Getting beaten up in the acquisition – need your help
we really need your help here - we don't have access to the expertise we need, those folks simply ain't around here and the time is ticking:
- We were approached by a very decent company who got interested in some pretty smart people inside our team (small startup, product making decent revenue, good ideas to expand the product lines) - I know good meetings and bad meetings - when we presented the tech and the team and ideas to the very senior tech staff of the acquirer -> it was a really really good meeting... 5/5
From there it went downwards (again, we are techies, not smart M&A guys): the M&A team started approaching us individually, did not talk to the team as a whole, told everybody a different story from "we just want you, we don't need the IP, lets just bilaterally agree on a signing bonus and what you think the company is worth" to "we need the entire technology and IP and need to perform an extensive DD on the tech".
Right now, they position it as "let us interview everybody individually and then pay some extra money for the startup".
To me that sounds like "let us try to screw you over, by offering individual signing bonuses, thus getting your reservation price revealed and pay peanuts for the tech because we will force you to sell the shares in the company through the employment contracts". Is this normal behavior or am I paranoid? I mean, it is perfectly possible they really just want the team (but again, they really need the entire team) - but then they kind a insist on the technology as well and are very pushy on the DD...
How do we find out their real intentions? Is it just a hiring or do they actually also want the IP and simply try to screw us? We don’t need to sell.
Guys, help.
Is that normal behavior from their M&A team? Thanks!
Jan