Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by noelwelsh 2982 days ago
The article said they had revenue of 100M. Training generally doesn't lead to recurring revenue, so a huge multiplier is not justified. Doesn't seem too cheap to me.
1 comments

B2B training should be recurring, large companies hire new classes of entry-level workers every year.
But that's not as "sticky" as software. If you decide to cut costs next year on training because its non-essential, the revenue gets slashed. If I still need to procure stuff, I'm not going to shut off my procurement software to cut costs.
On the flip-side, if cost-cutting becomes important, a company may decide to invest in current employees skills in lieu of hiring new external employees. Any software that isn't mission-critical faces high risk in a cost-cutting environment.
It also costs more to do (even partially) in-person training than to sell SAAS software.
My take on it is that B2B customers are difficult and expensive to acquire and Adecco has a relationship with 100,000 leads. Seems like a good acquisition to me.