That's just incredible. Milk made one application, gave it away for free, summarily shut it down, and sold for $15 - $30 million. I understand these guys are very talented, and that Google was buying the talent more than the product, but that's quite a price for some gifted people!
Every time I saw this happen in the 90s the result was the same: Small team shows up in big company after big $$, gets frustrated with big company BS, doesn't really care and runs down the game clock until vesting is nearly complete, leaves without fanfare.
I'm sure there must be counter examples, please let me know some if you have them.
Measure Map was a small team acquired by google that made a pretty analytics app for blogs and they went on to overhaul Google Analytics, which at the time still look pretty rough because it was an acquired app (Urchin) that was made for power users.
That team worked pretty well. After everyone vested, Jeff Veen put the band back together and they started cranking out other apps, first WikiRank and then Typekit, which was just bought by Adobe.
I can see the parallels with Milk: 1) a small interdisciplinary team that works well together and with a kickass designer (Daniel Burka) that has a knack for making the complex look simple, and 2) an app like Google+ that's just as important to their new core mission as Analytics was to their old one and also has similar room for improvement.
Two team-centric acquisitions that Google has made in recent years: Aardvark and Slide. Both were cases of products that were mostly ahead of their time or just-off re: product-market fit, and had genius teams. As far as I know, the majority of both teams are still at Google.
That was one of few acquisitions were Google actually wanted the product, and needed it badly. Mobile was Google's main growth area for years, until the social black hole opened last year or so.
That's a good point. In his current role he is essentially the top technical person in the company.
I wonder if the reason alot of acquired entrepreneurs leave is that they are used to having so much authority and latitude that getting a middle manager role at google just feels like wearing a straight jacket.
Yep...why go through the normal interview process to work at Google when you can get acqui-hired, get paid the same, but get a million-dollar "signing bonus"?
Milk was a rather quick flip, but if you consider a more average 4 year run to acquisition, and also consider the risk factor, isn't so much obviously better than just getting a job with Google salary and stock from the start.
So I heard this hundred times before and while it feels like Google (in this example) is making mistake, perhaps the second bottom here is that they wanted to shut down a competitor (at some field) and the nice way of doing it is to acquire. Then Google won't care if they find themselves behind gold cage of Google or not. They may leave or whatever. I don't think dropping $30MM is a big problem for Google either. For me or you that may be a waste, for Google it is 1) drop in the ocean 2) cheap way to shut them down.
I remember hearing in 2008 that Google valued engineers at 1-3m per. At Google's scale, an engineer can theoretically create at least that much value over a normal tenure (and denies their competition access to that resource).
Google makes $1.2M/yr/employee... Presumably quite a bit more if you count dollars per engineer. I know it's not quite so simple as "add an engineer and make more revenue", but it seems correlative.
It's a talent bubble, and while it sounds ridiculous it's not (completely) unjustified. The idea mine for the current generation of the Internet is less verdant than it once was, and so the cost of talent is escalating.
Couple that with the new trend in 'Big Data' and the talent that is out there needs to attach itself to an entity that has the resources to provide that (often proprietary) data.
No. Suppose these 8 guys are paid $150k a year on average. Engineers, good ones at least, bring in more than they cost. In some cases like Instagram and Facebook, the ratio of users to engineers is in the millions. Google is similar. When you also bring into account the caché of someone like Rose, the lifetime earnings from that team probably well exceeds what was spent to aquire them.
And how do you think the reasoning went during the telecom and internet bubbles? Hint: Exactly the same.
I encountered competing business plans which went along the lines of: Hire a team of 10 badass engineers, sell for $10-20M. It was a helluva time to hire people.
I'm sure there are a few people that Google employs "Because awesome." The self-driving cars thing comes to mind, though I'm sure that could be explained by giving people another hour every day to sit on the internet looking at ads.
Currently all of the Google Maps data for the US (and increasingly, other parts of the globe) is generated in-house by the street view cars - they don't just generate the data for street view, they also generate most of the data for the actual road layout of the maps now, too.
If the cars drove themselves, instead of Google having to pay actual people to drive around every single road on the planet all the time, that would be a pretty huge cost saving, I would imagine.
You are correct. I don't use the word often (apparently) and always thought the correct spelling for "cachet" was with the little e. Thanks for the tip!
Forgive me for not knowing this, but when an acquisition like this happens that is solely for the talent, do the developers themselves get any part of those millions, or does it all simply go to the company owner?
If it does all go to the owner, what would stop the developers from banding together and leaving all at once so they could pick up those millions directly, instead?
Usually: millions to the investors and founders for their stock. Employee stock will be worth little due to investor preferences. The acquirer will pay hundreds of thousands to retain a few "key employees", and tens of thousands to the ordinary developers (similar to what they'd get as a hiring bonus). This is why it doesn't make sense to be a startup employee.
Your question about why developers can't capture more of their value is a good one. Obviously acquirers would prefer not to pay $1M signing bonuses if they can avoid it, but they also seem to be happier about paying off VCs than engineers.
Let's say investor puts $1M with x2 liquidation preferences into company valued $3M pre-money (25% equity post money). Company then gets acquired for $20M. Investor gets $2M+$4.5M=$6.5M, rest get $13.5 (of which a much larger part usually goes to founders, and a small part to employees - e.g. $12M to 2 founders, $1.5M to 15 employees)
If they put $5M with x2 into company valued $5M pre-money, and company gets aquired for $20M, investor gets $15M, rest get $5M. Employees will often get a nice signing bonus from it, but the only one who can have a potentially life changing event is the founder.
He's right about it being historically the case that being a startup employee is a bad gig.
I honestly think the value proposition for startup employees has to come down to risk appetite, the quality of the team you're working with, and getting to work on interesting problems.
Any kind of pure economic calculus that properly accounts for risk is going to favor established companies if you're good at the career game.
The acquiring company has to give the employees incentives to stay. Otherwise they are under no obligation (barring a contract with the first company) to stay.
Clearly the team is awesome, so the question is: with a talent shortage apparently driving the market crazy, are the premiums justified? Is it really that bad out there?
This is a very interesting idea. I could imagine a website that purposely copies CrunchBase's look and feel. Players create a startup company with a roster of founders to fill the usual CxO roles. Players score points for every venture round their company wins, acquisition, and (if you're lucky) IPO. :)
It's Fantasy Silicon Valley available for iPhone and Android! Trade your team's hustlers for their engineers, make billions in an IPO, and defeat the evil villain Mark Zuckerburg.
The Milk shareholders won the bidding war. The Milk employees probably had their share options converted to Google share options. Not necessarily a bad deal, but hardly the payday that the buyout makes for the shareholders.
(Some companies have their share options vest immediately on a buyout to protect people against these kind of shenanigans. Not that it helped with a previous employer of mine since they ran out of money & when a buyer came along they required all the employees to waive that clause in the contract if we wanted the buyout to happen at all. Beggars can't be choosers and all that...)
I really don't get it. If the people are so valuable, why pay extra for the company and the investors. Just offer all the employees $1 mill dollar hiring bonuses, and if they gave up on Oink (as it seems they did) they will join you.
Very bad karma in a very tight-knit community that is dependent on investors. Google has been said to do at least one M&A action per week. With that kind of pace, you can't burn bridges.
The music is playing, find a chair.