
Dropbox Buys Cove To Bring Former Facebookers To The Team - jason_shah
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/27/dropbox-buys-cove-to-bring-former-facebookers-ruchi-sanghvi-and-aditya-agarwal-to-the-team/
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jason_shah
Congratulations to the Cove team!

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I wonder if talented, experienced, and coveted engineers and designers in the
Valley right now (read: talent frenzy) can start their own stealth companies
and reasonably plan towards a relatively early stage acquisition, be it for
talent, technology integration, or both. But it seems to be a growing trend
that wouldn't be as possible in a downturn or when talent isn't so scarce.

If they work on a technology and business they want to be working on anyways
that will integrate with several potential buyers, it seems like it hedges
start up risk and offers more upside (impact, financial, and otherwise) than
merely jumping from one company to a more senior role at some other company
where you have a little more say in what you work on and can negotiate 10-20%
more compensation, excluding equity, when you jump jobs. These sort of jumps
have a completely different cost-benefit profile than starting your own
company. It seems like potential benefit is uniquely outsized nowadays.

Choosing to not raise seed capital seems like an option if you plan to exit in
less than a year and have the savings to do so. And by not raising capital, an
acquisition this quickly seems far more aligned with everyone's interests and
cannot be slowed or prevented by any investors holding out for a larger exit.

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samstave
I hate it when I read articles like this and they tell me nothing of what the
acquired company did.

What was Cove? Why was it in such good alignment with Dropbox's vision?

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zbuc
If only it was easy to find out.

Googling "Cove" doesn't return their site on the first page of results, but
it's www.cove.com

I found this article that... kinda... says what they did:
[http://allthingsd.com/20120227/qa-dropbox-nabs-early-
faceboo...](http://allthingsd.com/20120227/qa-dropbox-nabs-early-facebook-
engineers-with-cove-acquisition/)

What's with this company? What did they provide exactly?

~~~
samstave
Thanks for that article.

I find it interesting that Dustin Moskovitz was an investor in Cove, if only
because I know that Aditya is an investor in Asana.

I don't know how common it is to cross-invest in eachothers companies, but I
am sure it is fairly common.

From the language used in that article - it sounds like Cove was an attempt to
make "Asana for group management" -- I also find it odd for a product to do an
alpha launch, gain "thousands" of alpha users then tell them they have 6-9
months to find another platform :)

Sure, it's understandable - but that has to be a weird conversation to have
with your users "Check out our new app! It's just what you need to do X! Yay -
thanks for being in our alpha launch, now you have 6-9 months to find a
different platform! WOOT"

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asolove
Was really hoping they had bought a literal cove in order to lure quality
engineers to a vacation-quality work environment:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackscottimages/4461780264/>

Now that would be an idea!

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eladgil
Congrats to the folks from Cove! I am guessing their are lots of Facebook
companies yet to come.

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hinathan
I'm surprised this was (according to the TC article, so grain of sand)
Dropbox's first acquisition — for their valuation and size it seems like
they'd have started that ball rolling a year ago or so.

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modoc
Why? Having money doesn't mean you should buy other companies, especially if
you're DropBox and are kicking ass in your niche and not trying to branch out
in a million directions.

I've seen SO many acquisitions go wrong for both parties.

