The Rise of Micro Startup Acquisitions | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of Micro Startup Acquisitions

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86 pointscarlchenet18 comments

The problem with this was explained to me by a M&A consultant... it's roughly the same amount of work for the acquisition team of a large company to buy a tiny company as it is for them to buy a much larger company. The problem isn't the cost, but rather the due diligence and bureaucratic bandwidth of the acquisitions team.

So this is unlikely to become much of a trend, simply because it's too much work for the acquiring companies.

You're not doing the same amount of DD on a $5M acquisition as you are a $300M acquisition, just as seed VCs aren't doing the same amount of DD as a growth-stage VC. The former may not even have aquifer financial yet and the acquiring company is mostly concerned about the talent of the team and the software. They may not even care that much about a couple of the founders--just needing them for a smooth handover.

While it might not be the exact same amount of DD it is still a good amount. I think it's the law of diminishing returns.

I've worked in M&A for several years. In terms of actually processing the transaction, yes it's generally true that it takes about the same time to process a deal regardless of size (there are legal, accounting, regulatory, basic DD, etc steps that happen in every deal). That's totally independent from the "go" or "no go" call that call that ultimately needs to be made by the acquirer though, which is the actual driver of the deal. It's a lot easier/quicker to make the "go" call when the stakes are low. Once an acquirer decides with conviction that they want to do a deal, it's pretty smooth sailing. The pain comes in when the acquirer feels the need to do deep dive due diligence and negotiation, which tends to make the larger acquisitions a lot more intensive.

I've been involved in a micro acquisition. From my experience, this is not true. Both the timeline, cost and effort from term sheet to closing was small (in comparison to larger acquisitions)

I don't understand. Why doesn't the amount of work required to perform all the due diligence activities not scale with the size of the company?

I'm foxed too. Due diligence is about assessing risk. The lower the valuation the less you're risking. Hence I'd expect early acquires to require far less due diligence. What am I missing?

Liabilities. While a lower valuation company would presumably be less likely to rack up some huge liabilities somehow, that is not necessarily the case.

Because they're not evaluating the things that scale. They're evaluating the founders, which is constant, and also the legal paperwork, which grows only linearly. The cost of valuating the company, negotiating, getting board consent, etc., are all basically constant.

> Because they're not evaluating the things that scale. .. also the legal paperwork, which grows only linearly

Um, that is something that scales.

> The cost of valuating the company, negotiating, getting board consent, etc., are all basically constant.

I don't see how that can be, though. If the company is just my friend and I, your "board consent" is just getting the two of us to say yes (assuming we are not structured as an LCC, in which case it is irrelevant). The cost of appraising a purchase is generally related to how much it is claimed to be worth. Ditto with negotiating; a higher price tag or larger organization brings more things to haggle over.

Even worse, why doesn't the amount of work scale with the selling price of the company?

I smell people not capable of doing cost-benefit analysis.

I could see how that would be true in some cases, but in cases where the startup hadn't launched yet I would assume there's a lot less to audit.

An increase in number of acquisitions means a decrease in competition, a decrease in product diversity (random product discontinuations, with higher probability for good products) and a decrease of market modularity and flexibility.

We should oppose this.

The way we oppose this is by educating, training, and supporting bootstrapped and aspiring startups. You'd sell, too, if things weren't looking so great. Pinterest would be an awesome opportunity in comparison.

You're assuming that every entrepreneur wants to build a company. Maybe it was a couple of engineers who were just really passionate about a product that they'll get to continue working on with more resources and a nice cushion. This may be especially true for companies that are not going to be unicorns, but more like my little ponies. If you're capping out at a $50m business in 8 years and someone comes along and offers you $8m today that might be a pretty good deal.

>We should oppose this.

Actually it depends. I would pop open a bottle of champagne if Google/Apple/FB bought out our competitors and mothballed their products. :)

> An increase in number of acquisitions means a decrease in competition, [...]

Depends. Clear exit strategies will entice more people into the market.

In the extreme case, if they never was any possibilities of getting acquired, we'd keep all the startups that get started and don't die. But far less startups would get started, yet alone funded.

Founding a company with this in mind seems foolish.

If you only have one likely acquirer, that's worse for you. If you're building a feature that depends on that acquirer, they will kill you off if you get big (see Twitter and other data suppliers.)

So you're choosing a startup idea which can be lowballed on the offer (only one acquirer) if they like it, and you can't get big and succeed on your own.

This looks great for big companies -- free R&D if the idea was bad. It looks awful for most founders.

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