Acqui-Hire

Definition

When a company buys another company not for its product but for its employees, which is the corporate equivalent of buying a house just for the kitchen. The product gets quietly killed while the team gets quietly absorbed and quietly regrets everything.

Example Usage

"Google acqui-hired our startup, which means they paid $10 million for our engineering team and immediately deleted everything we built, which our users didn't notice because we had seven."

Related Terms

Intermediate

give-to-get

The VC expectation that founders will make introductions, provide advice, and help other portfolio companies in exchange for investment and support. Networking as a contractual obligation.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

Lean Startup

A methodology for building companies by testing hypotheses quickly and cheaply, based on a book that every founder has read and none have followed. It's called lean because by the time you're done pivoting, your bank account is extremely thin.

🚀 Startup / VC

Advanced

signaling

The information conveyed to the market by investor actions, such as who leads a round or whether insiders participate in follow-ons. In startup land, subtext is text.

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

general partner

The VC who actually makes investment decisions and sits on boards, bearing unlimited liability but collecting management fees and carried interest. The person founders pitch to, hoping they're in a good mood.

🚀 Startup / VC

Advanced

signaling risk

The danger that passing on an investment or accepting certain terms sends negative messages to future investors. In VC, optics matter as much as economics—sometimes you reject money because taking it would look desperate.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

Decacorn

A startup valued at over ten billion dollars, because apparently unicorn wasn't exclusive enough and Silicon Valley needed a word that makes mythological creatures sound like a tiered loyalty program. Next up: hectocorn, at which point we're just making up zoo animals.

🚀 Startup / VC

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