Wharton Entrepreneurs Workshop #46 — “Acqui-Hires in the Bay Area Tech Sector: An Alternative to the Simple Offer of Employment” with Todd Carpenter and Rachel Proffitt

Competition for talent in the Bay Area tech sector is intense, and in the last few years the phenomenon of the acqui-hire has had a dramatic impact in the business community.

Some of the major corporate players — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo!, to name a few — are actively using the acqui-hire as a way of getting key engineers and managers to join their employee ranks.

For entrepreneurs in early-stage companies, it’s important to understand the dynamics and corporate motivations involved in an acqui-hire, as well as the mainstream elements that are typically part of an acqui-hire transaction.

What is the typical structure of an early stage company that lends itself to an acqui-hire transaction? What do the investors in an early stage company get out of an acqui-hire, if anything? Do employees involved in acqui-hires benefit more than by simply accepting an offer of employment?

In this Wharton Entrepreneurs Workshop, Todd Carpenter and Rachel Proffitt, partners at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati address these questions and more drawing from their experience in practices focused on venture-backed companies and the investors that support them, including acqui-hires on both the selling and the buying side.

Watch the workshop in its entirety below:

Posted: July 1, 2015

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