How To Keep Your Team And Make Your Startup Acquisition Succeed. Editor’s note: Tomio Geron is head of content at startup Exitround and was previously a staff reporter for Forbes and Dow Jones VentureWire. This is part of a series of posts on the tech M&A market. Follow him on Twitter @tomiogeron. As a founder, Kristian Segerstrale has had two successful outcomes. An expert in gaming, he cofounded Macrospace, which merged with Sorrent then was renamed Glu Mobile. He also was cofounder and CEO of Playfish, which was acquired in 2009 by EA for $400 million. He is now a co-founder at Initial Capital, which led the seed round in Supercell among others. I caught up with Segerstrale to get his thoughts on how to manage acquisitions and make them successful.
First, when you combine your company with someone else’s, you are getting married in a very real sense. It’s worth it to invest this time before an acquisition. Up Close And Personal Getting to know all levels of the buying company is critical. Talent Culture Drama Too Much Or Too Little? Communication. Corporate Acquisitions Of Startups -- Why Do They Fail? Acquisition Integration Models: How Large Companies Successfully Integrate Startups. Introduction When large companies wish to bring new technology to market, increase their portfolio capability to address broader customer opportunities, or access new customers or market segments, their need to move quickly drives them to consider acquiring the assets of other companies.
The target of acquisition, typically a startup, may have outstanding technology and a wish to exit stand-alone operation in favour of being acquired. Their motivation may be to leverage a larger company’s capabilities, such as cash for growth, access to channels, and brand association. The combination of these complementary motivations may seem to provide a strong force in the market, however, a strong commercial outcome depends on successful integration to realize the consolidated potential of any deal. Many acquisitions that looked promising during the business case phase do not deliver to expectation, in part due to the implementation challenges. Transactions Selected for Examination Table 1. Table 2. Managing Startup Acquisitions - LearnLearn. By Peter Alley, former VP Product Engineering, Chegg Inc. I was once part of an acquisition that served as a great example of what happens when you don’t focus on making the merger successful.
After the acquisition and the first few days of intense love, we rarely heard from our new parent company. We went about our business, even staying in our original location. Every few weeks, I met with their head of engineering – for less than an hour. Integrating startup acquisitions is challenging and can fail for any number of reasons including lack of attention. Pay attention to your engineering teams. During an acquisition process everyone is super excited but after it’s done it’s easy to move focus back to the main business or the next acquisition. This same problem occurs in small companies causing them to lose momentum as they grow.
Plan and develop your culture. Another reason acquisitions struggle stems from failures during the due diligence process. The result was predictable. It can work. The Perils of Innovation Through Acquisition » Digital Innovation and Transformation. If there is one thought that keeps 21st century CEOs awake at night, it is surely this: “How on earth do I keep my company relevant?”
As technological barriers to entry disappear and disruptive entrants proliferate across industries, large and incumbent firms like Havas, Ford and GE face the challenge of finding a path to innovation – in order to stave off nimble challengers, attract and retain top talent, and shift towards the most profitable part of the value chain. So often, the manager’s first instinct is to acquire and integrate an innovative company – for example, Havas’ acquisition and subsequent integration of Victors & Spoils. However tempting such an approach may be, I would argue that it is unlikely to yield the kind of cultural and organizational change that the manager is seeking. The Argument in Favor of Innovation-Through-Integration On the face of it, buying and integrating an innovative company makes sense as a way to become a more innovative company. More Harm Than Good. Palmarès exclusif Enjeux: les champions numériques du CAC40, L'Enjeu du mois. Accueil Pour la première fois en France, les sociétés du CAC40 ont été évaluées sur leur niveau de digitalisation.
