
Yammer Co-Founder David Sacks Leaves Microsoft - petethomas
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/24/yammer-co-founder-david-sacks-leaves-microsoft-after-acquisition/
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discardorama
It's the final stage of the cycle: start something, get traction, get
acquired, wait for the lock-in to expire, leave. Rinse, lather, repeat. :-)

Note: I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Just that I would have been _really_
surprised if he stuck around for much longer after lock-in expired. If he did,
_that_ would have been news. This was, more or less, to be expected.

I have friends who are on their 3rd iteration of this cycle. :-D

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chatmasta
Sounds like a good thing! Talented entrepreneurs and executors are few and far
between, so the more we (society) have on the market (instead of holed up in
some Microsoft cubicle), the better! I'm looking forward to whatever he works
on next.

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luuio
MSFT does not have cubicles by the way. They try to give each employee an
office.

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programminggeek
It sounds like Yammer timed the exit well and I'm sure there was some kind of
two year earn out.

I wouldn't be surprised if, like many acquisitions, once acquired Yammer
wasn't just another cog in the machine and being seen as a non-critical part
of Microsoft is more like being a cog in the machine than like being a fast
moving startup.

With all the corporate realignment, I'm not sure there is much room for any
acquired leadership to really make a big impact at Microsoft, but that is more
Monday morning quarterbacking than a super meaningful analysis.

It's always interesting to see how these things turn out.

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mathattack
The culture between Microsoft and a startup couldn't be more different. 2
years seems like a very long time. Either he was super-dedicated to pushing
the dream, or (your more likely scenario) he had a 2 year lock-in.

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ryanburk
yammer's head of engineering kris gale also left microsoft last month[1]. he
was a great voice of startup/agile culture inside of microsoft. and likely a
bigger loss to the company.

he also gave similar talks externally that I'd recommend[2].

[1]
[https://twitter.com/kgale/status/481876033746919426](https://twitter.com/kgale/status/481876033746919426)

[2] [http://firstround.com/article/Why-Yammer-believes-the-
tradit...](http://firstround.com/article/Why-Yammer-believes-the-traditional-
engineering-organizational-structure-is-dead)

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hyperliner
I wonder if there are M&A statistics about how many times acquisitions not
just fail (a well known problem), but fail because the market just "cools
down." \--- "Microsoft has pitched Yammer’s service–kind of a Facebook FB
+5.18% for the workplace–as part of its bundle of document-and-email systems.
Since the purchase, however, the white-hot market for such tools has cooled, a
factor contributing to a shrinking stock-market valuation for rival Jive
Software JIVE -0.39%."

If one was able to predict that, then a build decision would be superior to a
buy. Typically, those Corp Dev spreadsheets people work on so much when buying
a company assume a certain growth rate for a number of years, and another one
after that, etc. but I don't think people plan for the scenario that the
"market dies" after acquisition.

It would be kind of like predicting today that Docker-style containers would
be abandoned in 2 years. Or that virtual reality would never pan out (Oculus).

The problem is that when markets are hot, people see the lag as insurmountable
and deciding for Build looks overwhelming.

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akozak
Out of curiosity, why do you think that's a problem?

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hyperliner
I was calling a "problem" the situation where people see the market as "too
hot" and then decide they don't have time to build a solution, choosing the
"easy" path of M&A.

I them see less engineering, more corp Dev driven decisions when the market is
hot. If I knew the market was going to cool down, I could instead hire
engineers and build a more realistic product that solves the specific problems
that would survive the market transition.

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ChuckMcM
And the two years later, bazinga! I hope he also made his earn out. We played
with Yammer and it was literally a kind of Workbook (it almost seemed like
they reused Facebook code) Pluses and minuses.

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rfeed
I recall someone on Bloomberg (pre-Nadella crowning) that was saying DS should
be CEO

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floyddebarber
it seems like 2 years is the average time that founders stick around after
acquisition.

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shliachtx
The title seems a little misleading. The acquisition was _2 years ago_.

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dang
Thanks. We took that part out.

