when done properly, feedback is a dialogue, not a monologue. - Ben Horowitz

For the purpose of this discussion, it is useful to think about technology acquisitions in three categories: 1. Talent and/or technology, when a company is acquired purely for its technology and/or its people. These kinds of deals typically range between $5 million and $50 million. 2. Product, when a company is acquired for its product, but not its business. The acquirer plans to sell the product roughly as it is, but will do so primarily with its own sales and marketing capability. These kinds of deals typically range between $25 million and $250 million. 3. Business, when a company is acquired for its actual business (revenue and earnings). The acquirer values the entire operation (product, sales, and marketing), not just the people, technology, or products. These deals are typically valued (at least in part) by their financial metrics and can be extremely large (such as Microsoft’s $30 billion–plus offer for Yahoo).

A company without a story is usually a company without a strategy.

Want to see a great company story? Read Jeff Bezos’s three-page letter he wrote to shareholders in 1997. In telling Amazon’s story in this extended form — not as a mission statement, not as a tagline — Jeff got all the people who mattered on the same page