[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ...
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Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the
acquired company?
By "ruin" I mean the less tangible parts of the smaller company,
such as the culture, the enthusiasm and spirit, the flexibility,
the overall happiness. Having now been in two medium-sized
companies that have been acquired by large, public firms, I find
that everything we enjoyed is gone. Perks slowly disappear;
meetings, trainings, and general wastes of time increase;
productivity slows; engineers become demoralized; processes grind
through bureaucracy. As I understand it, this is typical. What are
some examples where acquisitions like this have happened and the
smaller company wasn't essentially destroyed?
Author : psim1
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-07-12 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
| seaourfreed wrote:
| Android, AdWords, MS DOS was acquired for $70k, instagram
| vannevar wrote:
| I don't know what it's like from the inside, but from the outside
| the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook has gone much better than I
| expected. I really thought Oculus would be gone within a year,
| but they've continued to put out some great products. Other than
| the misstep about requiring Facebook accounts, it seems like a
| success.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Instagram?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, one thing to keep in mind with all of this is that, if it was
| a small, fast-growing startup that got acquired, there was zero
| chance of it staying that way even if it did not get acquired.
| Being small and fast-growing for very long, is by definition
| impossible. In many cases, when a smaller company gets acquired
| by a big one, it's because they have hit the point where the
| founder of the smaller company realizes that their company's
| infrastructure and culture aren't going to work at a large scale,
| so they would rather offload the task of turning into a big
| company to somebody who already knows how to do that. But, even
| if they hadn't, they usually would have had to turn into
| something that looked a lot like the big company they got
| acquired by, anyway.
| mekoka wrote:
| Sometimes you just get acquired because "large sums of money".
| Some startups are on their way way up, with spare room to
| improve on their value proposition and mission at the time of
| their acquisition, and it's difficult to know what the road not
| traveled would've looked like. Even if you see improvements
| post-acquisition, you can't tell if the acquisition actually
| stifled the potential. For some of the companies lauded in this
| very thread, I'd argue that's the case.
| simonw wrote:
| Sadly Heroku/Salesforce used to be my go-to-example here, but
| that fell apart a few years ago when they effectively froze new
| feature development.
| dev_by_day wrote:
| Zappos by Amazon. I've heard they gave them a fair amount of
| autonomy and have been supportive.
| skizm wrote:
| Instagram and WhatsApp (so far)? Smaller scale: Conde Nast didn't
| ruin Reddit for the most part.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Conde neglected reddit for a while, then spun it back out. I
| think they owned it for 5 years. While not good, neglect is
| arguably better than trying to change too much.
| [deleted]
| iainctduncan wrote:
| (background: I work in tech mergers and acquisitions for a
| company that does pre-acquisition diligence.)
|
| It is worth noting that, most of the time, the things that are so
| wonderful about working at the small company are fun for all the
| same reasons that they aren't sustainable. Most startups are not
| cash positive - they don't make money, they just lose money more
| slowly than they get investment (by selling off bits of the
| company). So very often, the stuff you want to have continue just
| can't because it was based on imaginary income. The exit plan
| always involves the company becoming profitable at some point
| (maybe after multiple rounds of acquisitions) and that usually
| means that on each round the company has to become more realistic
| about how they spend their money, including how they manage their
| devs.
|
| On the other hand, it's true that a small lifestyle company can
| keep many of those things, but they do that by not having a plan
| to sell, which tends to mean you get the spirit and independence
| but not the throwing-around-cash-like-it-was-free fun times.
|
| When you factor in opportunity-cost, the whole office plays lazer
| tag on friday is really bloody expensive.
| hedora wrote:
| AOL/Time Warner
|
| (Time Warner was the acquired company.)
| bdcravens wrote:
| At least in the case of (many) startups, most are built with
| acquisition in mind. Many time perks are there only to attract
| talent to get the company to the exit, but aren't part of the
| long term business plan.
| otium wrote:
| Twitch by Amazon($1 billion)
| ianbicking wrote:
| Zappos and Whole Foods also seem to be operating very similarly
| under Amazon as they were before.
| fredguth wrote:
| What defines a big acquisition? Price or comparable size of the
| acquirer versus acquired?
| open-source-ux wrote:
| Amazon owns the following companies selling books:
|
| - AbeBooks (acquired by Amazon in 2008)
|
| - Book Depository (acquired by Amazon in 2011)
|
| These companies don't appeared to have changed dramatically from
| when Amazon bought them. I wonder if these companies operate
| 'independently' without too much undue influence from Amazon?
