[gojomo]

I don't recall those episodes, but I would say that in real life, yes, larger companies can 'kick the tires' for a long time, costing the target immense amounts of focus/time, then walk away.

Older incumbent companies, especially, may have giant 'business development' teams who almost recreationally do deep x-rays of emerging threats/opportunities. All their staffing/trips/flirtatious-discussions/legally-drafted-non-binding-letters-of-intent may be a rounding error in their bottom line, a cheap research expense. They can go through all the motions of an acquisition, appearing serious to the hopeful founders, with a negligible interest in actually completing the deal.

I mean sure, they'd bite if they saw a can't-lose bonanza - their talks are panning for gold in your stream, before buying or even renting your land. Even if 99/100 envisioned deals eventually fall-through, they're just happy to learn all the proprietary business internals.

See also: ~pg's 'Don't Talk To Corp Dev': http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html

[tempnow987]

Great write-up, and I see PG also had a separate post that overlaps with my other comment here:

"When a sufficiently high-up decision maker decides he/she wants to buy your startup, he/she will attempt to meet with you constantly and put time pressure on you, so as to prevent you from shopping the deal and getting a better offer. The absence of this behavior indicates the other company is not serious about acquiring your business."

[tedmiston]

That Silicon Valley episode and PG's Don't Talk to Corp Dev essay have a very similar takeaway. Interesting that they both came out around the same time in 2015 as well.

One counter I would make to PG's essay is: investors, whether accelerators, VCS, or otherwise, predominantly benefit from big exits... and so they have that effect of pushing towards polarized outcomes ($0 or big). But "small" exits can still be very meaningful for founders.