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That's just incredible. Milk made one application, gave it away for free, summarily shut it down, and sold for $15 - $30 million. I understand these guys are ve
by pawosty 15y ago
That's just incredible. Milk made one application, gave it away for free, summarily shut it down, and sold for $15 - $30 million. I understand these guys are very talented, and that Google was buying the talent more than the product, but that's quite a price for some gifted people!
- brosephius 15y agoYep...why go through the normal interview process to work at Google when you can get acqui-hired, get paid the same, but get a million-dollar "signing bonus"?
- veguss 15y agoDon't hate the player, hate the game my friend.
- veguss 15y agoWell, keep on hating the player and miss all the action then. Do remember when the bubble collapses, you will be hurt far more than the players who already made their millions and can weather the collapse.
- anon808 15y agowhy not hate both. everyone has a choice.
- PaulAnunda 15y agob/c if 99% of us were placed in that situation, we'd take the money
- Drbble 15y agoMilk was a rather quick flip, but if you consider a more average 4 year run to acquisition, and also consider the risk factor, isn't so much obviously better than just getting a job with Google salary and stock from the start.
- jpdoctor 15y ago> quite a price for some gifted people! Every time I saw this happen in the 90s the result was the same: Small team shows up in big company after big $$, gets frustrated with big company BS, doesn't really care and runs down the game clock until vesting is nearly complete, leaves without fanfare. I'm sure there must be counter examples, please let me know some if you have them.
- dpritchett 15y agoBret Taylor at Facebook.
- nuggien 15y agoHe didn't exactly get picked up to be some random engineer in a big corp.
- chollida1 15y agoThat's a good point. In his current role he is essentially the top technical person in the company. I wonder if the reason alot of acquired entrepreneurs leave is that they are used to having so much authority and latitude that getting a middle manager role at google just feels like wearing a straight jacket.
- jpdoctor 15y agoThanks for the counterexample. Just to be clear: His vesting clock is done?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- inmygarage 15y agoTwo team-centric acquisitions that Google has made in recent years: Aardvark and Slide. Both were cases of products that were mostly ahead of their time or just-off re: product-market fit, and had genius teams. As far as I know, the majority of both teams are still at Google.
- joering2 15y agoSo I heard this hundred times before and while it feels like Google (in this example) is making mistake, perhaps the second bottom here is that they wanted to shut down a competitor (at some field) and the nice way of doing it is to acquire. Then Google won't care if they find themselves behind gold cage of Google or not. They may leave or whatever. I don't think dropping $30MM is a big problem for Google either. For me or you that may be a waste, for Google it is 1) drop in the ocean 2) cheap way to shut them down.
- mbesto 15y agoSo talented that they couldn't build a product that netted profit...