Wiz Turns Down $23 Billion Google Deal (fortune.com) 25
Wiz, the cloud security startup that was in acquisition talks with Google, has decided not to forward with the deal and to remain an independent company, according to an internal note sent to company employees on Monday. Fortune: "While we are flattered by offers we have received, we have chosen to continue on our path to building Wiz," CEO Assaf Rappaport wrote in the note. Rappaport said in the email that the company's next target is to reach $1 billion in annual recurring revenue and to take the company public.
Wiz files chapter 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wiz files chapter 11 (Score:5, Funny)
Google would have killed the project in 4 years anyhow.
Re: (Score:3)
Google would have killed the project in 4 years anyhow.
Yes, but the founders and employees would be cashed out before that.
Re: (Score:2)
Possibly, though I wonder what the motivation was.
If the motivation was "we can do better", then I'd laugh at them.
If the motivation was "we care about our product more than we want to cash out", I'd have some respect for their sensibilities.
remember when Sergey and Larry tried to sell GOOG (Score:2)
to excite! for $5 million, and excite! turned them down?
this will be nothing at all like that
Idiots should stop (Score:1)
using the subject line as the comment.
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to excite! for $5 million, and excite! turned them down?
this will be nothing at all like that
You mean someone else could have gotten into a nasty habit of making very popular free programs and services, and them randomly shitcanning them?
Or nothing at all like that? Huh.
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Just guessing, but I think he meant something about building one of the most valuable companies on Earth.
Maybe (Score:3)
Prohibit M&A for big companies (Score:5, Interesting)
Huge companies like Alphabet and Microsoft maintain their positions through M&A. Buy up and absorb - or kill - future competition. Capitalism is a great system, but it breaks down when companies get too big - government regulation is essential.
IMHO, above a certain size, companies should be prohibited from any sort of M&A activity. Above an even larger size, companies should be forced to divest ("too big to fail").
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Yup, totally agree. People argue about "synergies" and "efficiencies of scale" and "overhead reduction". Assume they are done right, because most of the time they aren't. The cost of making or adapting to the new operational order has many years in ROI. I don't think those savings are worth the impact due to size to the overall economy or sector if something goes wrong. And once they get bigger than "even larger size" its a detriment to the company. The inertia NOT to adapt and change with the environ
Re:Prohibit M&A for big companies (Score:5, Interesting)
In general I agree, but instead of trying to come up with special case regulations for things that seem bad, we should be using a more general purpose hammer to try to prevent companies from getting too big in the first place. To wit, a progressive taxation on the revenue of companies, not just their profits. If two companies each making a billion / year in revenue merged, the result should pay more in taxes than the two individual companies combined.
Plus, if you tax revenue, it would be harder to not pay taxes through various tricks
Something would have to be done about the "trick" of appearing to merge companies but really being multiple different tax paying companies internally. I say trick because my own employer has this, but it is an effect of of multiple mergers and still working through the paperwork and other processes of trying to bring the merged companies together into a single unit, not wanting to save on taxes. So there would probably have to be some rule that the tax rate is not based on what each individual unit makes, but based on what the overall corporate ownership revenue is.
I also feel like that overall ownership should be based on the network of boards of directors -- if a person is on the boards of two different companies, those companies' revenues have to be combined to determine the overall revenue to determine the rate all the companies pay. This would mean, for example, that SpaceX would pay a rate not based on its revenue, but the combined revenue of itself, Tesla, X, and whatever else Musk owns.
I feel like this idea would result in a lot more separation between businesses, especially at the executive and ownership levels, which would overall be a good thing (IMO). But I doubt such a huge change could ever happen.
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You're effectively punishing scale, but scale is necessary for some things. We wouldn't have Unix and C if Bell hadn't been big enough to be able to afford a research division.
We need a mix of small and large companies in every sector, but your solution would make it cost-prohibitive to get big.
Instead of scale, let's punish anti-competitive behavior. That's what the current system is designed to do, and it's designed well. The problems are ones of execution, not of basic idea.
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You're right, my idea does have disadvantages. One is that it does effectively eliminate economies of scale. I don't think that would entirely eliminate research and development in companies, but it could reduce it. It would also likely result in higher prices for consumers. But it would also make it easier for new startups that don't have the advantage of scale to compete. It would also mean that the big players would have to really avoid wasting too much money.
It's also possible that things like R
Google can't even... (Score:3)
Google can't even take a Wiz for $23 billion.
Apologies in advance (Score:2)
Why not another company? (Score:2)
There are other innovators in this general space, eg. Elastic is way past the 1Bn revenue (around 4x the revenue of Wiz) and 23Bn would be a decent premium over its current market cap of 12Bn.
Bad move (Score:1)
The next step is that Google will simply copy everything Wiz has done, and bankrupt Wiz through the IP litigation process.
It's just a Twitter account... (Score:2)