2) The whole team would go into the office, meet with the founder/executive sponsor(s) for 30-45m to chat casually, then engineers (me) would break out for our interviews. Felt mostly like a final round interview day - mostly technical interviews and a couple cultural interviews (probably to make sure we fit with the vibe at the acquirer). During our interviews, the founder would have some 1:1s with other company leaders (their interviews). Usually we went back to our office after and debriefed as a team.
Another strange thing about the process that’s worth mentioning is the founder negotiated all our offers at the acquirer and we let her know ahead of time what we wanted for salary, equity, etc. No idea if this is standard, but I imagine it helped streamline the negotiations.