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We thank seminar participants at ABSTRACT Most technology startups are set up for exit through acquisition by large corporations. In choosing when to sell, startups face a tradeoff. Early acquisition reduces execution errors but later acquisition improves the likelihood of finding a better match since in the early market, there are fewer buyers because early acquisition requires costly absorptive capacity. Moreover, the buyer's decision to invest in absorptive capacity is related to the startup's decision about the timing of the exit sale. In this paper, we build a model to capture this complexity and the related tradeoffs. We find that the early market for startups is inefficiently thin if the timing of exit is a strategic choice, i.e. startups have to commit to whether to exit early or late. Too few startups are sold early, and too few buyers invest in absorptive capacity. Paradoxically, venture capital aggravates the inefficiency. However, if the timing of exit is a tactical choice, i.e. startups can choose to go late after observing the early offers, there are too many early acquisitions and too much investment in absorptive capacity by incumbents
Technology-focused acquisitions of startups by incumbents are highly diverse, comprising radical but also incremental innovations. We build a model of R&D competition between an incumbent and a startup to explain this diversity. Each player chooses investment level and success probability, or risk, of its project. After outcome realization, the incumbent commercializes the most valuable project, and, where necessary, acquires the startup to this end. We find that two locally optimal strategies for the startup can exist, characterized respectively by higher risk or lower cost than the incumbent's equilibrium strategy. Depending on the R&D technology, either of them may be the startup's globally optimal strategy. With two startups, numerical analysis confirms this finding. The intuition behind our results is that a startup pursuing a high risk strategy aims at technological superiority, while one following a low cost strategy banks on having the only successful R&D project. Our model thus suggests a dichotomy of technology-focused acquisitions of startups by incumbents.Abstract: Technology-focused acquisitions of startups by incumbents are highly diverse, comprising radical but also incremental innovations. We build a model of R&D competition between an incumbent and a startup to explain this diversity. Each player chooses investment level and success probability, or risk, of its project. After outcome realization, the incumbent commercializes the most valuable project, and, where necessary, acquires the startup to this end. We find that two locally optimal strategies for the startup can exist, characterized respectively by higher risk or lower cost than the incumbent's equilibrium strategy. Depending on the R&D technology, either of them may be the startup's globally optimal strategy. With two startups, numerical analysis confirms this finding. The intuition behind our results is that a startup pursuing a high risk strategy aims at technological superiority, while one following a low cost strategy banks on having the only successful R&D project. Our model thus suggests a dichotomy of technology-focused acquisitions of startups by incumbents.
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