Comments on: The new guard: Look at who is buying technology companies now

By: Basil Peters

Basil Peters — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:21:33 +0000

Excellent post, Om.

I’m also seeing a rapid evolution in the range of buyers for technology companies.

This video is from a talk I gave at the National Angel Capital Association summit, where I describe the new types of M&A buyers active today:

http://www.exits.com/blog/how-exits-have-changed-part-2/

All these new buyers sure make being an entrepreneur today a lot more exciting.

Thanks for your outstanding blog.

By: Maarlon1

Maarlon1 — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:07:35 +0000

Really great insight. This is happening quietly, that’s why most ‘old’ companies (and majority of public) don’t realise this fundamental change.

At today accelerated pace of change of everything around us, who knows who will own whom, how soon and how will old industry or niche look after change. Exciting times definitely.

By: Yusuf

Yusuf — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:53:26 +0000

Om excellent article and great example “A physical retailer of tomorrow … that is highly customized to an individual”.
Intuition Intelligence, Inc’s iCube Super Relevancy engine can already do it for retailers in their Smartphones and other digital channels.
Wipro Technologies recently launched “SmartOffers” in partnership with us for Financial Services.
- Yusuf Ansari
Founder, Intuition Intelligence, Inc.

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:12:44 +0000

“Tech Company” is a redundancy for any large enterprise market. Avis didn’t buy a “Tech Company” by buying Zip Cars, they just bought a company that did a better job of reaching a specific demographic by harnessing a newer utility.

By: Adam Richards

Adam Richards — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:05:31 +0000

Great article and of course many offline publishers will be buying these new digital media orgs…My top 10 list for acquisition targets in 2013 are (alpha order):

Adblade
AirBNB
Criteo
Datapipe
Dropbox
Outbrain
Pinterest
Quora
Spotify
Twitter (or IPO)

By: realist50

realist50 — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:49:47 +0000

Question with respect to Amazon, however: does Amazon actually have a sustainable business model, at least with their current pricing?

I say this as someone who personally likes Amazon as a consumer. Look at any financial metric, however – margins, net income, return on assets, and return on equity are all anemic. I can’t see why the company should have a market cap of anything like $120 billion. The counterargument from Amazon bulls is that the company is investing for growth. My issue with that line of reasoning is that a company with over $50 billion of annual revenue should have sufficient scale that profits from the core business easily fund growth initiatives – particularly when annual revenue growth is in the mid-20% range.

By: Dasher

Dasher — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:43:34 +0000

Good article Om. Athena Health is a tech company though. It is a major EMR (electronic medical records) company.

By: Michael Sinsheimer

Michael Sinsheimer — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:15:22 +0000

This trend makes sense from both a talent perspective and a complementary channel approach where bricks and mortar approach can be integrated with a more comprehensive online presence. We are providing a new channel for sellers to sell goods with our user driven platform at our newly launched beta site Flash Purchase.

By: Newcastle Martin

Newcastle Martin — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:48:28 +0000

I dunno. A great many enterprise software deals are still done for user base/licence revenue and for economies of scale. Gettign smart people or tech is secondary in that world of glorified financial arbitrage.

By: Elias Carlsson

Elias Carlsson — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:34:08 +0000

Good point, although I wouldn’t consider any one of the two as tech companies. They both fundamentally offer an analog service. One of the reasons for the acquisition was indeed to get a talented network of programmers on-board, but more importantly to cover another promising part of the car rental business.