Les résultats prouvent que l'urgence numérique est une réalité. Lire aussi le dossier complet et le classement détaillé dans le « spécial innovation » d'Enjeux Les Echos, septembre 2014.(...) Cet article est réservé aux abonnés, pour en profiter abonnez-vous. Et aussi sur les Echos Les articles à la une Budget fiscalité Nouvelle baisse d’impôts : qui sont les gagnants Près de 1 million de ménages sortiront du barème de l’impôt ou éviteront d’y rentrer l'an prochain. Politique Réfugiés : Valls répond à Sarkozy Après Bernard Cazeneuve, Manuel Valls critique à son tour la proposition de Nicolas Sarkozy de créer un statut « provisoire de réfugié de guerre ». Afrique - Moyen Orient Un nouvel humanoïde découvert en Afrique du Sud Découverte majeure en Afrique du Sud. À lire également sur les echos Recommandé par Les articles les plus lus Statut de «réfugiés de guerre» : Valls répond à Sarkozy.
The Adaptive Marketing Organization | The Adaptive Marketer. Successful companies must be able to evolve at the speed of change. Companies that don’t adapt to the changing world disappear quickly: Blockbuster is a prime example; today we are witnessing RIM (who makes Blackberries) following similar steps. Technology is the disruptor: cloud computing is empowering entrepreneurs and businesses with computing power that was inconceivable just a few years ago. Mobile devices are making information ubiquitous. Social technologies are enabling sharing of ideas and knowledge in real time. Smart – Buyers are armed with knowledge. It is all to easy to react tactically to the latest trend or to go for the new buzzword. The new Dynamic Customer Journey, as the Altimeter Group calls it, forces marketing leaders to build a dynamic, adaptive marketing team and to lead the company in its pursuit of being an adaptive organization. This need to continuously evolve and adapt as marketers is the reason why In February 2011 I renamed my blog The Adaptive Marketer.
BEUK1202_World_Class_Digital.pdf. The Five Dysfunctions of a Digital Team. When an organization's external digital presence is inconsistent or incoherent, this is nearly always a symptom of deeper internal structural problems. The people responsible for digital work are often isolated from the rest of the organization. (Photo by Jukka Vuokko) This post is the first in a three-part series. The digital function is increasing in importance in nearly all institutions today, yet few are actually managing it in an effective way. While there is no one right way to manage digital, the way most institutions—whether corporate, government, or nonprofit—structure their digital teams greatly limits the outcomes they seek, because every innovation they want to do online will be limited by their own internal capacity to dream, execute, and sustain it over time.
Why is managing this function so difficult? When an organization’s external digital presence is inconsistent or incoherent, this is nearly always a symptom of deeper internal structural problems, such as: A Company Organization Chart You Can Believe In. As our company has grown, we've had to think about the way we can support a larger organizational structure without losing what it means to be us. This meant creating things like a Corporate Values Statement and even a company Org Chart. When first setting out on this task, I started with a traditional tree. We have people in management positions, so why not?
For me, there are two big problems with this representation: It locks people into one place/department, with no indicator that barriers between departments need to be permeable.It literally puts managers in positions of superiority above their comrades. The Role of a Manager First, let me address the topic of managers. Enter the Venn Diagram While building our Org Chart in Illustrator, I stumbled across the option of a Venn Diagram. Download the Illustrator source file (.ai) As you can see, the Venn Diagram allows for the overlap of numerous departments (i.e. What did the Team Think? What's Next? Three Digital Governance Challenges | WelchmanPierpoint. I didn’t blog much last year but I have been busy nonetheless. I worked with a number of new clients in a number of different industries.
I collaborated with those in higher education, the pharmaceutical industry, and finance as well as several different B-to-Bs that make things we use every day but take for granted. At the end of last year, we also conducted a small study and co-authored a report with ActiveStandards on content quality for U.S. federal government websites. Additionally, I've been hard at work on “Managing Chaos,” a book about the fundamentals of digital governance. For those of you who've known me over the years, I've been talking about writing a book for some time. I'm really grateful that Rosenfeld Media is giving me the opportunity to document what I've learned about organizational digital governance over the last 15 years. Writing a book is a challenge but I'm really enjoying it. Challenge #1: The Decentralized, Silo’d Organization I don’t agree. Right. Good luck!