Last week, Wallstrip was officially acquired by CBS. Fred Wilson (A VC) and Scott Karp (Publishing 2.0) both give interesting takes on it that have more to say about it than I do, so take a look:
I will make a quick comment: it strikes me that many of the acquisitions out there in techland are really about acquiring talent and leadership for areas of interest. Giant acquisitions aside, I'm seeing a lot of companies look around, identify teams who have managed to get something new right and then buy them. It's easier to buy self-organized organic teams than to force existing people into unwanted roles with largely fabricated teams. That actually feels like the right model to me. While I'm not entirely sure that the prices are appropriate, it makes sense that it's better to bet on teams that have proven themselves. Now, the question is, how capable of doing this internally are these companies? Are the co's that are less acquisitive complacent or just more successful internally? How often are companies identifying new opportunities, building for them and actually succeeding?
Bob Sutton did a series of posts on the high performing team concept a few months back. His blog is here http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/.
I've seen many a team defect as a group to another company that 'got them' and what they brought to the table. It makes sense that an organization would want to buy a high performing team. Companies buy product lines and try to buy distribution relationships all the time. Now that the talent conversation is simmering again, buying teams is not such a stretch.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | June 02, 2007 at 08:32 AM
Thanks Valeria - I don't think I found the exact series you were talking about but found myself getting sucked into some very interesting material on Bob's blog. Highly recommended to the rest of the folks out there.
The talent conversation is definitely a piece of the picture here. Talent's at a premium, particularly in the tech/internet/media space. So, buying talent is certainly going to happen - either through whole team purchases or by picking off people in 1's and 2's from competitors. I think that's not really debateable.
What I think companies need to be thinking about and potentially concerned by is when innovation isn't coming from the inside. It's difficult for us to observe this from outside of companies, but as someone managing a business, I would be asking myself, "Are we betting on purchases to innovate?".
Posted by: Robi | June 05, 2007 at 06:14 PM