How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

Prospective acquirers will often pursue potential targets simultaneously and, if they go silent on you, this may have little or nothing to do with whether you followed up diligently or not. In my experience, when an acquiring company wants to move, they know how to do so quickly, at least to engage in sufficient due diligence to see whether they might want to do the deal. Thus, when you do get in a situation where you are getting slow or evasive responses after an initial expression of interest, or where things go silent after an initial set of exchanges, I am not sure there is much you can practically do about it <i>unless</i> you have options to sell to others and use this as a lever to speed the process. You can be as aggressive as you like in such cases but, if the acquirer is simply trying to keep options open, you won't be able to force things absent a credible threat of going elsewhere.<p>That said, this one may have simply fallen through the cracks owing to the early failures to follow up more aggressively. Only the Google people can know for sure.

One thing I have learnt since joining Google: everyone inside Google is always infernally busy.<p>I'm British, so my concepts of bothering people, being a nuisance, and being impolite are already vastly out of skew with the American work culture -- I've had to relearn a lot of that behaviour since coming to the USA and Google.<p>IMO it's not really specifically a Google thing. I think the lesson to be learned from this post (and as a founder, I'm wincing along with you jayro) is simple: when dealing with a big company, keep yourself in the radar or you'll vanish altogether.<p>But please don't be too crazy or in your face. I administered Summer of Code for our open source project this year, and one very keen applicant kept IMing me for status updates. Unfortunately, he was based in India, and so this meant my phone buzzing at 3am. Suffice it to say (and for mostly unrelated reasons), he didn't get accepted.<p>Be sensitive, be fresh, be relevant, be interesting.

Another one I learned that pops up in this tale: get on the plane if the meeting is important.

A great read about politeness (though it had some negotiating impacts) causing a missed opportunity. I too err on the side of politeness when it comes to business interactions and I've learned that more often than not, when I'm dealing with someone remotely whether it be a colleague or a point of contact, that the squeaky wheel gets the oil.<p>I think it was a mistake to let it ride for so long. A few weeks, maybe two months, and I would have called them up and followed up. Even a short email positioning myself as asking more out of curiosity than need for an acquisition, etc.<p>Anyone else agree? Would you have followed up?

There was a no-holds-barred discussion of the realities of being acquired by s soulless megacorp at Business of Software 2010, by Eric Sink, who sold a product to MS. He had a similar hot cold hot cold reception, and the deal was totally dead twice, prior to it working out. It appears to be the nature of the beast.<p>If BOS publishes the video of that, I'll post it -- it was one of the most eyeopening talks at the conference for me (and that is saying something, since they were virtually without exception outstanding).<p>P.S. Google is a soulless megacorp with above average PR.

Preezo sounds like it was built to be acquired from day one. I think that mindset makes it a lot more difficult to deal with missed opportunities and can really make the entire experience of building a product unenjoyable. This is probably why so many people suggest building something you want instead of what you think others will want; at least you can enjoy the fruits of your labor in the process.

Definitely a frustrating story to read. That said, two things stand out:<p>1) Deals fall through. PG et all write about this all the time. It's probably easy to figure why they fail in hindsight, but that doesn't make them any easier to manage in the future.<p>2) It seems like the main premise of the idea was to get bought by google/yahoo/microsoft. That is a dangerous strategy to employ out of the gates (although back in 2005 there was no hacker news and a whole let less general knowledge about the black art of startups).

The "get on a plane" advice is crucial. Product managers lead acquisitions at Google and are the hardest to reach. If you get any interest expressed from them, try to get in person w/ them within a couple weeks max, even if just for coffee. From there, it's helpful to send them a monthly or bi-monthly ping just to keep them abreast of any developments. They might not be ready to acquire now, but it's very helpful to remind them of you when they're ready or thinking of an acquisition<p>*disclaimer - ex-Google PM

I think the moral here applies to more than just dealing with big companies, but anything in general. Persistence can pay off big time.<p>Quick example: I interviewed with a company back in August and was told I'd hear from them in a week. I didn't so I began emailing the CEO (who I'd interviewed with) at least once a week for almost three months (never got a yes/no, so I kept "checking in"). Because I kept myself on the radar and kept pursuing it, when something finally opened up, I got the job and was told that they admired my persistence. Don't be afraid of annoying people -- if the answer isn't final yet, keep trying.

