Would a large tech firm ever acquire an early MVP product/startup?
Acquisitions usually happen when the buying company is acquiring for the talent or a growing/at-scale product. But are there cases when they would buy a very early stage product for its idea and early product implementation? For the sake of argument assume no employees are part of the deal.
If it fits into company's strategy and has a great team.
Company execs do make stupid stupid decisions - so, yes, it is quite possible. Ego can make burn their money in unimaginable ways!!
Feel free to share pointers 🙂
Can't share example since it is not public info. In general, such acquisitions are very small so they don't typically get much press - acquisition to sunset happens within 2-3 yrs but no one hears about it for that reason. There are tons of examples if you ask the right people. If you are on the seller side, one need to be great at BS'ing, be able to make others' brains spin by projecting future hockey stick growth in next 5 years even though you are not making 200K in revenues currently. Lastly, need to have connections and pick an area that very few people understand - this makes it easy to BS and sell the shit.
Patents make it more likely
Nah..in the open source world - it gives some credibility but not worth much. Exception is if it is truly breakthrough innovation. Big companies can go in without owning patent - they know how to squish small companies with limited resources.
Yup, my first company’s founders had their first company bought by amazon before they even launched the product. Was back around 2000s when amazon was on their shopping spree.
Y2K were interesting times and so is now..
Not for ideas, unless there are patents or significant IP attached. Ideas alone aren’t worth much.
yes. happens all the time. never heard of it without employees tho. and dollars are small since you obvi haven’t acquired a market yet
No