Companies like Facebook, Google and Zynga are so hungry for the best talent that they are buying start-ups to get their founders on board. Some technology blogs call the move “being acqhired.” The companies doing the buying say it is a talent acquisition, and it typically comes with a price per head.
Zynga said it bought 12 companies in the last year, and an unspecified number of those were for talent. One was Area/Code, a gaming studio in New York with 20 employees. While it kept one of Area/Code’s mobile games, Drop7, Zynga said it bought the company largely for the design expertise of its employees.
“Engineers are worth half a million to one million,” said Vaughan Smith, Facebook’s director of corporate development, who has helped negotiate many of the 20 or so talent acquisitions made by Facebook in the last four years. The money is often distributed in the form of stocks among the start-up’s founders, employees and investors. The acquired employees also get a rich salary and often more stock options.
But the deals may not be great for everyone, reports the “New York Times”. Some Silicon Valley veterans fear that companies are overpaying for talent and that some of the acquired employees will defect as soon as they can, perhaps because they will get restless in a corporate environment. And venture capitalists, who hope for windfalls in the tens or hundreds of millions if not more, will only grudgingly settle for less.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/technology/18talent.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25
