This sage advice (which is obvious, but I've never seen it elsewhere ... granted, it's now more of an issue since the IPO market is dead) plus some other things he's said in this general area of technical (or at least non-founder) talent, suggests to me that Fred Wilson really gets it. Too bad he loves NYC ^_^.
Impending sale is a unique situation where some of the other motivators are in serious doubt (control, status, etc.). No one can be credibly offered the other motivators when there's a chance of complete ownership change in the near future. ("The new owner might promote you; they might fire you. We can't guarantee either outcome because what we're selling is the option value.")
None of the studies of motivation I've seen have specifically addressed such a situation. They concern motivating good work, not sticking around through a foreseen ownership discontinuity.
A stay package may not make people happy and productive, but it does contractually keep them around, giving the new owners a reasonable chance of receiving the knowhow and functioning business, before eventually making their own personnel/motivation decisions.
(That's why even though Fred Wilson is right about the stay packages' propriety and value, I don't think there's anything wrong with calling them 'bribes'. That's a vivid analogy for the sort of purchased-but-not-necessarily-enthusiastic compliance they can achieve.)
A decade ago, when the company I worked for was sold, I was given a sizeable retention package; one-third was paid thirty days after the sale closed, the rest six months later. My extant stock options were made given excellent strike prices. All told, it was roughly a six-figure package and it kept me with the company another fifteen months until it was clear that the new owners were, indeed, incompetent.
But money can get you over that hiccup that a sales causes. The worries of going into an unknown environment can be enough to cause people to jump ship. But if you pay them, you get a year to sell your company to them as a long term solution.
Cash may be an inefficient motivator. Perhaps an extra monitor (~$700) motivates some engineer more than a $2k/year raise. That doesn't mean that cash, especially in large quantities, has no motivational power.
cash is not a good motivator. What money affords is the opportunity to attain a desire (power, consumption, freedom, increased peer perception). What motivates people is the ability to capture what they covet.
