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Some high-profile acquisitions take out a rising competitor, such as Facebooks acquisition of FriendFeed in 2009, some immediately expand a businesss suite of offerings, such as Salesforces 2020 purchase of Slack, and some may morph into an unrecognizable asset, like Amazons 1999 purchase of Alexa Internet, then a web traffic-tracking website. (The first Amazon Echo marking Alexas debut would launch in 2014.) But many lower-profile tech company acquisitions are made at least in part to gain access to specialized engineering talent. So-called acquihires havent traditionally raised many eyebrows. But the terms definition has been expanding as the AI arms race has accelerated a new form of tacit takeover, the reverse-acquihire. In this move, which isnt technically an acquisition, a company either takes a minority interest in a company or makes no financial investment in it at all. However, it hires one or more founders or key members of the executive team. This can leave the reverse-acquihired company rudderless or can cut off less senior staff from employment opportunities or liquidity. It can also allow the company conducting the reverse-acquihire to avoid the kind of process and oversight that comes with an acquisition. The Federal Trade Commission has said that its starting to scrutinize both reverse and traditional acquihires more closely given their potential for abuse. The canonical answer is that one avoids regulatory scrutiny, right? says Kyle Jensen, professor in the practice of entrepreneurship at Yale School of Management. Particularly antitrust scrutiny. A formal acquisition can trigger merger reviews and give regulators a clear set of documents, valuations and control rights to interrogate to decide whether or not healthy competition has been diminished. Reverse-acquihires dont do any of that. So the FTC is now starting to ask whether hiring the team is basically the same as buying out a company (which would retro-correct the term’s definition drift), but avoiding regulatory scrutiny. My understanding is that [the FTC] really want to make it more of a level position between standard acquisitions and the so-called [reverse-]acquihires, says Igor Letina, associate professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland, speaking in an academic capacity. (Letina is also a vice president of the Swiss Competition Commission.) What they’re signalling is that they will examine both types of deals in the same way according to the same standard, and make sure that they are compliant with antitrust laws. Letina is wary of any attempts to call it a crackdown by the FTC. But what the Commission decides could have huge ramifications for the industry. Reverse-acquihires are expedient exits for the executive team. If the fastest exits become harder, what happens to hiring, to equity promisesand the idea that a soft landing is always an option when setting up a company? Mergers and acquisitions have long been key to the world of business, argues S. Somasegar, managing director at Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle-based venture capital firm. Its how companies can acquire talent, customers and technology. But particularly with the urgent imperative to tap leading AI talent, big firms strategic framework has shifted in recent years from build, buy or partner to build, buy, and partneran ideal scenario for reverse-acquihires. Its somewhat of a new construct, he says. Indeed, that construct is now becoming familiar: a big tech firm hires a founder and a chunk of the team while signing a licensing deal or service agreement with whats left of the startup. Google brought on board Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas in August 2024 and then licensed its tech, all while avoiding an investment. Meta acquired 49% of Scale AI in June 2025 for $14.8 billion and made co-founder Alexandr Wang Metas Chief AI Officer. Given how closely the impact matches that of an acquisition, Letinas view is that competition authorities should treat it that way. We really shouldn’t focus on the form, he says. We should focus on the economic essence. Is it an acquisition of assets or not? Not everyone thinks reverse-acquihires are inherently suspect. For Jensen, there are plenty of legitimate reasons a buyer might prefer people over the corporate entity. There is a company that has really talented people, he says. Things haven’t really worked out. Maybe the company has a bunch of debts and weird assets and things like that. You don’t even want those. The danger, he suggests, is when a deal stops being just a hire and starts operating as a shadow acquisition. The problem is what to do about it. If such deals are made so risky in regulation that big firms stop doing them, entrepreneurs decision making could start to shift. Every founder wants their company to succeed, but a good backup plan is to exit by selling the top team. If thats closed off, it could impact the rate of new startups being founded. The individuals in the startups also potentially lose their free will to work for a potential acquirer, argues Jensen. Am I forbidden from working for Google? he asks. That’s a weird outcome, right? I ought to be able to work for whomever I wish to work for. Even if a clampdown is politically popular, its not obvious it would protect the people startups employ. Letina points out that the recent move to cherry pick staff and leave the remainder of the team can be especially ugly for what it leaves afterwards. All those people who were left behind got, in essence, a rather bad deal, he says. The recent trend of management leaving rank-and-file staff left holding the bag after they leave may also harm the ability for startups to hire staff. A stricter regime from the FTC could push big firms back towards full acquisitions that scoop up or provide liquidity for more staff. But Somasegar worries any regulatory change could impact on the speed of innovation. Things are moving fast, he says. Industries are changing fast. You can’t put arbitrary speed breakers along the way, he says. I don’t want to be in a situation where a company wants to buy another company and it takes two years before you know whether the acquisition can happen or not.