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Counter-point: Amazon bought Mobipocket in 2005, the guys who
| created the MOBI e-book format, turned the mobi format into
| their AZW format for Kindle books, then shut Mobipocket
| down.[0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobipocket
| influx wrote:
| You left out Amazing acquiring IMDB in 1998! Hasn't changed
| much since then. Likewise woot.com in 2010.
| krallja wrote:
| woot.com is not a good example of company culture staying
| good. The employees got so fed up, they left and started
| meh.com, which seems to be just "woot.com again."
| [deleted]
| QuillianR wrote:
| LVMH has purchased a lot of companies that have maintained
| success, but they are a holding company that runs companies more
| as independent subsidiaries. If software followed this model it
| might be alright, but most of the acquisitions by big companies
| are trying to merge the new company into the old, vs. buying,
| running and sustaining a company as a continuing business.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| John Collison explores this subject in an episode of Invest
| Like The Best [1]. He talks about conglomerates like LVMH and
| Danaher and how they often give managers of acquired companies
| latitude in how they operate. He also points out that no one in
| technology has done what is actually pretty common in the rest
| of the world, namely, one holding company for a whole bunch of
| independent businesses that are sharing expertise. A
| counterexample mentioned is Constellation Software [2] which
| owns about 500 businesses. I definitely think this style of
| business is underrated and will grow in popularity.
|
| The whole episode is brilliant, full of great insights that I
| think about often. It's well worth a listen.
|
| [1] https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/34646260/collison-
| grow...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_Software
| stedman wrote:
| The Acquired podcast does case studies of successful
| acquisitions:
|
| https://www.acquired.fm/
|
| It's an amazing show
| throwaway931 wrote:
| VMware's acquisition by EMC went well for most of the employees
| (at least during the initial years). For all practical purposes,
| EMC left VMware alone.
| neilk wrote:
| Salesforce recently acquired Tableau and from what I hear the
| acquisition has probably improved things at Tableau.
|
| This is a very special case though! Tableau is a company with a
| lot of Fortune 500 buy-in, but an aging development stack and
| business model. So this is the case of a somewhat more dynamic
| larger company acquiring a set of customers and some fundamental
| tech.
|
| Usually acquisitions are from big/slow/established/monopoly
| acquiring an upstart and it's no surprise that usually ends up
| badly.
| arama471 wrote:
| I worked at Tableau until very recently and I can't think of
| any way that the Salesforce acquisition has improved things yet
| (I do think it will eventually improve things). Did you hear
| about anything specific?
| dsaavy wrote:
| I've been working with Tableau for around 10 years and the
| most noticeable thing was making it easier for both
| developers and end-users to use the platform. Everything from
| mobile, to toolbar improvements, alerts, the API, etc. seem
| to have really come together.
|
| Now, these could all have very well been in development
| before the acquisition, but as a whole, the capabilities have
| grown tremendously since that time.
|
| Also, it seems like the licensing options for smaller
| businesses has really been focused on since the acquisition.
| It's become much more affordable for a small business to get
| and use Tableau compared to 4-5 years ago.
| digb wrote:
| Having previously worked at SFDC, I would not wager that it's
| much more dynamic than Tableau.
| theanirudh wrote:
| YouTube
| amf12 wrote:
| Linkedin and Github acquisition by Microsoft.
|
| Github and Linkedin both have their own culture, perks, and the
| companies are run independently. Infact, Linkedin pays better
| than Microsoft and are overall happier.
| superb-owl wrote:
| This sounds more like small company vs big company culture,
| rather than specifically the effects of acquisition. Some folks
| are much happier at a small, nimble company. Some folks like the
| stability and predictability of a larger company. Sounds like
| you're in the former camp.
|
| There are cases where the acquired company is left to run more-
| or-less independently, and its stock is just owned (or majority-
| owned) by the acquirer. But that's probably the exception rather
| than the rule. Usually, if you get acquired, you're now an
| employee of Big Co.
| [deleted]
| taylorwc wrote:
| Pixar acquisition by Disney comes to mind
| BryantD wrote:
| I'd argue that Marvel is another example, although a complex
| one. Marvel Comics has changed very little in terms of culture;
| Ike Perlmutter runs it very much the way he ran it when it was
| independent. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been great for
| Marvel but is no longer under Marvel Comics proper (it's part
| of the studio group now).
