I think it depends on how much they pay for it. If the price is high, then they want the product. If the price is low, they want the people. Of course even if the price is high, sometimes companies muck it up anyway.
Absolutely. I consider that a failed acquisition -- which many companies do. Yahoo!, for example, had done this a lot in the past with their acquisitions.
The worst is they shut down the product and the team was assigned work in unrelated area. I would say most of the time these companies just want to control the future of the product, it's more a defensive act.
Congratulations to Aviate. I think they're just a new company, I'm not sure.
I really love their home screen and I was afraid that Yahoo might shut them down. If that's the case I don't have anything to replace from Aviate. I like the combination of Aviate as home screen and Cover[0] as my lock screen.
It's not a bad product, but they don't actually care for treating even bug reports of the most simple and obvious kind respectfully. Somehow i doubt merging into Yahoo is gonna fix that.
This might be out of context, but a question though. How this companies get bought? Of course, building a great product is part of it. But are they shopping around, emailing / visiting bigger companies to buy them? Or they will just wait until some bigger company contact them and have some negotiations?
I am sure the same is true for all the other acquired companies. If you look through all startup acquisitions, the pattern is the same. You rarely see startups that haven't raised capital get acquired, unless they are actually successful.
Everyone under this branch made good points. Graduated from a top company with valuable experience is definitely a plus for this kinda scenario, but from my experience it's not a must.
This is one of the 'features' of Technology companies in general and Silicon Valley in particular.
When a company raises funding, either seed or a series A round with a venture firm, they become tied into a giant loose web of relationships which provides things like introductions, heads up on quality candidates, and general interest queries. This is further enhanced by the somewhat astonishing mobility of talent from company to company.
So when a company says "Hmm, we really need to get into X" they can tap that network to see who is out there doing that and how well they are doing it.
Sometimes an investor wants to 'close out' their investment and they will approach a friend on another board or a friend of a friend looking for "ideas", other times people just meet at a social event and decide they should work together. Large firms have a group that is nominally called something like 'Corporate Development' which is code for acquiring companies to fill gaps or needs.
During times of scarcity when folks are looking for talent, under capitalized companies are seen as a good place to 'pick up an entire team' of engineers.
The classic way to connect into this 'web' is to go through the process once, which is start a company (or join one), connect with the funding folks at company and social functions, and have an idea of what you're trying to achieve. An 'agenda' if you will.
Interestingly, just yesterday Evan Spiegel (CEO of Snapchat) posted a screenshot of his e-mail introduction to Mark Zuckerberg (who is strongly rumored to have offered 4 billion for the company).
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 64.8 ms ] threadI don't think big companies care too much about a product in itself. They care about the team (which created a good product) and/or a userbase.
I really love their home screen and I was afraid that Yahoo might shut them down. If that's the case I don't have anything to replace from Aviate. I like the combination of Aviate as home screen and Cover[0] as my lock screen.
[0] https://www.coverscreen.com/
http://getaviate.com/team.html
Congrats to the team. Great Product and team.
When a company raises funding, either seed or a series A round with a venture firm, they become tied into a giant loose web of relationships which provides things like introductions, heads up on quality candidates, and general interest queries. This is further enhanced by the somewhat astonishing mobility of talent from company to company.
So when a company says "Hmm, we really need to get into X" they can tap that network to see who is out there doing that and how well they are doing it.
Sometimes an investor wants to 'close out' their investment and they will approach a friend on another board or a friend of a friend looking for "ideas", other times people just meet at a social event and decide they should work together. Large firms have a group that is nominally called something like 'Corporate Development' which is code for acquiring companies to fill gaps or needs.
During times of scarcity when folks are looking for talent, under capitalized companies are seen as a good place to 'pick up an entire team' of engineers.
The classic way to connect into this 'web' is to go through the process once, which is start a company (or join one), connect with the funding folks at company and social functions, and have an idea of what you're trying to achieve. An 'agenda' if you will.
The screenshot is here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdU892zCAAEXy-q.png:large
Yahoo has repeatedly proven it is not a safe location for any service; it is even worse than google in that respect.