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A comment on Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog. Parent comment

Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by zenlikethat on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:31AM (#21013554)
What else are you paying $7B for if not the people? If I’m an acquiring company, I’m not optimizing for creating a very wealthy team that will leave and create another company. I want that team to work for me.
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Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by onion2k on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:59AM (#21013688)
What else are you paying $7B for if not the people?

Access to customers. User data. To remove a competitor from the market. Patents. Because the CEOs bonus depends on market share. To enter a new regional market.

There are lots of reasons to buy a company. Aquihiring the team is just one.

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Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by OJFord on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:02AM (#21014811)
And it's surely a risky reason to be the only (or main) one, you should probably assume a good chunk will leave immediately, and another chunk after 6m-1y, I'd have thought.
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Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by onion2k on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:34AM (#21014970)
Maybe, but you can easily guard against that by doing things like offering stock that vests over n years instead of cash.
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Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by zenlikethat on Monday September 23, 2019 @12:03PM (#21050150)
Revenue for Datadog is about $200 million ... "access to customers" isn't going to cut it for a $7,000,000,000 price tag.
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Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by Tehdasi on Thursday September 19, 2019 @08:33AM (#21015536)
I've heard it said that there is a line of business wherein you buy a software company, cut costs as much as possible, and start milking existing customers. The company you buy will not grow, or be expected to last many years, but the years that they do last will be highly profitable. Enough to cover the cost of buying the business and make a nice profit along the way.
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Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by mbesto on Thursday September 19, 2019 @10:07AM (#21016282)
> What else are you paying $7B for if not the people?

Uhhhh, customers?

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Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by dx034 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:57AM (#21013671)
For the brand, customers and the product.
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Re:Cisco Is Said to Have Offered $7B-Plus for DataDog by bdcravens on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:07AM (#21013722)
A bullet point in a product portfolio.
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