You Have to Have Synergy When Acquiring Other Startups - #QuotableMoment at SaaStr Annual

Name: You Have to Have Synergy When Acquiring Other Startups - #QuotableMoment at SaaStr Annual
Uploaded: 2019-04-25T19:12:30+00:00
Duration: 59 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: A founder explains why his acquisition worked: prior relationships from Google, shared investors like Felicis, and six months of engineering teams…

25 Apr 2019 · 1 min

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A founder explains why his acquisition worked: prior relationships from Google, shared investors like Felicis, and six months of engineering teams working together before the deal closed. Without that synergy and cultural fit, he says, acquisitions fail.

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What advice do you have for founders who may be looking to go out to acquire startups themselves?
Yeah, I'd say we were lucky in that Dan and I had worked together at Google. They were funded by Felicis as we were funded by Felicis. We had spent 6 months kind of working out an arm's length transaction. Our engineering teams were working well together already. So that kind of synergy and that shared values and shared vision of what this product could be really made it easy. So I'd say anything where you have that shared kind of mindset and strategy. And the nice thing is it's now been 9, 10 months. We've lost hardly anyone. The two teams work really well together. The products are getting integrated really well. If you didn't have that, I think it would have been obviously a lot harder to make the deal a success.