This is wildly revisionist. DeepMind without Google wouldn’t be anywhere close to what it is now. Hell, it very well might’ve died. Most European VCs hadn’t heard of it when the acquisition happened. It would have withered. Further, the acquisition price was ridiculed by many in the UK and Europe at the time. Founders Fund invested when UK VCs wouldn’t…and it had 25% of the company at exit. Google buying DeepMind was probably the best possible outcome for it. Prohibiting its sale wouldn’t have resulted in a roaring success. Same with Booking, Arm, and all the other companies that Europeans like to play ‘what could have been?’ with. Those companies needed deep pockets and best practices that simply aren’t available in Europe. https://lnkd.in/eNsf28bv
I would invert this issue. The issue is not that the company was bought at ridiculously cheap price, and takeover was not stopped. The problem was that owners decided to sell it instead of developing , growing and succeeding. And here possibly the European "overregulation" with well known beaurocratic burdens may come as the right answer?
This is just the degrowth mindset you were complaining about the other week.
“So I built this rollacoaster game, and now I’m trying to beat this Chinese game you’ve never heard of. I think maybe we can solve protein folding and data centre efficiency - they might be important if this all works out 🤷♂️” I’m not sure anyone who spends their lunchtime buying quarter zips is ever going to get that!
Michael, another excellent post. While human brainpower is evenly distributed globally, there’s only one Silicon Valley when it comes to capital, R&D, and scaling expertise. European regulatory capture, or efforts to reduce it like the SUP directive, doesn’t materially change that reality.
Heh, how many similar cases do we have now...? 🤣
The greatest acquisition of all time is either Youtube or Instagram.
Dailymotion another example of what happen when government interfere in M&A
Michael Jackson, interesting perspective. do you think more investment in startups can alter this narrative over time?
Protectionists like this behave like jealous ex-partners. "If I can't have them, no one can!" They'd often rather crush potentially successful businesses than allow them to thrive somewhere else.
Industrial engineer and economist
5d"Europe could've had the 100bn+ tech company, and made sure it would be worth 100m now." Fixed it.