Link: Can You Name A Startup That Got Better After Being Acquired?
Nathan Bowers states quite a controversial statement in his post from last year: "Can you name a web startup that got better after it was acquired?". He says he can't and gives a few examples.
Feedburner: Google folded them into their own login scheme. Google added crummy ad options to feeds. Otherwise the product is stuck. Feels undead.What they should be working on: improving the display of RSS feeds, making RSS feel more like a human connection between publisher and reader, fixing the fact that when you put an RSS button on your site it’s a dumb, non-stateful button (compare RSS buttons to Tumblr or Twitter follow functionality).
I have to say, personally, that in my opinion many of the acquisitions fail in the sense that they won't enable the original founder to take his idea and execution further. I believe it's this gap in the end result that may give many people the feel that acquisitions in general fail.
What do you think?
Link: Can you name a web startup that got better after it was acquired? (uxhero.com).
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Not exactly a web startup, but Android the operating system probably would not have gone to all places it is now going without Google acquiring Android Ltd.
Overture made their acquirer Yahoo loads of money post acquisition, not just in the intended way, but also as a result of the successful settlement of their lawsuit with Google over Adwords, through which they got 2.7m shares of GOOG. That's an improvement in economic performance, while I think you were really asking what products got better. I'm sure that some of CSCO's core hardware M&A would qualify, and I think arguably PayPal is still innovating post-eBay purchase.
Actually for web startups, Applied Semantics for GOOG for the revenue model, DoubleClick looks good so far, as does AdMob. Postini makes gmail spam-free.
YouTube
Come to think of it: Grand Central -> Google Voice was not total disaster either. And if you broadened the scope to HW world there probably would be more examples of startup creating something that big company made a success out of.
Well in general when a startup is acquired it typically turns to be something that is not a startup anymore (unless another startup has acquired it). Motivations to acquire are many - one is the innovation/business startup has, sometimes e.g. the team is the target - nothing else.
One cannot exactly state what are the startup assets to be utilized after acquisition and how they would be utilized. It may be that utilization has been very successfull but for outsider it may be hard to point this out.
Having said this I agree that failure is more obvious outcome from acquisition than clear success - for this I have plenty of examples and personal experience from target and acquirer point of view.