The customer database? Give me a break. First of all, they have maybe 300 or 400 customers. Most of those are listed in publicly available documents, like sales brochures, press releases, SEC filings, etc. You could probably come up with 90% of the customers with 3 hours of research, and another 9% by hiring one sales admin.
Once you have the company names, you hire a telemarketing firm at $12/hour to get the contact name.
Total cost to acquire so-called customer database - maybe $10,000? And then, what do you do with this list? They already have an implemented solution that cost them hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. You're not selling mail order clothing here. If the SCOP customer was unhappy, they know where to call.
I don't know what kind of company you worked for, but it's hard to believe a 200 person company could chop all management and 50% of the rest in a merger and still function. It must have been a pretty poorly run company. most of the high end software companies are not run like that. They would really hurt if 10% of the company left one day.
>> A few key engineers
Why on earth would you spend $400MM to get "a few key engineers"? you could give each of the few, say 5, a $500K signing bonus and another $500,000 when the job is done, and they have transferred their knowledge. Total cost $5,010,000. |
