One Thing I Learned From Today’s Breakfast

42 comments April 15th, 2008

Today at breakfast we had an interesting discussion on selling your technology vs. selling your business. We discussed the motivation of the buying company (making money):

• People
  

  Company will buy startups to get key personnel.

• Product
  

  Company will buy a product which they can plug into their sales process. Startups must have a whole product, training, documentation, support.

• New Market
  

  Finally companies will buy another company as a way to expand into a new market, a new vertical, usually it is an adjunct market.

In general, companies are not looking for technology, they want the team in place and committed to growing the business.