Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Exploding Offers Suck

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 178 posts

Re: Exploding Offers Suck

#61

Post by fecak »

mrfusion wrote: post #57
fecak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employment offers tend to be exploding because a company has a single need and doesn't want to lose every candidate because they are waiting for their top choice. Almost every offer of every kind 'explodes' at some point. It's the duration until the explosion that varies. I'm sure YC will make you reapply for future consideration, just as companies can not be expected to honor your employment offer if you defer for a…

What's a normal period for exploding employment offers? Is 2 days a lot or a little?

In my experience two days is low. 5-10 days is more common, and most companies are fairly willing to negotiate beyond that given some circumstances. It's not common to see candidates rejected if they try to accept an offer after it explodes.

Re: Exploding Offers Suck

#62

Post by larrys »

tptacek wrote: post #54
larrys wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A dear friend and excellent negotiator told me that when he gets any kind of short-term exploding offer, the first thing he does" As someone who considers himself an excellent negotiator (and gets paid to do negotiating) [1] I'd really caution someone from employing a technique that someone else uses that you don't have experience with. Negotiating is all nuance it's not engineering or an exact science. Go try and r…

Deliberately waiting until the offer ostensibly expires seems like an advanced technique, but simply disregarding the time frame seems pretty safe. Exploding offers are incredibly weak; they're a way of slapping your negotiating floor on the table before your counterparty says a word. There's something to be said for the idea that losing a seed funding deal to term explosion is a dodged bullet, too.

"but simply disregarding the time frame seems pretty safe"

All depends. Once again you could be right but I could also argue under the theory that "once you make a sale you close and get your ass out of dodge". Because things can and do change.

Keep in mind that an open offer not taken can be withdrawn. Or new information can come up which makes it less attractive or gives someone a reason to change their mind. I offer this not as specific advice given the topic but more generally that there are deals that are lost by "dicking around".

I've both seen this happen to others and have had it happen to deals I have done.

In one case Se______a Capital wanted to buy something that I had. I decided to go for a higher amount. Something happened and then they didn't want it at any price. Not even the original offer. Not at all.

Same technique I had used for years that never failed. But it failed in this case.

But there is a difference in my case. It's part of my business to sell what they were trying to buy from me. It wasn't a one shot deal. So I could afford to employ a method that had worked for me for years and be wrong in this one instance.

Re: Exploding Offers Suck

#63

Post by davemel37 »

malgorithms wrote: post #9

A dear friend and excellent negotiator told me that when he gets any kind of short-term exploding offer, the first thing he does is verbally reject the deadline. And the second thing he does is ignore the deadline and offer feedback only after it has passed. I've seen him employ this many times in practice and it has always worked out. I don't want to be responsible for anyone losing a deal, but remember: when someon…

This reminds me of SharkTank where Mark Cuban would make a shot-clock offer and give 30 seconds for someone to accept the offer.

Here's the thing. Mark Cuban can walk away from any deal, at anytime and not feel like he is missing out.

So, while you are certainly getting the shorter end of the stick with an exploding offer...It's usually coming from a place where the person making the offer has enough leverage to be ok with losing the deal.

In this case, waiting will make you lose the deal.

Sometimes, a good enough offer is better than a slightly better offer.

More importantly, as Robert Ringer says, "The results you get out of a negotiation is inversely proportionate to how intimidated you are when negotiating."

Re: Exploding Offers Suck

#64

Post by rdlecler1 »

carbocation wrote: post #19
DanBlake wrote: post #6

It is pretty clear to see whats going on: It is without question that most people applying to incubators apply to a few of them, in case they don't get into the (obviously) best one, YC. Its my guess that some of the less exciting incubators give these exploding term sheets to make the founder think: "Damn, I got into Incubator X but I have to say yes in 48 hours. I wonder if I will get accepted into YC also when ans…

> These guys dont just want YC's cast-offs, after all. That is thoughtfully provocative. I have literally zero evidence to go from, but I suspect that Y Combinator is like Harvard or Yale: they could get rid of the group that they actually admit and go for the next tier, then achieve similar outcomes. (In other words: there are so many strong applicants that they can't take them all.) This is just to say that even ta…

You raise an interesting point. James Gosling went to my university for undergrad (U. Calgary) and then went on to do a PhD from Carnegie Mellon after being turned down everywhere else. The day of his graduation, they told him that each year they randomly accept one individual they originally rejected and that he was the first one to graduate. I'd love to see the results of this after a 5-year run.

