[dglassan]

I was part of an acquihire within the last year, so I'll try to explain a few things. Some of these comments are accurate but I wanted to clear things up.

Not all acquihires are the same, so my experience is surely different from others, but there could be a number of reasons why founders would decide to be acquihired. Job security, higher pay, you get to solve the same problem you're passionate about but on a much larger scale, you have more resources to do what you need to do, you get to build a larger team than you would have been able to previously, you get to work with some amazing people and learn from them, you get an exit under your belt which looks good if you decide to do another startup in the future.

As far as why a company would want to acquihire a team? The team dynamic is more valuable than building a team from scratch. The team has proven they can design, build, and deliver a product. I'm willing to bet that 100% of the founders that get acquihired have domain knowledge of the product they work on, and that can be valuable to a large company that is trying to build a new business unit and may not know that industry as well. Corporations need to move fast to please investors, so often times it's easier for them to acquire a team that knows an industry rather than launch a new business unit and learn as they go.

I've seen so many people on HN complain when a company gets acqihired...but I bet that the majority of you would take the same deal given the opportunity. Sure it can be seen as selfish, but sometimes you have to do what's best for yourself, your career, and your family.