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Comment by xoebus | Hacker News Reader

Pivotal Labs CEO Rob Mee just posted a short message on his company blog about the acquisition :

http://pivotallabs.com/users/rob/blog/articles/2052-same-piv...

Every time a company is acquired, they say the same thing about how their larger parent is going to bring them greater resources and distribution. In reality, almost every company experiences the exact opposite effect. The early adopters and passionate base often leave and the company wallows in the murk of bureaucratic org charts.

I think the stories of what happens a few years after the acquisition are much more informative. Given their involvement in the Ruby on Rails community, I'm sure within 3 years we'll see this story show up as a 37signals Exit Interview.

http://37signals.com/exit

There are notable exceptions. Heroku is still shipping awesome new stuff at a rapid clip under their Salesforce overlords. I don't know directly, but the plan at acquisition time was that they would stay pretty independent. I would guess that that helps a lot.

I think Pivotal could be one of those. Him saying "same services" suggests that EMC isn't planning on absorbing the team into something else. It helps that Pivotal is (presumably) very profitable, so there's value to leaving it alone instead of just viewing it as a source of a ton of great devs.

If it's still really Pivotal, and it just happens to be owned by EMC, they might fade much slower than the "everyone leaves within a year and a half" that we've seen so many times.

There are notable exceptions, but in every case of acquisition in the enterprise software space, the PR after the acquisition will always say things will remain the same, it will remain a standalone subsidiary.

But thing usually change, quickly, within a year or two.

There are exceptions, but only as an anomaly. Also, that doesn't really get at what's wrong with each of these exiting thoughts. Did Heroku keep shipping as a result or in spite of selling their company?

I'm not arguing against the practice of acquisitions. However, when a HUGE company buys a small team (famous for agile development) I find it hard to believe statements arguing that more resources are going to lead to "increased velocity".

Of course there are exceptions. Reddit is a pretty good one of the parent not killing the acquisition. Although it's spun out again. It definitely grew immensely under Conde Nast and wasn't quashed.

case in point: LiveJournal / Six Apart http://news.livejournal.com/82926.html

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