我十分认同风投行业的退出机制。就算我并不了解收购价和出售价，如果投资组合中的某家公司被谷歌（Google）或者Facebook或者商务社交网站LinkedIn这样的巨头收购，天生就是一桩好事儿。“我们资助了这家初创公司，它们发展得非常好，甚至连谷歌CEO拉里•佩奇和Facebook的联合创始人尔盖•布林也必须要收购它。”

    然而现实情况是，很多收购案例更多地关注于人员更替，而不是知识产权的转移。它们被称为“人才并购”：在这类交易中，易主的主要资产是工程师。

    你一定或多或少听说过“人才并购”这个词儿。现在，北卡罗莱纳大学（UNC）的法学教授约翰•科依勒和格雷戈•波斯基合作撰写了很有可能是关于这个话题的第一篇学术论文。

    他们并不是要对人才并购的兴起进行量化研究，而是要对其进行定义并探究背后的原因，特别是为什么这种并购在加州尤其盛行，要知道加州的法律（包括对非竞争行为无强制执行力的法律条文）并没有禁止大型科技公司通过更传统的招聘渠道招贤纳士。比方说，律师事务所一直在偷偷挖人，但却并不会走流程从他们的老东家“收购”他们。

    两位作者发现，大多数人才并购案例都发生在吸纳了风险投资的公司身上，它们不能募集新一轮资金（也就是说用融资代替最终清偿）。换言之，这样的做法能给卖家（既包括企业家，也包括风投公司）保留几分颜面。

    正如一位投资人所说：“与其说‘我的生意做砸了，公司开始进入清偿程序，这时谷歌提出高价收购’，还不如说‘我成功地把公司卖掉了，即使交易的结果是所有人都在亏钱’，后面这种说法要好听得多。”或者就像另一位受访者解释的：“人才喜欢‘全盘收购’这几个字带来的神秘感”。

    科依勒和波斯基还发现，工程师们更喜欢人才并购的形式，而不是被直接雇佣，因为前者有可能让他们获得税务减免。具体而言，“签协议奖金”可以被当作资本收益，而不是一般收益。如果人才并购采取的是免税的机构重组形式，税收减免可能更可观，虽然这种情形并不常见，但并非完全没有先例。

    值得注意的是，税务优惠可能只是人才并购的短期特点——前提是不会引起美国国税局（IRS）的关注。对买卖双方来说，人才并购背后的基本逻辑是“购买不被起诉的权力，兼并或收购公司股票和资产”，然而这种所谓的理由只是个假象，让工程师遵守“有效工作场所”规定的想法也必须打个问号。

    “我认为美国国税局在这个问题上有个有力的论点，就是这里大多数都是一般收益，”波斯基告诉我。“这和收购一条福特（Ford）生产线及其上万名工人非常不同，后者要投入大量成本进行重新组装。”

    对卖方来说，两位研究者发现，人才并购背后的逻辑有两点：一、大型科技公司不希望得罪风险投资家，因为某一天他们可能会向这些公司出售更值钱的资产。通过人才并购、而非直接雇佣工程师的形式，可以让风险投资家们保住些面子（并且至少获得一点投资补偿）。二、通过人才并购，买家可以给并购来的工程师开出比公司现有工程师更高的薪水，而不会影响薪酬等级制度。“他的工资水平和你相符，但我们还得买他的股权……”

    这些听上去全都是双赢之策，然而也有一些人才并购使风投公司处于不利的境地，也就是那些原本可以进行新一轮募资的公司。今年四月，迈克尔•阿林顿曾经撰文提到这类案例，他建议，天使投资人和风险投资家可以修改最初协议条款，使投资人不用被迫做赔本买卖。

    波斯基说，他尚未看到任何迹象表明这些变化正在发生（例如增加清算优先权）。即使风投公司确实把这样的条款写进去，他们也不会真正执行这些条款，不仅是因为起诉一位企业家可能使公司声誉大幅受损，还因为（在加州）企业家仍然有权退出，拍拍手走人。

    实际上，他们唯一可行的办法就是防止企业家获得新一轮获得融资。一位受访者称：“风投公司不会起诉企业创始人。但他们手里都有一个黑名单，而且还在风投圈子里相互传递。”

    译者：珠珠

    I'm a sucker for VC exits. Even when I don't know the purchase and sale prices, there is something instinctively positive about a portfolio company being acquired by Google or Facebook or LinkedIn. "We funded this startup, and it became so important that Larry and Sergey just had to have it."

    The reality, however, is that many of these deals are more about HR than IP. They're the acqui-hires: Transactions in which the primary assets changing hands are engineers.

    You've almost certainly heard of acqui-hires, and now UNC law professors John Coyle and Gregg Polsky have written what seems to be the first academic paper on the subject.

    Their goal wasn't to quantify the rise of acqui-hires, but rather to define them and then understand why they're happening in the first place. Particularly why they are happening so much in California, where the laws – including the non-enforceability of non-competes -- don't typically prevent a large tech company from more traditional hiring practices. After all, law firms poach groups of attorneys all the time without technically "buying" them from their old firms.

    What they found was that the vast majority of acqui-hires are for VC-backed companies that would be unable to raise another round of financing (i.e., in lieu of eventual liquidation). In other words, it's a face-saving move for the sellers (both entrepreneurs and VCs):

    As one investor put it: "[I]t's a lot cooler to say you 'sold' your company even if everyone lost money than to say your company was an utter failure and you put it into liquidation proceedings and grabbed a nice offer from Google." Or as another interviewee explained, "The talent wants the mystique of having been 'bought out.'"

    Coyle and Polsky also discovered that engineers prefer acqui-hires to "straight hires" because of the possible tax benefits. Namely, they can treat their "signing bonuses" as capital gains rather than as ordinary income. There even can be greater tax benefits if the acqui-hire is structured as a tax-free reorg, which is rare but not unheard of.

    What's worth noting, however, is that the tax benefits may be a short-term characteristic of the acqui-hire, so long as the IRS begins paying attention. The basic justification for both buyer and seller is a façade – buying the right not to be sued and/or acquiring company stock/assets – and the idea of a few engineers meeting "workplace in-force" requirements is questionable.

    "I think the IRS has a strong argument here that most of these would be ordinary income," Polsky tells me. "This is very different from buying a Ford assembly line with ten thousand workers, which would cost a lot to reassemble."

    For the sellers, the researchers discovered that the acqui-hire rationale is twofold: (1) Big tech companies would prefer not to be on the bad side of venture capitalists, who someday might have something more valuable to sell them. So let the VCs save face (and recoup at least some of their investment) via an acqui-hire, rather than just hire the engineers outright. (2) Acqui-hires allow buyers to pay incoming engineers more than existing engineers, without upsetting pay-scales. "His salary is in line with yours, but we had to also buy his equity…"

    All of this sounds win-win, but it also is true that certain acqui-hires put VCs in a very bad position. Namely, the acqui-hires for companies that could, indeed, raise further funding. These are the deals Michael Arrington referenced back in April, suggesting that angels and VCs may alter initial deal terms so that investors aren't forced to take cents on what should be dollars.

    Polsky said that he didn't see any evidence that such changes (such as increasing liquidation preferences) actually are occurring. Even if VCs do add such provisions, they would be loath to actually enforce them. Not only because suing an entrepreneur can cause major reputational damage, but also because the entrepreneur still has the right (in California) to just up and leave.

    In fact, they're only practical recourse is to prevent the entrepreneur from getting funded the next time around. Said one interviewee: "VCs don't sue their founders. They keep a list. And they tell their friends."