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Comment by sroussey | Hacker News Reader

Acquisitions are not really happening.

Without commenting on my current employer, all of my previous large employers are busy buying more companies this year than the last three years combined.

The article disagrees. But my sense is you are right in relative terms. Much more failing than acquiring.

Article:

> Startup M&A bounced back: The number of venture-backed companies that were acquired or merged with another company increased by 20% in Q1 compared to Q4 2022, with 57% of those M&A deals valued at $10 million or less.

Yeah $10m for a lot of startups is equivalent to shutting down. Essentially asset/fire sales.

I think a lot of people who entered the industry post 2004 are about to learn how unreal the last 20-ish years were.

It’ll be interesting. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it to be honest. We have a massive shortage of software. Even with the low cost of software development compared to manufacturing you still need operating capital. Especially for hard problems. Without high risk VC dumping billions into the private market I could see the US drastically falling behind other countries. The entire reason why the US has been so far ahead in the tech sector is because of how much high risk capital we’re willing to invest.

Massive shortage of software where?

(excluding AI, which has no problem getting funding)

There's a massive shortage of software but most of it is low value. Not a lot of money to be made there and the era of "I'll fill this hole with a low-feature SaaS" is kind of over for the time being.

There is very little risk the US will fall behind on software. Once you get outside of CA the SW talent is pretty mediocre and once you're outside the US it's dire. I work with teams all over the world and while many of the individuals are great the gems are few and far between.

Last 20. Try last 3. if it were not for Covid a lot of recent unicorn IPO millionaires would never of had an exit.

Layers of unreal. Going into Covid the SWE job market was insane and had been so for years.

A couple years back, I worked for one that got "acquired" for a couple hundred K. This was literally pennies on the dollar.

Sure they are, JPMC just recently acquired a small startup.

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