March 14, 2013

Being smart can benefit the entire enterprise through the acquisition process

Few business owners would be comfortable seeing their company undergo a complete change upon being acquired by another firm. Even serial entrepreneurs are likely to want the original bottom line of their business to stay intact, even when acquisition companies take control.

In order to ensure that the core of an organization is not entirely redone, those who are looking to sell should be as prepared as possible before entering any negotiations. Financial statements and previous transaction records are important, and can show prospective buyers how a business has been successful in the past. Furthermore, having a well-rounded understanding of the current market situation can help entrepreneurs realize the actual worth of their company.

Even larger startups and technology firms go through this same process – it will not be detrimental to take precautionary measures to guarantee that the entire process runs as smoothly as possible.

Toronto University tech company acquired by Google

A startup from the University of Toronto's computer science department was recently acquired by internet superpower Google. DNNresearch, which was set up last year by Professor Geoffrey Hinton and two of his graduate students, focuses on the area of deep neural networks. Google hopes this research will help it go beyond traditional search algorithms in its ability to identify pieces of content, images, voice and text. 

University officials announced in a statement that Hinton's research has implications for areas such as speech recognition, computer vision and language understanding. Google also confirmed that the three researchers would be joining the company, but did not disclose financial details.

This business deal shows that even small companies of three people can find an ideal opportunity. The DNNresearch associates will apply large-scale machine learning to a variety of domains, Google fellow Jeff Dean explained on his Google+ account. Google has made acquisitions before that focused on bringing in new talent, along with technological assets.