Not to fuel the fire here, but from the startups perspective I'm not sure there's much functional difference between a company attempting to acquire a startup and then deciding to go it alone, and using the acquisition process for research on their future products other than intent.
No matter what if you do the DD process on an acquisition you'll certainly apply those learnings to your future efforts.
Side Note: I'm always amazed to find people that run large companies posting on hackernews. Doubly amazed that two companies I'm interviewing for are mentioned in the same post (about interviews no less.) :D
No matter what if you do the DD process on an acquisition you'll certainly apply those learnings to your future efforts.
There's even a PG blogpost about it. http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html
Side Note: I'm always amazed to find people that run large companies posting on hackernews. Doubly amazed that two companies I'm interviewing for are mentioned in the same post (about interviews no less.) :D
Small world.