I don't think there is a procedure that you can follow, but I think that if you assemble the right team and strike gold once, you can keep the gravy train rolling.
I'm using music as my model here. Some bands never make it (those guys who played your highschool house party in exchange for beer), some bands get lucky once but just didn't have the right team to keep it rolling (one hit wonders), and other bands get lucky once and do have the team to keep that sort of momentum going (I'd say The Beatles fits in here. Nobody really cares about their first hits, but they were a band for a while before 'getting discovered'.)
(In extraordinarily rare cases you have bands that arguably didn't strike gold through luck alone, but they are probably rare enough to right off.)
So OMGPOP got lucky and hit gold once. Maybe they had the right team to keep that rolling, maybe they didn't. Acquihiring surely puts a breaks on the possibility of having the right team to keep it rolling though.
I don't think "being acquired" (getting signed) kills a band quite like it kills a dev team though.
...maybe the trick is to acquihire dev-teams like labels sign bands.
I was working with the OMGPop office whilst they were releasing Draw Something.. Half the people who actually worked on Draw Something announced they were leaving shortly before the Zynga takeover was announced, so I suspect they were missing some key people
I'm using music as my model here. Some bands never make it (those guys who played your highschool house party in exchange for beer), some bands get lucky once but just didn't have the right team to keep it rolling (one hit wonders), and other bands get lucky once and do have the team to keep that sort of momentum going (I'd say The Beatles fits in here. Nobody really cares about their first hits, but they were a band for a while before 'getting discovered'.)
(In extraordinarily rare cases you have bands that arguably didn't strike gold through luck alone, but they are probably rare enough to right off.)
So OMGPOP got lucky and hit gold once. Maybe they had the right team to keep that rolling, maybe they didn't. Acquihiring surely puts a breaks on the possibility of having the right team to keep it rolling though.
I don't think "being acquired" (getting signed) kills a band quite like it kills a dev team though.
...maybe the trick is to acquihire dev-teams like labels sign bands.