[bitterfounder0]

Demoralizing indeed.

Google's acquisition of Slide for $100m crushed me. Myself and several others built more successful companies. We had 10x the userbase, larger profits (assuming this based on userbase), and fewer employees (team of 3 here). The difference was I was bootstrapped and working in stealth.

Lesson's learned: avoid bootstrapping. Raise venture capital from well networked investors. Do not work in stealth mode. Do a lot of PR. Be loud!

This ensures that the failure of your company will be an embarrassment for your investors. The louder the better. They will be inclined to have a friend buy you out to save face.

Disclaimer. I'm not saying that should be your primary goal. Goal number one should be passionately building a product you love. A buddy exit is simply a safety net.

[anon808]

don't be demoralized, and don't let others decide how you should run your business or what you should value. if you have a profitable business be happy with your success and build on it. lottery winners happen every day, don't let that ruin building great products and businesses for you. the problem with outside investors (any investors, VCs, angels etc.) is that your business automatically inherits their values, and if their values are different enough from yours the friction could destroy your business and/or destroy your values.

[sbov]

At some point, depending upon why they're buying, I think having fewer employees is a bad thing. It means whoever is acquiring you has to do more work to turn it into a fully fledged business. At least that's the sentiment I heard when our startup sold (4 employees total).

[drusenko]

It's no secret that the "going rate" for startups that are successful and get acqui-hired is $1-2M per engineer.

It's hard for big companies to find talented engineers, and so when they acqui-hire, they can just instantly shuffle those smart people out of the project they're working on and onto something else.

The bet is that each smart engineer will provide at least $1-2M of value to the company in the long-run.