A somewhat similar story: around the same time I was working on Numbler, a collaborative spreadsheet that I launched (unluckily) a couple of months before google spreadsheet went live. Numbler had some cool features that would enable you to see real time changes from other collaborators, see dynamic updates when someone else changed cell formulas, integration with internet data sources, etc.<p>I got the attention of Google and was flown into NYC for an interview / talk with the spreadsheet team. Similarly, I was also a one man shop since my founder had bailed on me and left for Google 3 months prior! Things went pear shaped when I failed to get through the algorithm gristmill. I had one poor interview with a beaver/rat ringed kid who was eager to demonstrate his intellectual superiority (or so it felt at the time).<p>The frustrating part is that as an entrepreneur your thoughts are ranging from how to make money/business model to UI design to backend engineering. I was expecting that the googlers would at least show some interest in Numbler - but that wasn't how the meetings were structured. The google PM (Fuzzy was his name) was interested, but seemed hamstrung by the google process. Google never asked me about any of the tricks I used work to build the UI, COMET style networking for responsiveness, etc.<p>In retrospect, Numbler was an acquisition play and needed a much better strategy and larger vision to succeed. I did end up with a google NYC t-shirt...

I don't have any relevant experience, but this sounds odd. If the product was good (better than Zenter), than why didn't they acquire Preezo at that later point in time?

I (a UK developer) just dealt with a company who were interested in my Pretext software, which finds text in images. I rang at 2PM their time when I rang, and when his development committee finally rejected me after a month of waiting, he said "You have written very capable and useful software - however, we want to develop in-house", I was polite and said goodbye, etc.<p>Everything to gain. Nothing lost but a couple transatlantic phone calls.

It also says something about the randomness of the startup scene. You can have just the right product at just the right time and <i>still</i> lose.

I gotta say hearing about things not going one's way is more informative and educational than hearing about when things all go peachy and a founder walks out with $X million. If you only read TC you'd think every startup in the world is cashing in.

This has inspired me to send some follow up emails on some leads I've been chasing, thanks!

<i>Jonathan Rochelle repeated wryly and with a smile, "Yes, time to go. Google is here,"</i><p>WTF? Is Google the mob or something? Almost seems like the next line should have been, "And I was never seen or heard from again."

Seems to me that your analysis suffers from a fundamental attribution error (blaming you rather than circumstances). While it is possible that you could have done a few things better (with the help of the ever so omni-potent captain hindsight), my experience is that such deals are complicated and involve a lot of people. So I think it is much more likely that the final outcome was more out of your control than your essay implies.

I know I've had experiences in life where I look back and say 'what was I thinking?!?'<p>As difficult as it is, nicely done on recognizing the situation, holding yourself accountable and chalking it up as a lesson learned. No doubt about it, this experience will help you somewhere down the line...<p>I'm really impressed with your articulate re-cap of the story.

I would say the problem is that you divulged technical details before getting a written "intent to acquire" from google.<p>While keeping the line of communication is important, it's also important to ensure it's worth your time.

Man, that royally sucks. I can't add too much to the conversation except to say that I hope your AppIgnite system works out to be a nice hit. I heard you on some podcast recently and it sounds pretty neat.

I used to work at OT when Glazer was there, and I attended a workshop once where he gave a talk. Very impressive guy -- I remember thinking "I want to work for the company <i>that</i> guy's working for!"

It would be rather interesting if the google folks involved in this could provide their side of the story. Just wishful thinking of course...but maybe someone from HN could try asking the question...

Comment from my friend, Jason Snell (@syn3):<p>"Ouch. That really sucks. Lesson learned. Sometimes you have to take off your engineer hat and stop pretending human communication works like TCP."

"ALWAYS BE CLOSING"<p>I know one of the Zenter guys. He is definitely a closer.

considering that Google's acquisitions are about about technology as much as about talent, and the fact that you hired another guy to help you with coding it is possible that they expected a team behind the technology to join them, but were disappointed when learned that you hired outsiders to help with building that technology.

This should also be a lesson about using engineering notebooks and other such legal documents in programming a new product, especially with new ideas such as the DOM manipulation indicated in this blog.

I don't think you "screwed" anything. You can't force a relationship, and it is a waste of time to think about the email you didn't send. Had you sent it and got no reply, would you feel better? How about the email they didn't send? Maybe they are the ones who "screwed"?<p><i>"Still what could've been. Is better than what could never be at all"</i> -- Tiffany <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LzGss9QGAk" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LzGss9QGAk</a>