First of all, let me say that I hate "acqui-hires" with a passion that could summon Cthulhu. I've taken to calling them "welfare checks" because that's what they are: a socially-closed, elitist private welfare system to keep rich kids (born into the necessary investor and acquirer connections) from actually failing no matter how dogshit-awful their ideas are. Acqui-hires usually benefit founders but screw employees, and should thus be thought of as a "gentleman's C" for shiftless, incompetent, useless rich fucks Playing Startup.
Thaaaaat said, I disagree with "always a failure", at least in the pejorative sense. Let's be realistic, here. Let's first take a page from Eastern religions. Impermanence. Go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impermanence
All things change. And die. That doesn't mean they were without value. They contributed, and left a trace. Something that is a ghost or a fragment of a god or a cloud of electricity (depending on whom you ask) carries around a decaying corpse for 100 years. It's absurd! Everything is constantly falling apart, but the universe seems to be get slightly better each day in spite of it. Nothing in the physical world is built to be eternal. That's especially true of businesses, which are generally built to effect one economic change that is initially radical but, once proven, is taken for granted, at which point it's commodity work that will be done better when a more innovative competitor comes along. Circle of life...
I try to live life by the Boy Scout's rule: I win if I leave the place better than I found it. Even though my effects will live on in subtle, chaotic ways, no one's going to remember my name in 500 years. If reincarnation is true, I won't recognize my current name in 500 years. So...
Yes, if you're building a business for "Teh Exit" with the intention of making millions while leaving your colleagues stranded in brain-dead corporate subordinate roles that they'll hate, then you are, in fact, a fucking loser wankbasket and I hope you fail. Build-to-flip scene kids can choke on a taint. But this doesn't describe everyone who starts a business and ends up selling it. Sometimes, the thing generates legitimate value but proves not to have enough upside to justify the entrepreneur's continued full-time commitment... or it just gets into a state where she's no longer the right person to manage it. There are good reasons for good entrepreneurs to sell their businesses.
We shouldn't be looking at the mode of Teh Exit for moral guidance. That's what created this fucked-up, worthless VC-istan so-called "tech" ecosystem in the first place. Sometimes good businesses are acquired and bad ones IPO (which is just another form of acquisition). Instead of boasting or griping about ExitzLulz!!!111!!(10^large-1)/9!!, we should be focusing a return to genuine value creation, no matter what form it takes (and it won't always be a private-sector business). We should get back to Real Technology: solving problems that people actually care about that make peoples' lives better. And we should get back to ridiculing these well-connected (not "empty suit", perhaps "empty hoodie"?) scene kids and their marketing-experiments-called-technology, no matter how they "exit". We should drive those fuckers out of town.
I do think it is fascinating that acq-hires tend to be priced at 40-50 years of salary, given that an employment relationship only lasts 4 years on average. What does it tell us? It tells us that we, as engineers, suck so bad at marketing ourselves and negotiations that an often inconsequential third party (stone soup?) can sell us for a 10x markup. Also, it shows that large companies are ridiculously bad at discovering internal talent. The fact that Yahoo bought 17-year-olds at a panic price just indicates that their middle management filter is so bugfucked that they've given up on discovering talent, internally, at the bottom. If you have to buy a new winter coat for $800 every November, it means you need to get some order in your fucking house so you stop losing track of shit.
By the way, most of "social media" is not that innovative. It's just a wave of marketing experiments that uses technology because almost everything new is technological. Social media are the reality shows of technology. Reality shows aren't prolific because they're good, but because they're cheap (no actor's salaries, no writer fees). Social media startups are so common because they don't require a deep technological understanding, and because well-connected morons can CxO them, so long as they can buy a "scaling expert" at a panic price post-Series-B.
Let's get back to the issues that actually matter. Bashing people just because they get acquired as bad as the tyranny of Those Who Have Completed An Exit (celebrity founders) in fundraising. So let's just stop the nonsense and talk about how to direct ourselves to real work.
Thaaaaat said, I disagree with "always a failure", at least in the pejorative sense. Let's be realistic, here. Let's first take a page from Eastern religions. Impermanence. Go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impermanence
All things change. And die. That doesn't mean they were without value. They contributed, and left a trace. Something that is a ghost or a fragment of a god or a cloud of electricity (depending on whom you ask) carries around a decaying corpse for 100 years. It's absurd! Everything is constantly falling apart, but the universe seems to be get slightly better each day in spite of it. Nothing in the physical world is built to be eternal. That's especially true of businesses, which are generally built to effect one economic change that is initially radical but, once proven, is taken for granted, at which point it's commodity work that will be done better when a more innovative competitor comes along. Circle of life...
I try to live life by the Boy Scout's rule: I win if I leave the place better than I found it. Even though my effects will live on in subtle, chaotic ways, no one's going to remember my name in 500 years. If reincarnation is true, I won't recognize my current name in 500 years. So...
Yes, if you're building a business for "Teh Exit" with the intention of making millions while leaving your colleagues stranded in brain-dead corporate subordinate roles that they'll hate, then you are, in fact, a fucking loser wankbasket and I hope you fail. Build-to-flip scene kids can choke on a taint. But this doesn't describe everyone who starts a business and ends up selling it. Sometimes, the thing generates legitimate value but proves not to have enough upside to justify the entrepreneur's continued full-time commitment... or it just gets into a state where she's no longer the right person to manage it. There are good reasons for good entrepreneurs to sell their businesses.
We shouldn't be looking at the mode of Teh Exit for moral guidance. That's what created this fucked-up, worthless VC-istan so-called "tech" ecosystem in the first place. Sometimes good businesses are acquired and bad ones IPO (which is just another form of acquisition). Instead of boasting or griping about ExitzLulz!!!111!!(10^large-1)/9!!, we should be focusing a return to genuine value creation, no matter what form it takes (and it won't always be a private-sector business). We should get back to Real Technology: solving problems that people actually care about that make peoples' lives better. And we should get back to ridiculing these well-connected (not "empty suit", perhaps "empty hoodie"?) scene kids and their marketing-experiments-called-technology, no matter how they "exit". We should drive those fuckers out of town.
I do think it is fascinating that acq-hires tend to be priced at 40-50 years of salary, given that an employment relationship only lasts 4 years on average. What does it tell us? It tells us that we, as engineers, suck so bad at marketing ourselves and negotiations that an often inconsequential third party (stone soup?) can sell us for a 10x markup. Also, it shows that large companies are ridiculously bad at discovering internal talent. The fact that Yahoo bought 17-year-olds at a panic price just indicates that their middle management filter is so bugfucked that they've given up on discovering talent, internally, at the bottom. If you have to buy a new winter coat for $800 every November, it means you need to get some order in your fucking house so you stop losing track of shit.
By the way, most of "social media" is not that innovative. It's just a wave of marketing experiments that uses technology because almost everything new is technological. Social media are the reality shows of technology. Reality shows aren't prolific because they're good, but because they're cheap (no actor's salaries, no writer fees). Social media startups are so common because they don't require a deep technological understanding, and because well-connected morons can CxO them, so long as they can buy a "scaling expert" at a panic price post-Series-B.
Let's get back to the issues that actually matter. Bashing people just because they get acquired as bad as the tyranny of Those Who Have Completed An Exit (celebrity founders) in fundraising. So let's just stop the nonsense and talk about how to direct ourselves to real work.
And... In-dig-nay-shun! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s