I seriously can't see any upside to the acquirer. I don't believe "corp dev" teams' mission is to acquire "deal flow" by having failing startups pitch them as a source of million dollar engineers. Even if it was, I don't think there are any failing startups too ignorant to talk to Facebook and Dropbox without being incentivised by a marketing gimmick. Acquihires are not a seller's market. Other potential acquisitions that consider themselves to have a potentially viable business model, defensible IP or some strategic value aren't going to be in the least bit interested in being acquired by you just because you have a "minimum price", but they might negotiate a lot harder when you do bid for them because "1.5x the minimum" just doesn't sound as attractive as 15 million dollars. And the VCs, who know that some of their portfolio's founders will cash out at $1million-per-engineer and some will earn nothing due to liquidation preferences, will just think you don't understand.

The only behaviours I can see it encouraging are perverse ones, like failing companies that have had enough introductory meetings to anticipate an aqui-hire offer hiring a couple of extra engineers to bump the minimum sale price.