It's a lot of time, but it's probably more important that it's psychologically destructive. As soon as you've invested any meaningful time into an acquisition discussion, it becomes very difficult to manage the company as a going concern and to make good long-term decisions about it. You're explicitly contemplating ending the company.
You mostly don't need the "don't talk to corpdev" advice once you've found product/market fit, unit profitability, whatever; it's more obvious whether the discussion is a waste of time or not. But early on, it's an especially hazardous thing to do, because you're not anchored to a specific conception of how your business is going to operate.
That's a super interesting point... even if you're fine financially and the acquirer doesn't sabotage you, you've fundamentally damaged the company by exploring acquisition.
Like if somebody goes from working hard on a marriage to seriously investigating divorce. Even if they decide divorce was too expensive or whatever, they're never getting back to even the problematic state they were in before they called a lawyer.
To make matters worse, corp dev people are absolutely aware of the dynamics --- they're more aware of them than you are, because this is their entire job, where you might engage with it once or twice in a whole career --- and are selected for their expertise at manipulating the dynamic. They will, if they're seriously targeting you, deliberately bait a hook and keep you on the line long enough for walking away from a deal to be especially painful.
I think Paul Graham pretty much has this topic locked up and can't see how you'd express it better.
I investigated divorce months before marrying and we made sure that if it had to happen, like to 55% of mariages around us, we d make it as painless as possible rather than total chaotic surprise. I suppose there must be a corporate equivalent ?
You mostly don't need the "don't talk to corpdev" advice once you've found product/market fit, unit profitability, whatever; it's more obvious whether the discussion is a waste of time or not. But early on, it's an especially hazardous thing to do, because you're not anchored to a specific conception of how your business is going to operate.