Category:
E-Commerce
A college degree is usually thought of as a ticket to a great job and a secure future. Yet, the job market over the past few years has not been kind to graduates. Rapid changes in technology and uncertainty about the influence of AI on the economy have made it harder for companies to know what their new employees need to know to be successful. I have argued in the past that this uncertainty actually makes college degrees more useful than ever, but higher education is doing a poor job of helping students navigate this uncertainty. Sadly, universities arent going to fix this problem by hiring more career counselors. Instead, theyre going to have to do the hard work of restructuring their teaching mission for the 21st century. As it turns out, there is a straightforward (if labor-intensive) way for higher ed to make graduates (and continuing education students) more future-proof: focusing on teaching students durable skills, that will see them through the future; tying assessments to outcomes; and tracking competencies rather than courses. I believe so deeply that this change must be made, that I have left my role as a university professor and administrator after 27 years to work for Minerva Project, a company that built Minerva University, a private university, from the ground up using this approach and now brings it to schools around the world interested in reform. Here’s what this looks like: 1. Focus on durable skills Most college graduates credit their degree programs with helping them to become better learners, communicators, and thinkers regardless of their major. Indeed, liberal arts degree holders may struggle to get jobs initially, but they are quite successful in the long run. These degree programs provide value, because they ultimately teach durable skills. A skill is durable when it can be applied usefully in many different settings. Someone who learns to use a particular computer programming language has a potentially valuable skill. But, if the industry changes the standard for the language being used, or if AI can do a lot of the coding that companies need, then this skill loses value. Someone who learns the more durable skill of characterizing a problem and framing the path to a solution can continue to play a role even if much of the work to implement that solution can be automated. Universities are in the business of teaching these durable skills. Students learn key competencies like characterizing a problem, engaging in systems thinking, and communicating that problem and solution to others. Unfortunately, this teaching is done unsystematically in a way that can make it hard for some students to truly achieve competence in these deep skills and makes it difficult for graduates to articulate what they have learned. The solution is for institutions to align on a framework to characterize the core set of skills they deliver. This framework benefits employers, faculty, and students. Employers get a clear statement of what graduates have learned. Faculty get a common language for talking about these skills so that they can call them out explicitly to students in classes. Students then have a better understanding of the skills they are learning. That enables them to be strategic about selecting classes that will help them to solidify key abilities and provides them with a vocabulary for talking to employers about what they will bring to their work. In order for this approach to be successful, though, faculty need to provide students with authentic assessments and students need some kind of record to track their expertise. 2. Authentic assessment Just talking about the skills that are (somehow) being taught in higher education is not enough. Students need evidence of their progress toward gaining competence in these durable skills. Unfortunately, when students take an exam or do an assignment, the most visible result of that work is a grade. A professor (or teaching assistant) may write comments on the work, but the student tends to focus on whether they got an A. Authentic assessment happens when each assignment is related directly to outcomes that the course is designed to develop. Students should be aware of the relationship between these assignments and the outcomes. More importantly, assignments need to be evaluated by using a measure (a rubric) that relates the students work to the skill being practiced. In this way, the feedback students get on their work is focused on what the exam or assignment says about their current proficiency rather than on the number or letter at the top of the page. While this wont get rid of grades altogether, it does provide prospective employers with a way to emphasize the skills they believe signal success, which is a recipe for changing the focus of students from grades to competency. While it might seem obvious that authentic assessment is crucial to good education, most college faculty are not trained as educators, and so their assignments (and bases for grading) are often disconnected from the desired learning outcomes for students. Universities need to provide more support for faculty to improve the quality of their assignments and grading rubrics. Authentic assessments change the focus of a students work from achieving a grade to developing competence. That focus can motivate students to put in the effort to improve. As a result, students are not trying to game the system to get a good grade. Instead, they are looking for opportunities to expand their skills. This approach also provides a guard against academic misconduct. After all, what is the point of cheating on an assignment if the sole purpose of the work is to help you get better and understand your skills? 3. A competency tracker, not a transcript Part of what obscures the value of a degree for students and employers is that the primary record a student gets of their time in college is a transcript. Transcripts are just lists of courses (whose names dont provide much information about their content) and grades (that provide a blunt assessment of how students performed). Indeed, few people ever look at a graduates transcript, because the entries on it dont say much about what that person can do. The alternative is to build a record of student performance around the institutions framework for durable skills that accumulates the evidence from the many assignments students have done that teach and assess these skills. This tracker provides students with a current snapshot of what they do (and do not) do well. The record itself links back to past assignments. This tracker enables students to look back at past work to see the growing complexity of their thinking. Anyone who has looked back with some horror at a paper they wrote in their first year of college can recognize the improvements in their communication ability and complexity of thought. This record systematizes that experience. It also enables students to clearly articulatetheir skills to employers. In addition, over the course of a career, maintaining a competence tracker can signal to someone that it is time to get some more education to stay a step ahead of economic and technological changes. Higher education must make these changes . . . now in order to equip students for the future. It is up to all of us who care about colleges and universities to push them to do so.
