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It's enough to offset the failures for a big company if they're any good at acquisition. For a startup the payoff has to be a heck of a lot more. The odds of the merger going bad are higher (too many chefs) and going bad means a total failure of both companies.



I think we're debating at cross-purposes.

The original statement was along the lines of - M&A usually fail, so there is no point in doing this for startups.

Now, maybe being a startup modifies the M&A rules in some or many ways - but I don't think it precludes M&A as a worthwhile option.

A merger in a high risk field might be a tipping factor - might improve your chances or getting a critical mass of users, funding, or some other key factor - so whilst the merger is risky, it modifies the chance of success in some critical way.

In the highly competitive field such as online storage, this kind of advantage may well be something worth pursuing -- I'm not 100% convinced in this case, but it does have some interesting implications.

So - totally agree - might be risky. Might be risky most of the time... But certainly not worth dismissing.


More like: they usually fail so proceed with caution




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