The hard sell 27 Apr 2007

RedEye VC tells us that you have better odds of winning $5M in the lottery than you do of selling your company to either Google or Yahoo. Having trawled the two businesses' SEC filings for 2005/06, RedEye found that Google had acquired 15 companies, while Yahoo! had acquired only 11 companies. By contrast, there were 19 prize claims of $5 million USD or more in the New York Lottery over the same period.

What's the moral of this story? We'll leave that to RedEye:

"Entrepreneurs should focus on building real, long-term value. An exit opportunity only exists if you build a company that has differentiated technology, a strong team, offers customers real value, demonstrates traction in the marketplace, and/or solves a real need for the acquirer. You can't build a company to sell it - I've never seen it work. If you are playing the odds for a quick flip to Google or Yahoo, buy a lottery ticket."

[via Peter Van Dijck's Guide to Ease]