All insights
StartupsStrategy · 5 min read
Acquihires from both sides
Most writing on acquihires is from the acquirer’s perspective. The view from the acquired side is wildly different, and rarely matches the press release.
Acquihires get celebrated in press releases as strategic talent acquisitions. From the inside, they’re usually quiet retreats, a way for the acquiring company to get good engineers for less than recruiting them, and a way for the acquired team to land softly without admitting the product didn’t work.
What both sides should know
- Most retention packages are designed assuming half the team will leave within 18 months.
- The acquired product almost always gets shut down within a year.
- Acquired founders rarely thrive in the bigger company, the role gap is too wide.
- The deal is often more about avoiding a worse outcome than reaching for a better one.
When acquihires work
When the acquired team has a genuinely complementary skill set, the integration is light, and the acquired founders have ego room to be smaller fish in a bigger pond. Without those, the acquihire is a soft landing that quietly loses the talent over a year or two.
An acquihire is rarely the strategic win the press release implies. Both sides know it; few say it.