Over the past several months, I've started to see a really bad trend with respect to Big Companies doing the dance with little companies.
It seems to be all the rage these days to send little MBA monkeys out to tell little start up how you are all hot to trot to potentially buy em and then basically leaving them hanging.
The most recent that I watched was a young MSN type hanging out at SXSW pumping up some small start up. Yeah, we love little guys like you. Yeah, we're buying em up. Yeah, we would be interested in buying you. Weeks later, no return phone calls, no return emails, nothing. As a favor, I stepped in, dug around and, surprise, it was the beer talkin....
Company was dumb enough to run around saying MSFT is buying me and some wise ass MSN putz sprinkled toxic pixie dust on these people. Goofs all around to be sure.
And that's just one of a number of examples that I've watched unfold in this insane frenzy around Nutsy 2.0.
As a start up, sober up. Unless you have a written offer signed by big company (with a little 'legal ok' stamp on it) don't drink the kool-aid.
I used to work for MSFT so telling me MS is gonna buy us, act now, is not the best way to excite me.
As a BigCo, train the monkeys. Personally, if I witness this again, I'm going to go seriously public, naming names, posting emails and make Valleywag look like the Wall Street Journal.
And, to be clear, Google and Yahoo have cages of these MBA monkeys as well; it is not a microsoft only thing.
This practice of hype the kids, give em the SHITS (Show High Interest Then Stall) is offensive and needs to stop.
I'm a fanatic about counting chickens not eggs. It seems pretty obvious. Talk is cheap is something that anyone with a lick of sales experience lives by.
Is this the nature of techies that enter into business?
Posted by: Alan Gutierrez | March 23, 2006 at 09:42
Alan,
Kool-Aid is a dangerous drug!
Posted by: Rick Segal | March 23, 2006 at 11:54
Rick,
(FYI, your trackback links don't seem to work. I linked to you here: http://remarkk.com/2006/03/23/rick-segal-memo-to-bigco-shut-up/
The main point of that post is that this appears to me to be part of a bigger picture of disfunction in the Web2.0 world:
VC may be broken, the only exit strategy is acquisition, BigCo’s are acquiring startups for “strategic reasons” or to acquire talent and then abandoning innovation, getting stuck with the hard work of building a business model only to be taken out by a new more innovative startup seeking acquisition, and the cycle continues. Value is being exchanged/transferred, but what value is created? Or BigCo sits on ass and plays kingmaker while eager young pups jostle for attention, wasting everyone’s talents, time and attention. This is a sucky and anti-innovative situation.
The acquisition dance is part of the business, but Web 2.0 mania and disfunction puts this in a new light. It puzzles me...
Posted by: Mark Kuznicki | March 23, 2006 at 23:01
If you have a lick of sales experience, you're probably not looking to flip your startup in an early stage. If you're a techie _without_ experience in a field such as sales or law where being lied to is common, you're likely to take such talk more seriously than it ought to be.
Posted by: Matt | March 24, 2006 at 01:23
Didn't we all learn this with Riya?
Riya was in negotiations and Google pulled out late in the stage of acquisition.
But, yeah, if you see someone at Microsoft doing this, give me a call and I'll slap them. Not nice!
Posted by: Robert Scoble | March 27, 2006 at 14:40
Four words: Show me the money.
Talk is cheap.
Posted by: Katherine | April 14, 2006 at 06:34
Four words: Show me the money.
Talk is cheap.
Posted by: Katherine | April 14, 2006 at 06:36