This is an unbelievably awful way to look at hiring.
People aren't actually "assets".
Only under the rarest circumstances are they looked on that way by potential acquirers; a company needs a coherent place to put a whole team that both meshes what they did before and gives them enough upside to stay. You read about "talent acquisitions" far more often than you do about the companies that lay off all their employees, because the "talent acquisitions" make interesting copy.
You are not likely to profit from the "recruiting arbitrage hedge" you've come up with; all you're going to do is crater your company and screw up a bunch of people's employment. Don't do this.
The idea that valuations can be affected by staff numbers is one I have heard numerous times. While I wouldn't refer to employees as assets, it seems like a mistake to completely discount the idea that increasing the number of engineers won't affect valuation.
The best I can come up with at the moment are some comments in the wake of Powerset's acquisition:
"At that time we knew that a talented engineer in a tough to get tech was worth about $1.5 million per head. Thus, I knew with relative assurance that since we were going to hire at least 70 people with our Series A money, that our worst case scenario was about a $100 million exit." -[http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-cr...]
In many cases the team is a crucial component of a valuation. That is not the same thing as saying "if the business fails and you built a good team, your worst case scenario can be a talent acquisition". A talent acquisition is on the "good" end of the spectrum of scenarios, is unlikely, and appears to happen only when there's a graceful mesh between what an acquirer wants to do with a specific team and what that team has already been doing.
"While probably not the best strategy" was probably not the best caveat. I agree that this is dumb, but I also think it's the underlying reason some founders spend so much of their time hiring.
>You are not likely to profit from the "recruiting arbitrage hedge" you've come up with;
If I understand you correctly, I don't agree with this completely. One of the reasons outsourcing and temp companies exist is to perform recruitment that their clients are incapable of doing themselves. There is good money in recruiting arbitrage as a business plan, but in most circumstances "we'll do that if our real strategy fails" is completely useless as a hedge.
People aren't actually "assets".
Only under the rarest circumstances are they looked on that way by potential acquirers; a company needs a coherent place to put a whole team that both meshes what they did before and gives them enough upside to stay. You read about "talent acquisitions" far more often than you do about the companies that lay off all their employees, because the "talent acquisitions" make interesting copy.
You are not likely to profit from the "recruiting arbitrage hedge" you've come up with; all you're going to do is crater your company and screw up a bunch of people's employment. Don't do this.