. Because, yes, a natural born entrepreneur does always feel that drive to build and to create. But nothing says we can only have one creative outlet in our entire lifetimes!
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#9>I uploaded them to blumpy.org, my crudely named personal website
Oddly they link to the url when it is now some Japanese site.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#10No, no, a thousand times no. This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry, but you lost me at: The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders. Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali L…
Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD. The other option is to stay independent and maybe, maybe eventually IPO.
This is the part that rankles with me. Why is, "stay privately held and continue to turn a profit year over year" never considered an option? Why is it only "sell" or "IPO"?