Dale Larson and Marcy Swenson Company Culture, People, Startup Happiness

6 Keys to Happiness When Your Startup is Acquired

Acquisitions aren’t easy, but they don’t have to be miserable. Here’s a guide for anyone at a company being acquired (most applies to acquirers as well).

Last week James Home and Marcy Swenson hosted a core conversation at SXSW on How to Be Acquired and Stay Happy. Wonderful smart people generously participated, sharing their experiences of what worked and didn’t in both sides of dozens of acquisitions of tech startups. (In a future post, we’ll summarize the unique issues for founders and the executive team leading up to acquisition.) With the market shift in startup exits from IPOs to acquisitions, learning to do it well and happily is important to anyone at a startup.

Interestingly, the entire conversation focused not on business integration or strategy but on human integration. We think the strategy may be less important than the people and how they run with it.

Here are the six keys… Continue reading “6 Keys to Happiness When Your Startup is Acquired” →

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How to Be Acquired and Stay Happy (Startup Happiness at SxSW 2012)

We’re proud to have both been asked to lead sessions at SxSW 2012, and look forward to seeing you in Austin starting tomorrow! Dale had to decline his panel this year due to scheduling snafus, but Marcy’s looks like it will be standing room only again (like 2011’s Agile Self-Development)…

Come and share your happy acquisition success stories!

Often company acquisitions that seem like a great idea result in disappointment, a mass exodus, the technology being tossed aside, and hard feelings on both sides. But every once in a while, an acquisition results in the team feeling like they got a big win, not just financially, but that it moved their product and careers forward in a way that would have taken them much longer otherwise.

How to Be Acquired and Stay Happy: Marcy and friend James Home, Product Designer, Google (through its acquisition of MetaWeb), lead a Core Conversation about acquisition success stories.  The goal is to draw out what worked well, and provide those looking to be acquired with some guidelines to what to watch for and how to pull it off happily.

Get there early to get a seat and join the conversation; we look forward to seeing you in Austin this week!

Friday, March 9, 3:30-4:30pm, Courtyard Marriott, Rio Grande Ballroom

#sxsw #StayHappy