Hacker News Reader

Comment by jordanmoconnor | Hacker News Reader

Confirmed on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gitchat/status/842058103571001344

Link to the live post: http://blog.gitter.im/2017/03/15/gitter-gitlab-acquisition/

Looks like they will open source the whole thing. I'd be very interested in learning how much Gitlab paid for this acquisition.

I'm sorry but we don't comment on acquisitions prices. Being transparent about it is not common in the industry and us doing this by default might make future acquisitions harder since the company being acquired might not like it. Also see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/general-guidelines/ "Most things are public unless there is a reason not to. Not public by default are: financial and legal information"

I think even public companies often disclose the prices though, especially for major ones. This being said, I have been thinking about the GitLab IPO, including things like fixing Reg FD for a while now.

> I think even public companies often disclose the prices though,

"Even public companies"? Public companies are required to report a lot of financial information publicly that non-public companies are neither required to report nor in the habit of reporting.

The point is there probably won't be much problem in disclosing this info and they will likely have to do so after they IPO anyway.

'Whether or not there a separate disclosure about a specific transaction (including its price and form of consideration) depends on the size of the acquisition relative to the size of the company and whether the acquisition is "material." Accounting rules define "materiality" in an intentionally broad way. From FASB Statement of Concepts #2:

The omission or misstatement of an item in a ﬁnancial report is material if, in the light of surrounding circumstances, the magnitude of the item is such that it is probable that the judgment of a reasonable person relying upon the report would have been changed or inﬂuenced by the inclusion or correction of the item.

In practice, a company's auditors will set a materiality threshold based on a company's revenue, assets, and net income. Thus, big companies can make small acquisitions without disclosing much.'

from https://www.quora.com/For-a-public-company-when-does-the-siz...

Of course, GitLab should do better than that if possible

..because financials is something people hope a company to be more open. It takes quite alot of courage to honestly reveal all the salaries. Then you wouldn't need a calculator anymore. So probably you should consider when you are acquiring talent, talent may set the price based on their own needs and have a right to negotiate. You shouldn't first of all, build an annoyingly outdated calculator and give it to HR to reject good talent and rely on community to mess up when the decision to build that calculator was mostly to serve company's own purpose. (which probably why its more biased to downpaying employees)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com