The reality of life in "the promised land" of being acquired Sunday, December 03, 2006
Jim Leff, founder of Chowhound, a forum for food worshiping, whose company was acquired by CNET early this year for a price in the low millions of dollars said his new employee role works like this: “Insofar as my input, there’s a lot of meetings where I’ll say, ‘I think we should do this,’ and they say, ‘I don’t think so,’ and I say, ‘O.K.’ ”
Oh, the joys of becoming an employee in a big company.
Lifecycle:
1. Talent starts innovative business
2. Big company buys talent & their company
3. Big company "B listers" sit on top of talent, using their experience of never having had to build value from scratch to direct the new division activities
4. Big company can't figure out why it hasn't continued to see the success achieved by the business it acquired, in the period since purchase and decides even tighter control of new division is required
5. Acquired talent leaves in disgust [taking most of their riches] and lives on yacht for a while
6. go to 1.
posted by John Wilson @ 2:51 PM Permanent Link
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