|
| As long as we're doing Disney acquisitions, Lucasfilm is also
| still pretty independent and successful. Other Disney
| acquisitions have been less so.
| groovybits wrote:
| Lucasfilm, perhaps.
|
| LucasArts (now known as Lucasfilm Games)... tell that to the
| games that were put on hold and then eventually cancelled
| upon acquisition.
| BryantD wrote:
| I'd argue that LucasArts was effectively dead before the
| acquisition, despite having in theory a few games in
| development. That said, I'd also argue that LucasArts would
| have wound up shuttered even if it had been in great shape,
| so you're probably right either way.
| tpmx wrote:
| Strong disagreement. The acquisition happened in 2006. The last
| few great Pixar movies were in the pipeline already
| (Ratatouille - 2007, WALL-E - 2008, Up - 2009).
| xnx wrote:
| Counterpoint: Inside Out, Soul
| tpmx wrote:
| _Inside out_ was good, but not great, IMO.
|
| Counter-counterpoints:
|
| Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University, The Good Dinosaur,
| Finding Dory, Cars 3, Coco, Onward, Luca, Turning Red,
| Lightyear.
|
| The (not very original) point is: You can no longer count
| on a Pixar movie being excellent.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Coco was excellent. But agreed on the rest.
| tpmx wrote:
| Ah. Might have to watch it then. After a number of duds I
| gave up on watching new Pixar movies except for those
| made by Brad Bird, or especially recommended.
| nemothekid wrote:
| Coco and Turning Red were excellent. The rest of your
| list however, proves you more right than wrong.
| rockostrich wrote:
| I'd argue the only real misses were the cash grab sequels
| (Cars 2, Cars 3, and I can only assume Lightyear is in
| that group but looking at RT it seems like both ratings
| are still "fresh"). The rest of the movies on the post-
| acquisition list were good, if not great. Critically, I
| think the worst one on the list is the Good Dinosaur and
| even that's still generally well liked.
| tpmx wrote:
| I'd argue that the old-school criterium for a
| "successful" Pixar movie was that it needed to be great,
| not just good.
| influx wrote:
| My whole family enjoyed Luca FWIW.
| agotterer wrote:
| Lightyear was a letdown. My kids enjoyed it but I thought
| it could have been much better. I expected to see Buzz as
| at this exciting space ranger, but that wasn't what the
| movie was about. If I was Andy from Toy Story there would
| be no way I wanted a Buzz toy after seeing that movie.
| mcphage wrote:
| Cars 2 was the only real stinker. I agree they're not
| 100% excellent, but most are at least okay. And from your
| list: Brave, Cars 3, Coco, Onward, Luca, and Turning Red
| I all consider great to excellent. I haven't seen
| Lightyear yet.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| I disagree too from a animation/story-quality perspective,
| but from a business perspective, Pixar seems to be doing well
| enough to meet OPs criteria of not being ruined.
| jedberg wrote:
| Technically that was a merger, which made Steve Jobs the
| largest Disney shareholder (more than any member of the Disney
| family).
|
| But yeah you have a good point. They retained their culture and
| in fact spread it further by having the Pixar folks take over
| Disney Animation.
| RubberShoes wrote:
| Google acquiring YouTube
|
| "In the Plex" by Steven Levy goes into great detail on how
| YouTube could not survive its growth without the infrastructure
| and ad technologies Google brought to the platform.
| olalonde wrote:
| Also Android.
| paulgb wrote:
| I realize OP is talking more about the experience of the
| workers than the users, and I don't have an inside scoop here,
| but I'd put forward "Google acquiring Keyhole" as well. Google
| was in a unique position to allow anyone with a browser to view
| satellite photos from around the world, for free, and have the
| economics make sense for them.
| jessriedel wrote:
| That's an argument for the acquisition of YT by Google being
| net positive, but it doesn't answer the OP's question, which he
| specifically restricts to the "less tangible parts of the
| smaller company".
| cleansingfire wrote:
| That sounds like the author is defining good as "what I like,
| and can't or won't tell you."
| macspoofing wrote:
| >but it doesn't answer the OP's question
|
| I think it does, otherwise OP's question is ill-posed. That
| is, if YouTube scaled independently from a scrappy startup to
| a $170billion behemoth, the changes in corporate governance
| and culture would have been equally as drastic as being
| acquired by Google.
