[georgemcbay]

The whole engineering/NIH/underestimate situation certainly rings true.

OTOH, there also tends to be a vast underestimate on how difficult it will be to integrate an existing product (even if it is already built) into a new company.

It is extremely rare that a product the company is acquiring for is exactly the product they need, it is usually 90% of the product they need, and they're still going to have to get the second 90% done while simultaneously working on all the culture issues that pop up when trying to bring two companies together.