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Read More »Facebook poisons the acquisition well – TechCrunch[0]Who should you to sell your startup to? Facebook and the founders of its old acquisitions make strong arguments against the purchase of Mark Zuckerberg and Co. After half a decade of clash among the most respectful and desired acquirers, a series of scandals has destroyed the image of Facebook. M & A division. This could make it more difficult to convince entrepreneurs to sell to Facebook or force it to pay more and set up contractual guarantees of autonomy. WhatsApp the founders left in aggressive pressure to monetize. The founders of Instagram left while their independence was threatened. The founders of Oculus have been demoted. And in recent years, Facebook has also closed acquisitions, including the TBH viral Q & A app, the LiveRail video ad system, the Wit Voice Control Developer Toolkit. ai and the still popular Parse mobile application development platform. Facebook users may not know or care much about this. But the next time Facebook tries to buy a competitor or a complementary service booming, this could be a point of friction. Broken promises with WhatsApp The real problem started with the departure of Facebook from Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, a year ago, before acquiring the sum of $ 22 billion in 2014. He had insisted that Facebook does not stick to targeted ads from WhatsApp. not to. Acton even added a clause to the agreement that the remaining shares of the co-founders would be acquired instantly if Facebook implemented monetization systems without their consent. Google was also interested in buying WhatsApp, but Facebook 's independence guarantees sealed the deal. The other co-founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, Facebook left in April following the tension on how Facebook will monetize its application and the impact of it on privacy. Acton's departure saw him leaving $ 850 million on the table. Captivity had to be tough enough for freedom to be as good. Today, in an interview with Parmy Olson of Forbes, he explained in detail how Facebook had promised him that he would not integrate the WhatsApp user data to have the agreement approved by European regulators. Facebook then broke that promise, paid the fine of $ 122 million, which represented a small speed boost for the printing company, and continued to hack. When Mr. Acton attempted to promulgate the instant vesting clause at the time of his departure, Facebook claimed that it was still exploring and not "implementing" monetization. Acton declined a legal fight and left, finally tweeting "Delete Facebook". Koum stayed to dress a little longer. But shortly after they left, WhatsApp started charging businesses for slow responses, and it will inject ads into the WhatsApp's Stories product next year. With the slowdown in user growth, users switching to articles and introducing news into ad space, Facebook's revenue problem has become the WhatsApp monetization mandate. The message was that Facebook would eventually break its agreements with acquired founders to prioritize its own needs. Autonomy reduced for Instagram Instagram & # 39; s Co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced their resignation this week. According to some sources, TechCrunch would be causing increasing tensions with Zuckerberg regarding the direction of products. Zuckerberg himself negotiated the 2012 acquisition for $ 1 billion ($ 715 million when the deal was concluded with Facebook's share price down, but later $ 4 billion while it has increased massively). This price was stipulated on Instagram and remained independent in the brand and product roadmap. Zuckerberg has maintained its end of the market for five years, and the co-founders of Instagram have remained beyond their usual acquisition dates, which is rare in Silicon Valley. Facebook highlighted Instagram's autonomy when it was trying to secure the acquisition of WhatsApp. And with the help of Facebook's engineering, sales, recruitment, internationalization and anti-spam teams, Instagram has become a gigantic user of 1 billion users. But once again, Facebook's growth and financial difficulties caused Zuckerberg's enthusiasm to change. Facebook's popularity among teens was in free fall while Instagram remained cool. Facebook has pushed to display its alerts and links to the parent company within Instagram's notification and settings tabs. Meanwhile, he removed the Instagram assignment from cross-pics and removed a shortcut to Instagram from Facebook's favorites menu. Zuckerberg then installed a loyalist, his close friend and former News Feed vice president, Adam Mosseri, as the new vice president of production for Instagram in the middle of this year. The reorganization also allowed Systrom to start reporting to Facebook CPO Chris Cox. Previously, the CEO of Instagram had more direct contact with Zuckerberg despite CTO's technical reporting, Mike Schroepfer, and the insertion of a management layer between them was eroding their connection. Six years after its acquisition, Facebook has begun to break its promises, Instagram has felt less autonomous and the founders have left. The message again was that Facebook was waiting to be able to exploit its acquisitions independently of their previous agreements. Reduced visibility for Oculus Zuckerberg said Oculus was the next big computer platform when Facebook acquired the virtual reality company in 2014. The adoption ended up being slower than expected, forcing Oculus to fund VR content creators, an always unsustainable activity. Oculus has probably been an important cash well for Facebook, so hopefully that will pay off later. But in the meantime, the co-founders of Oculus have disappeared. Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell have moved from leading the company to the most serious part of its growing product line as executive vice president of the PC VR and Rift hardware teams, respectively. Hugo Barra, former Xiaomi hardware leader, has been appointed vice president of VR to oversee Oculus, and he reports to former vice president Facebook announcements Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, a Zuckerberg confidant who has taught at Harvard. material efforts of Facebook. Oculus's original visionary inventor, Palmer Luckey, quit Facebook last year as a result of a schism with the company to fund Hillary Clinton memes and sh * tposters. He was in a hurry to apologize by saying: the perception of Oculus and his partners. " The lesser co-founder, Jack McCauley, left Facebook just one year after the acquisition to launch his own virtual reality lab. Unfortunately, Oculus co-founder, Andrew Reisse, died in 2013 when he was hit by a vehicle during a police chase just two months after the announcement. ;acquisition. The co-founder, Michael Antonov, was the chief software architect, but Facebook has just confirmed that he recently left the division to work on the artificial intelligence infrastructure on Facebook. Today, for the first time, none of the co-founders of Oculus has appeared on stage at its annual Connect conference. Obviously, the skills needed to scale up and monetize a product are different from those needed for creation. However, moving from company management to audience assistance does not send a big message about how Facebook treats the founders acquired. Course correction Facebook must take action if it wants to reassure future acquisitions, which can be a good home for their startups. I think Zuckerberg or Mosseri (probably named new leader of Instagram) should issue a statement stating that he understands people's fears about what will happen to Instagram and WhatsApp, given their importance in life users. identity that they do not want to change. Again, the 15-year-old Instagrammers and WhatsAppers will probably not care, but potential acquisitions would be. Until now, Facebook has only managed to ignite more the founders against Facebook. Today, the former vice president of Messenger and current head of the Facebook Facebook team, David Marcus, wrote a critical note criticizing Acton for his interview on Forbes and saying that Zuckerberg had tried to protect the autonomy of WhatsApp. "Call me old. But I find that the attack on the people and society that made you a billionaire, and that you have been unprecedented to protect yourself and accommodate you for years, low-end. It's actually a whole new lower class standard, "he wrote. But this has been a useless opportunity for Facebook to discuss all the benefits it brings to its acquisitions. Marcus wrote: "As far as I am concerned, as a long-time entrepreneur and founder, there is no other great company I would work for, and no other leader I would work for," noted the relatively long time that the founders have acquired has remained in the past. However, it would have been more productive to focus on why he wants to work, how the founders manage to reach billions and how other buyers like Twitter and Google frequently dissolve the companies they buy and often see their founders go. earlier. The acquisitions have protected Facebook from disruptions. Now, this strategy is in danger if it can not change this story. Many zeroes on a check may not be enough to convince the next big entrepreneur to sell his startup to Facebook if they suspect they or their project will be processed. /*
