Some of these comments confuse me. What do you expect an m&a email to read like? Having been through a bunch of acquisitions, that email is par for the course, especially for a (presumably) smaller acquisition. You have an internal product sponsor who asks for basic financial info, asks for a price, has clearly laid out next steps and the process, and wants to start immediately. All positive for a first step. Some of the best corp dev guys I know have the worst grammar and email manners and to focus on that as a weakness is ridiculous...as long as they can approve a wire transfer, who cares? Some people are Youtube and have Eric layering sweet sugary syrup on their Pancakes whilst they discuss the beautiful synergies of a monster deal, but most of the time, the startup CEO is hustling it across the finish line.
> "For the little story, Zlio, became blacklisted/sandboxed by Google 6 months after…. It killed the company…"
This is only speculation, but it looks like zlio.com was sandboxed/blacklisted because of rampant spamming. 4 out of the top 5 referring domains are porn sites (about 150k links).
took a quick look, aren't those backlinks to subdomains? No idea what the product/service does but it appears subdomains are the main spam links, not the root.. So perhaps they were duped by spammers creating subdomains
It is a create your own store product. People would have simply been making a store and then using software to spam their links everywhere. I think sub domains are usually treated as separate domains though?
If all the subdomains had links back to zilo (say the header or footer), it starts to look like a huge link farm, or a bunch of satellite sites. It's actually pretty dangerous. But disavow is here, right? hah
I think it's a power thing because they're manoeuvring for negotiation.
Translation: "I can't be bothered to spell because you're teensy and I have another $1B to spend today on companies 100x bigger than yours. Make with the paperwork chop chop."
Then, confirmation: "Give me your mobile so I can call you any time I feel like to make you jump, because you're the bitch now."
Yeah. My reply to that message would have been "I only give my mobile phone number to friends. Please use my office line between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM EST."
But honestly, a lot of people seem to like doing business deals while walking around with their cell phones, so perhaps this is not actually a power play.
It's funny how they refer to Schmidt, Page and Breslin as "the board" since it's obviously just 3 people :) In any large company you only use the "board" wording for a committee that's at least 15-20 people.
I think this was intended to read the way it does. Google A/B tests everything, including how well canned messages work vs. more personal messages like this.
They wanted financials and a valuation range? And then deep communications about technical challenges and workarounds? Reminds me that one of the nice things about owning a company is you can tell people to go away.
This is why I wouldn't touch SEO as a consultant. They ended up getting sued, despite little chance probably they could fix their issues without massive internal changes to the service. I guess the SEO company overpromised.
Agree on the point you make. But out of this context, I think, its useful/interesting for Startup founders, to see what acquisition mails from Google look like.
Of course I don't know what the terms were, but if you're in a position to decide to take on (more?) VC or sell to Google I'm inclined to say going with the latter is the better choice.
If you're a great visionary you'll have another chance not too far down the road to show the world again. If your good fortune hitched a ride with lady luck to some extent, then shamelessly cashing out your personal bubble is also a smart thing to do.
Sure, I read this: "After waiting for it 30 days, we decided to accept the Mangrove investment proposal." That sounds like a choice was made.
My main point is for those going forward: unless the equity you stand to convert into your own personal wealth is insignificant to you, an exit can't really stop your career for long but it also just might be the only chance you get.
Maybe the Google deal wasn't a sure thing but whether or not they could pay was not a question.
I love Jeremie's life principle which got him through the Google sandboxing/blackballing and company failure after passing on the acquisition:
“Everything that happens in your life is for your own good”, “Every challenge makes you stronger”... "All he said was, don’t worry, good things will happen after this tough experience"
