Well, if we're defining "auction" to mean anything with competing options -- rather than its typical usage, which is price-only competition of something rather

Well, if we're defining "auction" to mean anything with competing options -- rather than its typical usage, which is price-only competition of something rather commodity-ish -- then sure. My process had elements of an auction - using competing options to determine "a market price" for various terms. BTW - the VCs also had that, in that they could have put that same capital to work in other companies vs mine. But that's not a pure auction. i.e. there's still room for qualitative choice and optimization on both sides. This should be most obvious to you in the non-monetary terms and how difficult it would be to translate into $ terms (for instance - how many seats on the board? How much lower/higher of price makes sense for more/fewer board seats? Well, for starters, it would depend on which VC is asking and what stage the biz is in). Clearly these aren't pure auctions. Because (back to my original point) this is possibly a 10+ year partnership you're getting into (longer than many marriages). A good process is more equivalent to (1) speed dating, which leads to (2) a handful of non-exclusive longer dates, (3) a period of exclusivity (no-shop) and 'meeting the family' (diligence), and then possibly, finally, (4) marriage.