• 1 Post
  • 309 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
cake
Cake day: January 15th, 2026

help-circle



  • It means you:

    • Pay off the investors by licensing the tech, so they get made whole
    • Hire whichever employees you feel like taking from the team, typically the founders + their favourites
    • Leave the rest of the company in place

    You can do it as a founder as a type of exit where you get paid a whole lot of money.

    The bad part is that every other employee at the company basically gets stiffed. The “social contract” of startups is that you forego a big tech-level compensation package in favour of stock options which may provide returns at the point of an exit. In reverse acquihires this social contract is directly violated.