Acqui-hire

An acquisition where the primary motivation is to recruit the acquired company's team and talent rather than to gain its product, technology, or customers.

In competitive hiring markets, acqui-hiring allows larger companies to rapidly onboard skilled teams who have already proven they can work together. For founders being acqui-hired, it is a form of exit that monetises the team's collective skill.

A startup founder's social app fails to gain traction, but her engineering team is exceptional. A larger tech company offers to acquire the business for £800,000, primarily to bring her five-person team on board rather than for the product itself.