| aliqot wrote:
| Youtube, the product, maybe makes more money. However,
| Youtube, the community, was much better initially, which I
| suppose can be expected with most communities as they grow.
|
| Bad actors creep in, which creates new rules, which
| negatively impacts the whole, which causes resentment,
| which causes more bad actors, which lead to more rules, and
| before you know it, review-girls don't seem so bad when
| your feed lands on terrorist-mickeymouse and the syringe
| babies.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Youtube only existed publicly for around a year before
| being acquired. I don't think it supported comments on
| videos. Whether or not YT's community was better early on
| (which like, I'm not even sure is true) is independent
| from whether its acquisition by Google affected that
| community, because YT was acquired basically before there
| was any chance for a community to develop.
| jessriedel wrote:
| That's a new claim not made in the comment I replied to
| (and arguably still not really answering the question,
| which is definitely not ill-posed).
| Noe2097 wrote:
| Dassault Systemes acquiring Solidworks.
|
| Most users don't know that Solidworks, which is well know as a
| mid level solution for CAD, is actually owned by the French
| company developing CATIA, which is practically used by every
| single serious manufacturer in the world (from automotive to
| aircraft to ship to factory to you name it).
|
| The geometric kernel powering these two is now the same, but it
| wasn't for years. I guess it's a good illustration of why this
| acquisition was successful and didn't ruin Solidworks: the
| company was left practically untouched for more than ten years.
| "assimilation" took place at a very slow pace (almost
| cosmological for a software company).
|
| Now the question to ask is more why the acquisition is taking
| place. To get a list of customers? To get skilled contributors,
| or knowledge, or patent, or a piece of technology? To get a
| presence in a different country? All or a part of this? To kill a
| competitor?
|
| Anyway you put it, acquisition is not a neutral move. It's always
| joining a bigger structure, hence jumping to a later stage and
| size at extreme speed. Considering how difficult it is for a
| single company to get through its different stages by itself, it
| is normal that acquisitions are hard for acquired companies.
| Assuming the objective is not to kill the acquired, tremendous
| efforts will be needed on both sides to make it work. The
| acquiring company ramping up newcomers, on new actual processes,
| on new ways of doing; the acquired one to agree to it, and accept
| that it is the cost to pay to operate at a higher scale.
| JeremyHerrman wrote:
| Did Solidworks actually move away from Parasolid? I had thought
| that only some 3DEXPERIENCE cloud products were using CGM, but
| Solidworks on the desktop was still based on Parasolid.
| terravion wrote:
| Deloitte's acquisition of BearingPoint's Federal practice in
| 2008-9. Fascinating to watch from the inside -- literally the
| same people increased revenue & margins with happier employees,
| primarily driven by implementing a better management and
| incentives culture with better HR practices. Also interesting
| that Deloitte hired their corporate M&A integration group to run
| the integration for themselves.
| alberth wrote:
| Oracle acquiring Sun.
|
| I know there is a lot of Oracle hate but: MySQL, GraalVM (Java),
| Sun hardware (both Exa* and SPARC), VirtualBox and many more
| technologies are better today than prior.
|
| The challenge Sun would have had, regardless of Oracle or not, is
| that they were solidly in the On-Prem business ... and the market
| has moved to Cloud.
| creshal wrote:
| Even on the remaining on-prem market, who's still using MySQL
| over MariaDB or Postgres? Who's using SPARC over X64? Who's
| using Virtualbox over HyperV, Libvirt or VMWare?
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| > Who's using SPARC over X64?
|
| A lot of telecoms stuff.
|
| > Who's using Virtualbox over HyperV, Libvirt or VMWare?
|
| A considerable number of people who want an open source
| virtualization solution that is relatively painless to use
| (so, not libvirt).
| ipaddr wrote:
| More people are using MySQL over mariaDB and postgres install
| base is a fraction of mysql.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Enough people so that it's profitable.
| silvestrov wrote:
| The Java language has improved a lot since Oracle took over. It
| started to languish at Sun, like they didn't want to put any
| effort into it.
| carimura wrote:
| I wasn't at Sun but am on the Java team now at Oracle. I'm
| constantly amazed by the inventor culture that Sun had, the
| people who came from there, and the legacy it has produced, but
| we all know how the business ended. That's no environment for a
| world-changing development platform to thrive.
