I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
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Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#2Ok, my take away: if I ever want to merge my team with another team, I'll avoid "but that team is better than us"
(not that I'll ever be in that situation in the foreseeable future anyway)
(pg's answer in this thread: "Whoah, I had no idea about any of this till now...")
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#3That hurt to read.
I'm expecting to be in a position where I could meaningfully influence any acquisition or merger (let alone a 125 million USD one), but knowing when to shut your mouth is a valuable skill to have in many situations.
I'll try to keep this in mind whenever I realize that I'm overexcited (which I tend to be).
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#4That hurt to read. I'm expecting to be in a position where I could meaningfully influence any acquisition or merger (let alone a 125 million USD one), but knowing when to shut your mouth is a valuable skill to have in many situations. I'll try to keep this in mind whenever I realize that I'm overexcited (which I tend to be).
*not expecting to be
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#5Nitter.net link. Here's the link that should have been submitted to HN assuming not all HN users have/want Twitter accounts: https://nitter.net/apartovi/status/1449856639331340289
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#6Integrity matters. Even if he hadn't gotten a big offer later on, he could still walk away with that.
Yes, you can argue that he could have just kept his mouth shut and still honestly taken the Yahoo deal, but he said what he thought was right and gave Yahoo some good judgement about pg's team.
I recently interviewed with a number of firms, and the ones that give off the best impression are the ones who ask to integrity at some point in the process. Hopefully this won't turn into the next "what's your greatest weakness" of interview questions. But firms doing the same thing in the same industry can often have a very different feel to them, and this is one of those things that might change your impression.
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#7In sales there is a term "know when to stop selling", this story is kind of a variant of that. If you have acceptable terms worked out, stop "selling", stop trying to show or add more value to the deal.
Close the deal you have, and then work on any new or additional things.
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#8Is this the same guy who recently posted about trying to bluff Steve Jobs, getting called out on it and losing a deal? I wonder how many more stories like these he has lol
Edit: found the link for those interested https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28826437
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#9Integrity matters. Even if he hadn't gotten a big offer later on, he could still walk away with that. Yes, you can argue that he could have just kept his mouth shut and still honestly taken the Yahoo deal, but he said what he thought was right and gave Yahoo some good judgement about pg's team. I recently interviewed with a number of firms, and the ones that give off the best impression are the ones who ask to integr…
Makes you wonder if behind the scenes, someone at Microsoft checked with someone at Yahoo and heard the story, and then Microsoft did the deal.
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#10Integrity matters. Even if he hadn't gotten a big offer later on, he could still walk away with that. Yes, you can argue that he could have just kept his mouth shut and still honestly taken the Yahoo deal, but he said what he thought was right and gave Yahoo some good judgement about pg's team. I recently interviewed with a number of firms, and the ones that give off the best impression are the ones who ask to integr…
How do you have integrity when you throw your own engineers under the bus?