Re: Exploding Offers Suck

#66

Post by mrfusion »

fecak wrote: post #61
mrfusion wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a normal period for exploding employment offers? Is 2 days a lot or a little?

In my experience two days is low. 5-10 days is more common, and most companies are fairly willing to negotiate beyond that given some circumstances. It's not common to see candidates rejected if they try to accept an offer after it explodes.

Thanks. Also wondering: should more senior people be offended by exploding offers. Architects, team leads, etc?

Re: Exploding Offers Suck

#67

Post by blazespin »

malgorithms wrote: post #9

A dear friend and excellent negotiator told me that when he gets any kind of short-term exploding offer, the first thing he does is verbally reject the deadline. And the second thing he does is ignore the deadline and offer feedback only after it has passed. I've seen him employ this many times in practice and it has always worked out. I don't want to be responsible for anyone losing a deal, but remember: when someon…

While I applaud Sam and his statement: "an accelerator that does the wrong thing for founders will not last long.", your advice is wrong. An offer is basically giving an option to sell for free. The longer the option is available, the more you're giving away. Exploding offers are just limits on how much people want to give away for free.

Re: Exploding Offers Suck

#68

Post by TeMPOraL »

carbocation wrote: post #19
DanBlake wrote: post #6

It is pretty clear to see whats going on: It is without question that most people applying to incubators apply to a few of them, in case they don't get into the (obviously) best one, YC. Its my guess that some of the less exciting incubators give these exploding term sheets to make the founder think: "Damn, I got into Incubator X but I have to say yes in 48 hours. I wonder if I will get accepted into YC also when ans…

> These guys dont just want YC's cast-offs, after all. That is thoughtfully provocative. I have literally zero evidence to go from, but I suspect that Y Combinator is like Harvard or Yale: they could get rid of the group that they actually admit and go for the next tier, then achieve similar outcomes. (In other words: there are so many strong applicants that they can't take them all.) This is just to say that even ta…

> I have literally zero evidence to go from, but I suspect that Y Combinator is like Harvard or Yale: they could get rid of the group that they actually admit and go for the next tier, then achieve similar outcomes.

I agree with this, and I don't think that actually needs much evidence. It follows straight from assuming that:

- YC has prestige and is recognized as a top accelerator (which is true)

- YC is competent at picking strong applicants (which also appears to be true)

- there is no magical cutoff in the applicant pool where applicants below it are significantly worse than above it, and the cutoff point happens to be exactly at the point where YC stops accepting people (proposing the opposite would require serious evidence)

Re: Exploding Offers Suck

#70

Post by mathattack »

davemel37 wrote: post #63
malgorithms wrote: post #9

A dear friend and excellent negotiator told me that when he gets any kind of short-term exploding offer, the first thing he does is verbally reject the deadline. And the second thing he does is ignore the deadline and offer feedback only after it has passed. I've seen him employ this many times in practice and it has always worked out. I don't want to be responsible for anyone losing a deal, but remember: when someon…

This reminds me of SharkTank where Mark Cuban would make a shot-clock offer and give 30 seconds for someone to accept the offer. Here's the thing. Mark Cuban can walk away from any deal, at anytime and not feel like he is missing out. So, while you are certainly getting the shorter end of the stick with an exploding offer...It's usually coming from a place where the person making the offer has enough leverage to be o…

Also about how many options you have for yourself. You never want to put yourself in a situation where you might get an exploding offer without something else in hand.

Unfortunately I didn't follow this advice when recently buying a car.

Post reply on HN