In an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2014, then-CEO of Pure Storage, Scott Dietzen, was requested about the opportunity of exiting by way of acquisition.
He didn’t pull any punches: “Acquisitions all the time suck, and suck worse than you assume that they will suck.”
That doesn’t sound like getting acquired is the most effective factor that would occur to your startup, however this is just one perspective on the matter, and maybe it relies upon who you ask.
If being acquired means shedding the model and identification you’ve gotten labored so exhausting to construct — or maybe worse, shedding your cultural identification — it in all probability will suck. Should you get caught with an organization that merely imposes its will on you, it positively will.
Generally, despite Dietzen’s proclamation, it may be not less than OK, and either side get one thing out of the deal: the buying firm wants your product or your expertise, you obtain an exit and a verify.
Beforehand, we spoke to the buying corporations to get their perspective on the deal and the way they fold these corporations into the bigger entity. Now, we’ll hear from executives who labored at three corporations that they purchased.
These corporations mentioned their acquisition expertise was simply superb, thanks very a lot. Although they aren’t about to speak crap about their new overlords, you do get the sense that they landed in a fairly first rate spot, all issues thought-about.
Deciding to promote
The businesses we chosen are usually not recent startups by any means. One was owned by a personal fairness agency, and one was owned by one other firm once they had been offered, so that they had been across the block and knew what it was wish to report back to another person. The final firm, a 72-year-old operation, was the exception.
Will Conway, CEO of Pathwire, had been down this path earlier than. His startup was a member of the YC Winter 2011 cohort, and was offered to Rackspace a yr later. Non-public fairness agency Thoma Bravo picked it up some time later and offered it to Sinch final yr for $1.9 billion.
As a part of a personal fairness agency, Conway didn’t have quite a lot of enter when it got here to being offered. If the agency was going to promote, it was going to promote, however as Conway sees it, he landed with pretty much as good an organization as he might have hoped for. Pathwire’s major merchandise, Mailgun and Mailjet, gave Sinch a lacking e-mail advertising and marketing piece, and match properly into the corporate’s platform of communications providers.
