Chapter 42. There Are Three Exits—Remember, the Nearest Exit May Be Behind You
Startup acquisitions happen along a continuum that looks something like this:
Team Acquisitions
At the leftmost side of the range, you have the acquisition that’s all about the people: the team acquisition. In a team acquisition (or, colloquially, “acqui-hire”), the acquirer believes that the company’s greatest value is in its people.
The most common situation for team acquisitions is when a company has not yet found product/market fit.1 They may have a great product, but discover that the market isn’t as big as they thought. Or more commonly, they’ve found an amazing market, but the market hasn’t yet found them very interesting. In either case, it’s usually a startup that’s hit a wall (or at least a speed bump) and either is considering a pivot or is running out of cash.
As you might imagine given the likely circumstances, team acquisitions are the least lucrative sort. While some may fetch a high price (particularly for teams with one-of-a-kind star power), it’s more common for investors to break even, plus or minus, and the employees get compensated in a way that’s better than a job offer—but not by too much.
Facebook is well known for team acquisitions. In 2010, they picked up a social sharing service called Hot Potato that let people check in, share, and chat about events for an estimated $10M. ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month, and much more.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
