Thanks for the advice, but we are not concerned with ruining the prospect.

We are ramen profitable and are going to succeed with our without an acquisition. We would just be on a different path.

A large reason we put this post out there, is to determine if it is something we are actually interested in.

Also, being able to be open with the world about what we are doing is one of my favorite parts about being in a start-up. One of our main goals with our startup is enjoy the experience. If YouTube really doesn't want to work with us because we mentioned our meeting publicly, it is an indication that it is not somewhere we want to work!

They are owned by a public company though, so they may have some sort of rules in place for talking about acquisitions before they happen.

I applaud you for this. Frankly you'll end up being more desirable if the company notices that you don't really care about them that much. As you say, it will send strong signals that you will succeed regardless and they'll probably want to acquire you now on the cheap than wait till you become too expensive. Don't listen to the other people that want you to jump hoops for something that may not even pan out.

That's pretty obtuse. You should certainly take their position into consideration, and even more certainly should be talking to a competent attorney with M&A experience about this.

I agree that is makes sense to respect companies you are working with wishes.

In this post though we are merely speculating as to the reason for the meeting and looking for advice from the HN community. If the company had suggested to us that we should keep the fact that we are having a meeting with them confidential, we certainly would have. It is definitely the right thing to do if people ask.

Yeah I know of a few YouTubers who post here.

Oh no, the YouTubers! Please. Huge cred to ryanjmo for being open, it should be like this.

This is good advice. HN is plagued with people posting when instead they should be speaking to attorneys.

Maybe, but what we were looking for in this post was to get a feel for what the general experience was like for people who have been through it. We aren't seeking legal advice at all. If we were, I agree that HN is certainly not the place we'd turn to.