[fearless]

Most likely $0. If you don't have any traction or investors, what makes you an attractive acquihire target? If it were so easy to throw together a few friends and make a million dollars via acquihire everyone would be doing it instead of applying for a job.

Acquihire is 30% about getting a team with proven ability to execute and 70% about paying back investors as a favor or a down payment on maintaining a good relationship with them. If your dream is really to get acquihired your best bet is to pull together enough traction to raise seed funding and then invest that money in hiring the best engineers possible before shopping it around to get acquired.

[gamerDude]

They might have a great technological solution or expertise that the acquihiring company needs. Thus they might be paying for the technology instead of spending time and resources trying to develop it themselves.

[gojomo]

That's not quite an "acqui-hire", though, that's a technology purchase.

"Acqui-hire" has a strong implication of, "we don't need your technology, and will likely discard/discontinue your product... but we want your engineers, as a cohesive team with relevant domain experience."

[AndrewKemendo]

In that case the acquiring company would be coming to them. If there is a pinch point that bad that an unproven technology would be implemented before it has traction, any wind of the technology to fix it would draw mice.

[ojbyrne]

Then its not an acquihire.

[taurussai]

If there is no technology play, at the minimum it should be a signon bonus that the company would pay engineers joining at that position in the company. How much higher than that would depend on other factors that everybody is discussing.