MICROSOFT DEAL KING TO LAUNCH OWN FIRM
One of Microsoft's chief deal architects is leaving the software giant to start his own firm. — Bruce Jaffe - currently vice president of corporate development for Microsoft - plans to vacate his post at the end of February.
Context & Ripple Effects
Bruce Jaffe's departure is the third high-profile Microsoft exit-to-startup in the corpus's arc: an MSN manager left to launch a startup in October 2005, and Microsoft's top search executive walked out in March 2007. Now the man who ran corporate development — the group behind the company's acquisitions — follows the same path, confirming plans for his own firm when he leaves at the end of February.
The timing compounds an unusually busy stretch of executive churn: Jeff Raikes announced a retirement-and-transition plan through September 2008 with Juniper's Stephen Elop hired into the Business Division, all while Microsoft's online advertising push was winning over Wall Street despite lagging consumer search. The story travelled fast — Silicon Alley Insider picked it up the same week under a headline speculating about another Microsoft run at Yahoo, reading Jaffe's exit through the lens of the company's stalled dealmaking ambitions.
First-order effects
- Microsoft must backfill its corporate development chief while its acquisition strategy faces public scrutiny — the same week Valleywag reported the dealmaker going startup and syndication framed it around a possible renewed Yahoo bid.
Second-order effects
- With Raikes exiting and Elop arriving in parallel, Microsoft is simultaneously rebuilding both its business-division leadership and its M&A bench, raising execution risk across deals already in the pipeline.
Third-order effects
- If the 2005-2008 pattern holds — senior Microsoft operators repeatedly leaving to found their own ventures — the company functions as a talent incubator whose alumni compete with it from the startup side, a structural cost of scale that no retention program has yet reversed.
The trend: Mid-2000s Microsoft is exporting its most seasoned operators — search, MSN, and now corporate development — into independent ventures faster than it can retain them.