Category:
E-Commerce
February is here. The “New Year, New Me” energy has officially worn off, replaced by a much more realistic “New Year, Same Me, But Freezing” thanks to a very disrespectful wind chill a heating bill thats starting to look like a phone number. But we live in the future! We have technology! Here are six actually useful gadgets thatll keep you toasty without burning up a ton of cash. Rechargeable Hand Warmers (~$20) Disposable hand warmers are fine, but theyre wasteful and, frankly, kind of gross after a while. These rechargeable ones, on the other hand (pun intended), are basically big batteries that get hot. They charge via USB-C, include one cord that charges both at the same time, and offer three heat settings. They can be snapped together magnetically to form one mega-warmer or split apart to keep both pockets toasty. Coffee Mug Warmer (~$18) You made coffee. You got distracted by a Slack notification. Now you have sad, cold coffee. This coffee mug warmer isn’t new tech: in fact, its barely tech at all. Its a tiny hot plate for your desk that keeps your drink at a steady, drinkable temperature for hours. Is it fancy? No. Does it have an app? Thankfully, no. It just does one thingfight the laws of coolingand it does it well. No need to microwave your coffee like a savage. Bluetooth Beanie (~$16) You want to listen to a podcast while walking the dog, but your earbuds hurt your cold ears and your headphones won’t fit over your hat. The fix? A hat that sings to you. It solves the “earbuds vs. frostbite” dilemma nicely since the speakers are sewn right into the fabric, connecting to your phone via Bluetooth so you can listen to your favorite playlist while shoveling the driveway. The audio quality wont win any Grammys, but for 20 bucks, it keeps your noggin warm and your audio playing. It’s washable, too, provided you take the electronic bits out first. Smart Plug (~$9) The floor is freezing, and you have to get out of bed to turn on the space heater. Thats a problem. The solution is a smart plug that lets you control your “dumb” heater from your phone or smart speaker. “Alexa, turn on the Heater.” Thats it. You can also set a schedule so your drafty home office warms up 15 minutes before you sit down. Just make sure your heater has a mechanical switch (the clicky kind) so it really does turn on when the power cuts in. Heated Insoles (~$30) When youre standing outside, the ground is actively sucking the life force out of your feet. These insoles are literally tiny electric blankets for your shoes. Theres an app you can use to finesse the temperature, and full disclosure: each insole has its own battery pack that you wear around your ankle like a house-arrest monitor. But, hey: Its winter. Long pants season. And theyre “cut-to-fit,” meaning you just trim them with scissors to match your shoe size. Simple. Effective. Warm. Electric Plasma Lighter (~$10) Lighting a roaring fire for warmth and ambiance is annoying when the matches break or the lighter runs out of fluid. Enter the rechargeable lighter, which uses electricity to create a plasma arc. Its windproof, splash-proof, and makes a cool, crackle-y sci-fi noise. You plug it in to charge it, then press a button to create a tiny lightning bolt that sets things on fire. Its quite a conversation starter, and hopefully the last lighter youll ever need to buy.
Category:
E-Commerce
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