Getting Acquired: What They Don't Tell You

Acquisition is often described as the happy ending. The founder cashes out, the team gets stability, everyone wins. The reality is more complicated.

The Process

Acquisitions take longer than you expect—typically 3-6 months from serious interest to close. During this time, you're running your company while also doing extensive diligence, negotiating terms, and managing information asymmetry.

It's exhausting in ways that fundraising isn't, because the stakes feel more final.

What Gets Negotiated

Price is obvious. Less obvious: earnout terms, retention packages for key employees, rep and warranty insurance, escrow holdbacks, IP assignments, non-compete scope. Each of these can significantly change what an acquisition actually means for you.

After the Close

Integration is where acquisitions succeed or fail. The best case: your product gets resources and distribution it couldn't access alone. The worst case: your team is absorbed, your product is deprecated, and you're stuck in golden handcuffs watching everything you built disappear.

The middle case—most common—is somewhere between. Some things improve, some things get worse, and you spend your earnout period wondering if you made the right choice.

Is It Worth It?

Depends entirely on what you want. If you want to keep building your specific thing, acquisition usually isn't the path. If you want liquidity and are okay with your thing becoming part of something larger, it can work well.