Does acqui-hiring pay off? An empirical investigation of founder retention
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14867804 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nikolaus Seitz (0000-0003-0634-9839, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar), Erik E Lehmann (0000-0002-4108-7523, University of Augsburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 361-391 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Small Business Economics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0921-898X • E-ISSN: 1573-0913 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11187-025-01107-1 |
| OpenAlex | W4416248179 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 136 |
In the fiercely competitive global talent landscape, even tech giants struggle to attract and retain top-tier entrepreneurial talent. To address this challenge, companies increasingly employ acqui-hiring—a strategic approach based on mergers and acquisitions aimed at acquiring startups primarily for their human capital. However, empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of acqui-hiring is limited and contentious. Our study aims to fill this gap by investigating the retention decisions of acqui-hired founders, who are central to the success of such acquisitions. Leveraging a dataset comprising 454 acqui-hired founders from 241 transactions by Google and Meta (Facebook), our findings highlight the difficulty of retaining individual entrepreneurs compared to entire co-founder teams, and underscore the importance of maintaining co-founders’ hierarchy. Our research contributes to the strategic entrepreneurship literature by exploring nuanced organizational design decisions in intrapreneurship and startup–corporate collaborations, shedding light on the efficacy of structural integration for knowledge and innovation transfer
Competitive advantage · Empirical evidence · Empirical research · Entrepreneurship · Intrapreneurship · Mergers and acquisitions · New Ventures · Strategic fit · Strategic management · Employer Branding and e-HRM · Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences · Human Resource and Talent Management
Applied Logistic Regression
Turnover and Retention Research
Dynamic capabilities
Protecting Their Intellectual Assets
A note on a general definition of the coefficient of determination
Let's put the person back into entrepreneurship research
One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research.
Entrepreneurial Motivations: What Do We Still Need to Know?
Searching for the Inverted U-Shaped Relationship Between Time and Performance
Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity Aversion
Demographic forecasting
The People Make the Place
The Big Five personality dimensions and entrepreneurial status
Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression
Mergers and acquisitions process
Taking Gender Into Account
Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability
Social networks and the geography of entrepreneurship
The advantage of experienced start-up founders in venture capital acquisition
Corporate entrepreneurship
Green merger and acquisition and green technology innovation
Should I stay or should I go? Multi-focus identification and employee retention in post-acquisition integration
The Economic Geography of Talent
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |