121–130 of 137 posts
Perhaps this is superfluous in light of all good advice youlve already received, but: these guys are not doing you a favor! You owe them nothing. There is no reason whatsoever to cut them any slack. You have something they want and you can make them bleed to get it. Honestly, these are the same tactics as employed by Moroccan carpet salesmen.
> We're about 5 years old and are highly profitable and have been for a while. If highly profitable means you all earn enough money to drive the car you want, live in a comfortable house and take your family to holidays once in a while, you are on the right path and continue to walk it. Why should you bother with additional risks if you have job you like and it earns you enough?
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Fully agreed, I also completely fail to understand how they got this far without a set of good advisors.
Either they do have a good set of advisors and they're just being thorough by asking HN (free advice from smart people, what's not to like?) or you have a new datapoint about the necessity of advisors.
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To me that would be reason enough to make sure I negotiated the deal... Sure. By "reject the offer" I mean to reject that offer, not that the offer couldn't be revised to become acceptable. If the deal is good they might be lowballing them anyway and they're scared the other party finds out by how much. It might be a good deal, but trying to convince someone to not consult advisors indicates to me a certain lack of e…
> Sure. By "reject the offer" I mean to reject that offer, not that the offer couldn't be revised to become acceptable. Ok, in that case I would word it as 'we're taking it under consideration' to buy some time to regroup. And then respond after thinking things over with a counter-offer, not with a rejection. > As a general rule I don't think it's good to make deals with people you don't trust. As a general rule, I'd…
We're definitely green as far as this stuff goes but that's because we've existed in our niche bubble for the last 5-10 years and never really had much reason to go speak to anyone besides our general counsel and CPA. None of us have any business training beyond what we've picked up along the way.
Shop around now. You have 1 offer. You're quite likely to get a much better offer (by either the current oferee (?) or another one), with just a few weeks of work. Shop around, for real. "Has (without saying so) implied that they make an offer and that is it" -> standard negotiation practice. Shop around, even if "selling" isn't your strong point. Practically, tell them you need some time to think this through. Then,…
Just to address this, we will not receive another offer. Period. It's annoying that I can't fully explain that without blowing our cover, but you'll just have to take my word on it :)
In the worst case, they could fire us on day #2 and we'd have only the token money we got up front to show for it. To me, this would be enough to immediately reject the offer. I don't believe in doing deals which make my worst case worse unless I will be in a position where I can prevent the worst case from happening -- and it doesn't sound like you'd have any way to avoid getting screwed here. they've expressed to u…
> Any time someone tries to convince you to not consult your advisors, run away immediately. In most cases, you're absolutely right. With investment bankers, completely different. Investment bankers will turn this into a process, try to pick up multiple bidders, and add to the complexity of trying to get the deal done. In general, bankers (not lawyers!) can be harmful to a deal. They could be telling him that they're…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sure. By "reject the offer" I mean to reject that offer, not that the offer couldn't be revised to become acceptable. Ok, in that case I would word it as 'we're taking it under consideration' to buy some time to regroup. And then respond after thinking things over with a counter-offer, not with a rejection. > As a general rule I don't think it's good to make deals with people you don't trust. As a general rule, I'd…
Well the reason we got this far is because we spent the last decade of our lives working extremely hard to make products that people in our industry want. That is all we did. No networking, no events, etc. If we needed money we either figured out a way to make do or we took pay cuts. An exit never occurred to us because we were too busy doing what we do. We're definitely green as far as this stuff goes but that's bec…
Play it careful!
drop me a line. i'm well versed in this process, the current environment, etc.
This looks like classical negotiation tactics from people knowing how to play hardball. They try to take control of the situation by setting limits to the offer. YOU DON'T HAVE TO ACCEPT THESE LIMITS !!! THIS IS A CLASSICAL NEGOTIATION TRAP NEWBIES FALL INTO !!! THEY WILL TRY TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE THAT SURRENDERING TO ANY OF YOUR COUNTER REQUESTS IS A VALUABLE CONCESSION. IT IS NOT. THEY HAVE SET THE OFFER FAR TOO LOW…
Good stuff, all of it. Especially the point about getting an experience negotiator in there, you are not the right person at the table because you have too much riding on this deal.