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Book · How it actually went

Chaos Monkeys

Antonio García Martínez · 2016

A caustic first-hand account of building and selling a startup, and then working inside a very large technology company — the least reverent book on this list.

Why it is here

The author took a company through Y Combinator, sold it in circumstances he describes in uncomfortable detail, and then worked on advertising at Facebook. The result is a first-hand account of both sides of an acquisition, written with no interest in protecting anyone's reputation including his own.

The genuinely useful material is on the acquisition itself: how the price was arrived at, how co-founders were treated, and how much of an announced transaction is really retention compensation. It is the most vivid available illustration of the point our acqui-hire entry makes analytically.

It is deliberately provocative and parts of it have aged poorly. Read it for the transaction mechanics rather than for the commentary.

Read it if

You want to see what an acquisition looks like from inside, without the press-release framing.

Skip it if

You would rather not spend time with a narrator who is working hard to provoke you.

Pair it withSuper PumpedMike IsaacA reported account of Uber under its founding chief executive — governance failure at a company that, unlike most on this shelf, survived.

What it explains

Terms this covers

Acqui-hireAn acquisition whose purpose is to hire the team rather than to buy the product, typically priced per engineer and structured so that most of the value goes to employees as retention packages rather than to shareholders.Exit waterfallThe order in which sale proceeds are distributed — creditors first, then each preferred class by seniority, then ordinary shareholders — and the calculation that tells you what your shares are actually worth.Drag-along rightsA provision allowing a defined majority of shareholders to compel every other shareholder to sell on the same terms, so that a buyer can acquire 100% of the company without holdouts.

Chaos Monkeys: common questions

What is worth reading this for?
The acquisition mechanics. How the price was set, how the founders were treated, and how much of the headline figure was retention compensation rather than consideration to shareholders — which is the point our acqui-hire entry makes in the abstract.
Is it a reliable account?
It is one participant's version, written to provoke, by someone with obvious scores to settle. Read it as a vivid primary source rather than as a balanced record.

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