How to Sell a Company to Uber

Last week there were two acquisitions of autonomous vehicle startups. Apple bought Drive.ai, and Uber bought MightyAI (a Madrona portfolio company – woohoo!). Both startups had raised tens of millions of dollars and were acquired by companies that are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into developing autonomous vehicle tech.

Rumors of both deals had been reported a few weeks ago, but it was interesting that the final deal announcements happened within hours of one another. From an investor perspective, this is a great demonstration of how deals get done.

Deals are all about creating “demand” for your “supply.” Something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it, and with several autonomous vehicle deals “in play” at the same time, along with several potential acquirers competing for deals, I’m sure the perceived scarcity and social proof helped get both of these deals done.

From a behavioral economics perspective, it’s interesting that this stuff happens all the time. For example, rewind a few weeks and take a look at the data visualization market where Tableau and Looker were both acquired within a few weeks of one another for billions of dollars each. It’s not a coincidence that markets “heat up” and “cool down,” and deal activity gets concentrated in specific sectors.

What’s the next sector to watch? This Salesforce board deck from 2016 might have some good clues as five of the companies highlighted in the deck have been acquired already… perhaps marketing automation, vertical SaaS, or service management will be next?