|
| It took a few years to find its footing, but Oracle has really
| given Java the space and resources to thrive. The roadmap is
| fuller than it ever has been and the release cadence continues
| to deliver value. Check out projects Amber, Loom, Panama,
| Valhalla. Tap into the stream of Inside.java. Exciting times.
|
| Point being, I believe Java is a datapoint for successful
| product acquisition.
| jedberg wrote:
| Lol talk to anyone who was there and they would tell you that
| Oracle absolutely destroyed Sun.
| alberth wrote:
| I was there.
|
| Nothing destroyed. Just differences in company culture.
|
| The alternative for Sun was IBM to buy them. An acquisition
| by IBM would have been the death of Sun. Sun, under Oracle,
| still lives on well today.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| > Just differences in company culture
|
| Which is what this thread is largely about.
| alberth wrote:
| Then the question is completed flawed, because the actual
| question then is "what are some examples of companies
| being acquired with the same corporate culture".
|
| Because a # of the examples given are parent companies
| just leaving the acquired company alone in isolation.
|
| How is that good for either the acquirer or the
| consumers.
|
| No synergies can be had if the two companies are
| operating independently.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| The question was pretty poorly worded IMO, but its an
| important one.
|
| Usually when a company is acquired, certain unique (and
| attractive) features of its company culture die pretty
| fast.
|
| These can be measurable things eg: PTO policies, imposing
| certain dev environments/corp machine policies on devs,
| bonus structures, conference/training allowances,
| frequency and structure of meetings, etc.
|
| Or these can be more vague things, like shifts in how
| internal comms work, the death of informal means of
| resolving issues, incremental shifts in management style,
| etc.
|
| The last acquisition I went through (as an employee of
| the acquired company) resulted in about half of my team
| leaving pretty quick. The acquirer basically took away
| all the perks that made working there worthwhile
| (compared to any given competitor).
|
| If my current employer was to be acquired, I'm willing to
| bet that the entire staff of the business unit I'm part
| of will be looking for new jobs, as I doubt the acquirer
| would be giving us the degree of freedom that we have
| currently.
| pforret wrote:
| Wasn't Google interested? It would have given them tons of
| IP and might have saved them from the law suits Oracle
| brought over Android.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| Google also buys a ton of StorageTek.
| alberth wrote:
| The only formal offer came from IBM, and then Oracle came
| in higher.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Technology/story?id=7395780&pa
| ge=...
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I worked at Aol when Huffington Post acquired them for -$300M and
| the culture stayed mostly the same.
| InTheArena wrote:
| NeXT with Apple is a pretty solid canonical case. In that
| situation, it really became a reverse acquisition with Steve Jobs
| regaining control of Apple.
|
| We've done a number of acquisitions - and most seem to have done
| well. A big portion of that is recognizing that you are not only
| acquiring the company - it's IP and people - but also it's
| culture. If you don't want that culture - if it's not better then
| yours, you don't want it.
| fredguth wrote:
| I like the example, but can you say that NeXT was a large
| acquisition for Apple? How big was NeXT compared to Apple? Does
| size matter in this analysis? I believe so. I don't know much
| about this particular acquisition, but I always assumed that
| buying NeXT was the price to get Jobs back.
| PAPPPmAc wrote:
| I've seen and used the phrase "NeXT bought Apple with Apple's
| money" for that acquisition, they didn't just replace Gil
| Amelio with Steve Jobs, they also had a huge fraction of
| their management and tech leads swapped out with NeXT folk in
| pretty short order. They also turned over a huge number of
| board members in '96-97 as Apple flailed then reformed. Apple
| spent $429M on NeXT (Apples market cap at the time was around
| $2B) when they were losing about $700M a quarter and expected
| to be bankrupt by the end of 1996. They slid through the bad
| spot partly on a $150M investment (...possibly motivated by
| antitrust avoidance) from Microsoft.
|
| Steve drove (Chief Operating Officer) Marco Landi and (chief
| technologist) Ellen Hancock out even before he became CEO.
| Bertrand Serlet (1997-2009) then Craig Federighi (2009-) ran
| the (variously named) OS team and Avie Tenivan was the tech
| lead, all former NeXT folks (which makes sense because Apple
| failed at 3 OS projects then shipped reskinned NeXTStep). Bud
| Tribble followed Steve to NeXT then back to Apple in various
| VP roles. George Crow and Jon Rubinstein did the same kind of
| loop working on hardware platforms at Apple-NeXT-Apple. Mitch
| Mandich became SVP of sales almost immediately after the
| acquisition. Etc.
| amerine wrote:
| Thank you so so so much for this detailed history! I love
| the people webs that exist around some of our favorite
| tech.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Aren't half the UI classes in OSX still prefixed with "NS"
| for NextStep?
| chubot wrote:
| Yeah my understanding is that most of the OS X team were
| from Next, so Apple definitely got something out of the
| acquisition
| rvense wrote:
| OS X was an upgraded NeXTStep (including an all-new GUI
| and printing subsystem) with the addition of two ways of
| running old Mac applications: Classic mode, which was a
| full OS9 environment running under hardware
| virtualization, and the Carbon APIs, which were a set of
| upgraded but mostly-compatible C/C++ APIs that allowed
| Mac applications from the last decade and a half to be
| carried forward. These APIs survived for about ten years,
| and while they were not completely frozen in time, there
| was always a feeling that they were the second-class,
| legacy choice compared to the "native" alternative,
| Cocoa. There was never a 64-bit Carbon, so running (much
| less compiling) Carbon apps has been impossible for quite
| some time now.
|
| The Objective-C Cocoa APIs are a straight descendant of
| the NeXTStep APIs, and many NeXT apps would run on OS X
| with a simple recompile. While there have been many
| additions since, and the main focus these days is on the
| Swift language, to the best of my knowledge, you can
| still take an Objective-C NeXT application and compile it
| on your ARMintosh and have it run with very few issues.
|
| I was a Mac user from 1989, and I didn't like OS X much
| at the time. It felt like a completely new system, not an
| update to what I was used to. Sure, it was better in many
| technical ways, but it was also a lot more complicated.
| And it felt different. So there were was definitely a
| sense that it was really a Mac anymore.
|
| Just about the only technical concession to the old Mac
| crowd that I can think of was the use of the old HFS+
| file system, over NeXT's UNIX filesystem. And I think
| this was only because there was a transition period of
| several years where dual-booting was common, even
| necessary. So you could install OS X next to your old OS
| 9 system and boot either at your discretion without
| having to have several partitions. Mac OS9 is very
| dependent on some features in its FS, so this was the
| only way to allow a smooth transition. But other than
| that, OS X was and felt like a new, alien system, even
| though it did allow for compatibility with many
| applications.
| pjlegato wrote:
| In this case, Apple's culture changed to match NeXT's.
| chubot wrote:
| The crazy thing is that Disney -> Pixar was also pretty much a
| reverse acquisition, so Steve was involved in 2 of those. At
| the time of acquisition his wife was the largest Disney
| shareholder, so she had more shares than anyone in the Disney
| family
|
| Seems like Pixar is doing well and Disney is taking influence
| from them
| leoncaet wrote:
| Pixar movies had an artistic downfall after the Disney
| acquisition. But sure they are doing fine financially-wise
| and technology-wise.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I would argue that this is more about the departure /
| firing of John Lasseter then a side effect of Disney.
| Lasseter's mandate was to rescue Disney animation, and
| while Pixar went down a bit, it very clearly re-emerged for
| a while.
|
| Where Disney is now is more about destroying the parks as
| cultural touchstones in the USA.
| arbitrage wrote:
| That's a very subjective statement. It's difficult to find
| evidence for, let alone prove.
| com2kid wrote:
| IMDB ratings, and even revenue from movies.
|
| Pixar used to work on one movie at a time, and each one
| that came out was technologically ground breaking[1], a
| huge media event, and an instant classic beloved by
| adults and children.
|
| Now days you have https://www.imdb.com/list/ls020738923/
|
| Some of their movies are good, some are great, some
| aren't good, but now days they are willing to make cash
| grab sequels.
|
| [1] Siggraph during Pixar release years turned into "what
| ground breaking tech did Pixar invent this time"
| [deleted]
| Kye wrote:
| Now it seems like Disney is doing the innovating with the
| way they film stuff for Disney+.
|
| https://qz.com/1754288/disney-is-trying-to-revolutionize-
| fil...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bErPsq5kPzE
|
| Though how much of that is Disney and how much is the
| companies they worked with is unknown to me.
| unixhero wrote:
| I can't say I agree. Every title is the definition of
| polished. I just wish they hadn't made millions of
| children sad with the opening of Up!
