Apparently, a number of founders from ventures acquired by Google are leaving the Googleplex:
“Like DodgeBall, Blogger team members and dMarc founders left GooglePlex, preferring to follow their own internal algorithm instead of working for Google. It seems like a trend: for entrepreneurs who sellout to Google, Google money is good, but working for Google, not so good!”
Isn’t that almost always the case for entrepreneurs who decide to sellout? They innovate, the acquirer is good at scaling. Sometimes the acquisition is about the people, sometimes about the systems, sometimes just to kill a competitor, etc. What’s new? With dMarc it was about the systems, apparently, as we can read in the NYT today:
“Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said last year that he planned to eventually have 1,000 employees working in the company’s radio unit. Google paid as much as $1.24 billion to acquire dMarc Broadcasting early last year, and used that company’s systems to expand its AdSense for Audio sales system to include radio capabilities.”
Agree, Entrepreneurship is something we becasue, it’s worth doing. it’s not about money or working for the man.
maybe a solution is a two tiered buy like Skype: we pay x now and y if the company reaches target growth within 5 years.
The earnout didn’t keep the Dodgeball guys at Google, they just became too frustrated. But indeed, these kind of arrangements do give some incentive to stay put.
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