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Comment by seanp2k2 | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, does anyone have some examples of an acquired company thriving post-acquisition? It seems like they just all burn out or stop doing cool things. I’m thinking of examples like Nest and Tumblr, but I haven’t noticed any where I think “wow, they’re really doing amazing things now after being acquired”. I get that many are acqui-hires or done for the IP portfolio, or as favors to founders or other investors to make a few people a whole lot of money.

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Yeah, so many.

YouTube, Instagram, Github, Android, Slack, Heroku (until recently), etc. And those are just the ones that were left to their own devices.

There's also a ton that have lost their brand, but melted into the parent company. It's not obvious from the outside, but the tech (and team behind it) goes on to become a vital feature. Like, look at any acquisition by Stripe.

Lastly, companies sell because things are going really well or they're going really badly. This company was closer to the latter, and that has a much smaller success rate – but teams often get continued employment, some get promotions, people make money, etc.

It seems like you’re asking about whether a brand survives the acquisition, but I think there are lots of examples of an acquisition absorbing into the parent company and the parent company being better off and performing well and making good use of the new IP and new talent. I bring it up because I work in a group that was acquired a decade ago and now represents a major division of the parent company having brought it’s product to the parent company’s massive market successfully. I also know several people who’ve started various startups, been acquired, and now run teams based on their original independent product in the parent company under the parent company’s name.

Recent example (last ~6 months): Anduril acquired a 30-person company, Dive, that built autonomous submarines with some novel low-cost process. They had built a small number of vessels for internal testing and maaaaybe had started to generate a little revenue, but nothing serious.

Then, four months post-acquisition, Anduril’s influence earned them a $100M contract to build prototype submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. Dive benefitted from Anduril’s political savvy and connectedness in a new part of the world; Anduril benefitted from Dive’s tech of course.

PowerPoint originally was an acquisition by Microsoft and by all accounts it seems to have been a “perfect” acquisition.

As was Google docs (originally Writely)

Amazon did well with Ring. Facebook seems to be doing well with Oculus, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Siri?

PA Semi

NeXT :P

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