| wiseleo wrote:
| Cisco's acquisitions. There's a book about them. The Crescendo
| switch acquisition was extremely successful and they became
| Catalyst switches.
| pea wrote:
| Cisco has an interesting playbook with spin-outs as well, that
| I haven't seen many companies pull off (i.e. mpls multiple
| times over)
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Instagram, arguably
| vosper wrote:
| Agreed, and I also think Meta/Facebook's acquisition of Oculus
| was good for Oculus, too. Meta just reversed course on the
| requirement to have a Facebook account, which was the big thing
| people complained about. They're pouring enormous resources
| into VR with a long-term timeline. By some accounts it's less
| like Facebook took over Oculus, and more like Oculus took over
| Facebook.
|
| I hope Valve sticks it out with VR, because though I do not
| like or use Facebook I think Zuckerberg could be right about
| VR, and someone needs to compete with Meta. I think for Valve
| it's potentially an existential threat.
| randomly123 wrote:
| https://www.motherson.com/company/history
|
| This company does decent M&A in the auto ancilliaries industry
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| Instagram ($1 billion), WhatsApp ($19 billion)
| skciva wrote:
| Obviously we'll never know but I'd love to see an alternate
| timeline where those acquisitions didn't happen.
|
| Instagram specifically has just become another ad infested
| shopping app for me these days.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| I'm not a meaningful Instagram user nor would I defend it as
| "good", but from a "success" perspective, for my demographic
| (I'm a 30-something US resident), it is clearly the most
| relevant social network.
| stagger87 wrote:
| This happens all the time. It is essentially the business
| strategy of many (not all!) conglomerates. Scoop up successful
| companies and let them keep running as they are, sometimes with
| even greater success due to things like access to money and
| peers. I've worked for a few subsidiaries through the acquisition
| process, and aside from some accountants showing up once a year,
| everything remained the same.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I have lots of examples where they ruined it.
| curiousllama wrote:
| OP - Of your 5 criteria, 2 will change by the very nature of what
| it is to be acquired. The other 3 are essentially 1 (how excited
| are we about this change?)
|
| Culture: there's different people around, now. So culture
| necessarily changes.
|
| Flexibility: bigger companies are less flexible because there are
| simply more people. Even if every individual is more flexible, it
| doesn't matter.
|
| Enthusiasm, spirit, and happiness - are these not synonyms, in
| this context? And if they are, are they not reactions to external
| factors (culture & flexibility)?
|
| I would suggest your question may be tautological: big companies
| will always ruin small companies from the perspective of someone
| who likes small companies because the small company became big.
| psim1 wrote:
| I think there's a finesse to it where the bigger company can in
| many ways adopt the smaller company culture, leave it alone, or
| bring in their own unique and not bad culture. Big != sucks,
| necessarily. Some of the other comments have insightful
| examples.
| spullara wrote:
| BEA's acquisition of WebLogic and Oracle's acquisition of BEA (at
| that point, basically WebLogic).
| zippergz wrote:
| I might only half-jokingly say that these acquisitions did not
| ruin the company because they were already too terrible to be
| ruined...
| kerblang wrote:
| While not answering the question, I think a lot of companies are
| acquired in a state of immaturity and then comes the problem of
| succeeding as actual grownups. Everyone blames the acquirer but
| it's not that simple. I work with a group that still has leftover
| ego-execution mismatch and it's tiresome.
| kodah wrote:
| Salesforce's acquisition of Slack, possibly. A good portion of
| folks I know don't even know Slack was acquired, which is a good
| sign.
| Mandatum wrote:
| They haven't changed anything. Yet. Dreamforce isn't for a few
| more months.
|
| Also Slack and Salesforce's culture is very different.
| Salesforce is closer to Oracle, Slack always had super-
| technical, friendly sales and support staff.
|
| I'm sure we'll see price hikes and a push to land larger,
| government and Enterprise contracts as they forget about SME.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Not an expert, but I'm curious if one difference between the
| buyer and buyee (in the author's situations) is SOCS2 compliance.
| [deleted]
| harel wrote:
| I think github got better after Microsoft bought them. They were
| in some stale rut for a long time before that.
| sofixa wrote:
| The got better because they finally got to money to try to be
| competitive with GitLab. Before that they were really behind on
| features.
|
| However their reliability is down the toilet. So a mixed bag,
| IMHO.
| smcleod wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more, GitHub has had significantly more
| outages - especially transient ones and is now focused on
| smashing out sales driven features rather stability and core
| functionality.
