The Ledger
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Choi: Acquirers Should Focus on Target Quality Over Deal Price
“Mike Volpe, who was famously that head of Corp Dev at Cisco during the heyday of Cisco M&A, he once said something to me, which I never forget. He said, never get the right deal, get the right company. And I think that that really holds true today.”
Coinbase Expects New Hires to Deliver Within 30 Days or Leave
“We're going to want to see real action, and that means that if you really don't do something amazing in the first 30 days, you're probably not going to be a fit here, and it's actually the most compassionate thing to say, you know what? Bad on us, because we p…”
Choi: Tech giants copy startup features to avoid acquisition hassles and regulation
“One is that the tech giants have in many cases gotten really good at copying emerging startup products, so they don't need to deal with the hassle of acquiring, not to mention the hassle of potential regulatory scrutiny for M&A.”
Choi: Startups should build ongoing corp dev relationships, not transactional contacts
“I'm a big fan of Mark Souster's line about, it's about lines, not dots. In other words, it's about long-term relationship and a series of dots, not just one transactional conversation. So don't just come to us when there's a transaction going on. Knowing the c…”
Choi: In Tech M&A, Acquiring the Right Company Matters More Than Price
“I truly believe that the most important thing is buying the right company and not getting the right deal, and I think that there's a lot of different examples of companies that have said that they're going to go after the potentially weaker asset for a lower p…”
Choi: M&A fails when CEOs and CorpDev heads make decisions alone
“The recipe to fail in M&A is that it's the head of CorpDev and the CEO who make the decisions, right? It has to be deeply integrated into the process of how product and engineering work at the company.”
Coinbase Conducts All M&A Using RAPID With Single Decision-Makers
“We're not a committee. We're not a consensus based culture. There has to be one decision maker at the end of the day. If you have the right people as part of that rapid, you're going to be so buttoned up about how you can run fast on making quick M and a decis…”
Choi: Brian Armstrong Stamped Out Political Culture and Side-Lobbying at Coinbase
“Brian Armstrong, there's no political culture here, and I don't just mean that about his apolitical post. I mean about, you don't lobby people on the side. You don't have this thing where you talk about Somebody in the room one way, and then after they leave t…”
Job Candidates Inspired by IBM Are Not a Fit for Coinbase
“I will often ask people that I'm interviewing, what other companies would you interview at? What other companies are you inspired by? Now, no offense, but if they say something like IBM, which I've definitely had, they're not going to be a fit for Coinbase. If…”
Managers Should Lead Performance Reviews Directly With Critical Feedback
“Just go in and just jump to Harry. We got to talk about this Because you're not going to be successful here unless you can nail these three things. I start with the hard stuff because everybody dreads it on both sides. That's my recommendation to you. Like, do…”
Choi: PE cost-cutting in tech buyouts degrades R&D and product quality
“My concern is that the focus on cost cutting can eat into R&D investment, which can translate into subpar products over time.”
Choi: Top consumer acquisitions boost target R&D, marketing spend 30-40%
“What's really interesting on the consumer side, what really stands out from the most successful ones is that they were really left alone. The acquiring company typically provided them with a bunch of backend help and Legal and other GNA services, but they usua…”
Choi: Weathering a crypto winter prepares tech leaders for anything
“It's much harder to do than to actually say that, but I think once you've weathered like a crypto winter, you are ready for anything.”
Choi: Lateral career moves can trigger exponential career growth
“Sometimes you'll have a situation where you're taking on a lateral move, but if you take on that lateral move and you crush it, you could kind of take things exponentially higher than you would have if you had just been kind of slow and steady up and to the ri…”
Choi: Showing vulnerability in key moments creates deeper employee connections
“What I learned in that moment was that in these select moments where something really matters to You kind of show yourself to be vulnerable. You create so much connection with people.”
Choi Pressure-Tested Armstrong's M&A Commitment Before Joining Coinbase
“I pressure tested this with Brian. Cause I really wanted to make sure if I was going to come over to head up corp dev at Coinbase that Brian genuinely wanted to do M&A.”
Founders Frequently Hire Corp Dev Leaders Without Actually Doing M&A
“Founders like the idea of M&A, but In many cases, what they'll do as they kind of unpack M&A and do due diligence is they'll say, you know what, actually we can build this ourselves. We don't necessarily need to buy it. And so I've just seen this too many time…”
Choi: Companies doing only acquihires do not need senior corp dev lead
“Talent is a great way to do M&A, but in that case, you probably don't need like one dedicated senior head of corp dev.”