| moolcool wrote:
| I agree, but this is a hot take among a lot of free software
| purists.
| aliqot wrote:
| Not sure whether I'd be labeled a purist, but I've been
| stdlib only for a while now, and tend to choose the open
| choice over the left hand path of the corporate capitalist
| patriarchy, I wouldn't call myself outright biased though ( I
| kid. )
|
| However, all jests aside, being a relatively open source
| person, I haven't seen much in the git product of Github
| getting any worse after Microsoft acquired them. The social
| aspect, well, it is what it is, and I don't care for it, but
| I don't necessarily think my preferences translate well to a
| quarterly earnings call.
|
| I do personally perceive the downtime to be more frequent
| now, but maybe only because it's more publicized, I do not
| have any data to substantiate that personal observation.
| harel wrote:
| Yes that is true, but lucky for me, I'm not one. So I can
| clearly see how much better it become. I don't even
| understand why. I would have thought they were profitable
| before the acquisition (were they?) so why resources only
| started being applied afterwards?
| FinalBriefing wrote:
| I'm guessing that being part of a much larger company
| allows them to spend more time on UX and "the little big
| details" that might not directly contribute to profits.
|
| Maybe Github Actions has brought in a lot more revenue,
| too. They get a "discount" on Azure hosting, I'm sure.
| Noe2097 wrote:
| I'm curious here: what got better in GitHub since the
| acquisition?
|
| It's a genuine question, I'm not being sarcastic, I really
| don't understand the statement (which seems to be shared by
| several people here). I honestly can't point out a single thing
| that was delivered that changed the game for like, 6 years from
| now if not more (copilot is a nice gadget IMHO but it's not
| really game changer, is it?).
|
| I was actually hoping that MS support would change that, but I
| don't see it happening.
| lghh wrote:
| I have enjoyed using Actions. The GitHub integration into
| VSCode has been a huge productivity boon for me as well.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Off the top of my head: Tree view in PRs, the new projects
| board, code search, Mermaid and maths in markdown, the cmd+k
| action bar thing, Copilot, the best VS Code themes, lots of
| small changes like Readme TOC, and so on.
|
| Maybe these changes are incremental, maybe you don't cherish
| them as much as I do ,and some were very much over due.
| Regardless, I like them and am impressed by Github's recent
| work.
| harel wrote:
| The app(!), the inline vscode INSIDE github (just press the .
| [dot] key when in the repo), actions, general interface,
| settings to name a few.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Yep I agree. And unlike where lots of acquisitions die down
| after years even if they do ok initially, it's taken years but
| Github finally seems to be increasing the pace of innovation.
| Clubber wrote:
| >I find that everything we enjoyed is gone. Perks slowly
| disappear; meetings, trainings, and general wastes of time
| increase; productivity slows; engineers become demoralized;
| processes grind through bureaucracy. As I understand it, this is
| typical.
|
| The first time I was in a company that got acquired, this
| happened. Then it got acquired again by an even bigger fish and
| it didn't really happen because it already sucked after the first
| time.
|
| The second company that got acquired it also happened. Usually
| the suck starts after a year when managers try to increase their
| bonuses by finding "synergies," which really means cutting
| employees through consolidation and adding a bunch of unnecessary
| friction to the development process.
|
| The lesson I've learned is if you get acquired, you've got about
| a year to get out or you will be miserable if you aren't the big-
| co type. I made the mistake of staying too long both times it's
| happened to me.
|
| To answer your question, I've never been at a company that got
| acquired and it was better for me.
| varjag wrote:
| GitHub, LinkedIn
| dev_by_day wrote:
| Trello by Atlassian. They have tried to rollout some of the UX
| improvements from Trello into other products and kept the
| majority of the talent.
| smueller1234 wrote:
| Booking.com was acquired by Priceline for 100M in 2005. Now it's
| >80% of value and revenue of the parent company. By that logic,
| booking's value peaked over 80b$.
|
| I was there from 2010-2017. The philosophy of the holdings was to
| let its constituent companies execute independently and even
| compete (this included Priceline.com, Agoda, Kayak,
| rentalcars.com, OpenTable, etc). Therefore the culture of
| booking.com remained fairly intact for a very long time.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Cisco bought Duo Security, and by all accounts from the people I
| know that work there, the culture is pretty intact and people
| happy. Maybe that has changed in the past year or so, though!
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