Coinbase Limits All Job Interview Blocks to 30 Minutes Maximum
“There is no interview longer than 30 minutes.”
Coinbase Interviews Require a 20-Minute Presentation and 10-Minute Q&A
“Finally, we actually have a presentation part of our interview process, and this is the hallmark of Coinbase. And I can tell you a lot of really amazing senior people kind of have a It's 20 minutes of presentation. It's 10 minutes of Q&A.”
Choi: Clear and concise communication is the key to succeeding at Coinbase
“The hallmark of successful people at Coinbase is they are excellent presenters. They are excellent communicators. They are pithy. They're strong. They get their message across.”
Choi: Great corporate development executives build lifelong relationships with founders
“I want to know that founders freaking love you, and that they would just do anything for you, and that they want to work with you. The way that I have seen this manifest in my own career is that a lot of the entrepreneurs we acquired at Companies that I've bee…”
Choi: Corp dev value comes from gathering ecosystem insights through relationships
“The whole thing about corp dev is you're an external facing person. Who can get invaluable insights if you have amazing relationships with the whole ecosystem.”
Choi: COO Role Is Clearing Operational Environment for Product to Ship Fast
“COO to me means I am here to create the absolute best Environment for product and engineering to ship everything they need to ship as quickly as possible, because we are a product and engineering led company.”
Coinbase Allocates Resources: 70% Core, 20% Adjacencies, 10% Venture Bets
“70% of our resources are devoted to core, 20% are devoted to adjacencies, and 10% are devoted to venture bets, right?”
Choi: Strategic corporate investments effectively build ecosystems around core products
“On the strategic investment side, I used to be more bearish on that area. I see it as a great way to seed an ecosystem around your products and services and have some skin in the game, so I'm a big fan of that.”
Choi: LinkedIn Corp Dev prefers starting startup relationships at seed stage
“In many cases, it's at seed level. And again, it doesn't mean that there has to be anything transactional about the relationship, but it's good for us to start interacting at that stage if they're in a space that we're interested in.”
Choi: Creating False Urgency in M&A Negotiations Destroys Startup Credibility
“One of the things that I would recommend to founders is to be careful about putting false sense of timelines on a deal. So for example, it often happens that somebody will call and say, listen, we're going to get a term sheet from three other companies by the …”
Choi: LinkedIn had three acquired founders leading main business lines
“At one point, for example, at LinkedIn, we had three founders running the three key business lines at the company”
Choi: Matching company engineer retention in M&A signifies top performance
“If you are anywhere close to the overall software engineer retention rate for your company with the acquisitions, you are crushing it.”
Choi: LinkedIn retains acquired engineers above overall company average
“For LinkedIn, fortunately, we are actually trending slightly above that”
Choi: Coinbase caps candidate interview panels at five people
“We have a panel of people. We generally try to keep that panel no more than five people who actually interview the candidate.”
Coinbase Execs Write 2-3 Problem-Proposed-Solution One-Pagers Every Week
“The exec team ourselves probably write, you know, Two to three a week.”
Choi: Coinbase commits to one-week turnaround for RAPID decisions
“We also try to get these decisions decided in a week. So once we actually have the formal rapid written, we're committing to getting back to these folks in a week.”
Corp dev teams should use a crawl-walk-run framework mapped to strategy
“I think anybody who's building out a corp dev practice should think about kind of a crawl, walk, run approach. So figure out What are the nuances of the company and the company's strategy, and how can you map an M&A strategy to that?”
Choi: LinkedIn Uses a RAPID Framework for Internal M&A Approvals
“We at LinkedIn have implemented something called a rapid process. There is one usually executive level sponsor who will, on R&D usually, who will recommend this acquisition. The other R&D person, for example, the head of engineering for that particular group, …”
Choi: Brian Armstrong remains calm regardless of crypto market conditions
“First of all, I think Brian Armstrong, our founder, is the key to this because he is very kind of calm and even keeled and balanced regardless of how the market is.”
Choi writes weekly 'top of mind' emails to all Coinbase employees
“And I write a top of mind every Friday to the whole company.”