13 ms·

One painful meeting with Steve Jobs

215 points by coolandsmartrr 5y ago

spaetzleesser 5y ago
On a smaller scale I knew people like Jobs. They constantly lied about things but at the same time really resented when others lied. One guy who constantly cheated on his wife was totally outraged when she did the same once. And because they were experienced liars themselves they were good at assessing others. That's how the story reads to me.
- analognoise 5y ago
  Yup, and it's a manipulation tactic to make you show your belly - which this guy still does, years later.
siva7 5y ago
So jobs never lied to advance his company? Or is the message more like to not lie at the wrong moment?
- yoz-y 5y ago
  Don't lie to the wrong people I guess. Or don't get caught.
- swalsh 5y ago
  It is perhaps why he is acutely aware of the danger.
- shultays 5y ago
  I guess the point is "just don't get caught, at least until the lie does not matter. be wary of the stakes when you lie"
- smiley1437 5y ago
  It’s like being a good poker player. Listen to Kenny Rogers
  - stormking 5y ago
    In poker, you'd call a bluff. You wouldn't get mad at the other player and call him a liar.
- rexreed 5y ago
  The better you are at strategic deception, the easier it is to smell out others who are deceiving. Is it a lie? Is it an exaggeration? Is it a forward-looking prediction? Is it just a fabrication? Does it matter? When you're in the room with someone who is clearly a master of wielding the Reality Distortion Field, don't think you can go in as a rank amateur and beat him as his own game. It would have been better to just say "make us an offer" without making any claims at all, and then leave it up to the negotiation. On the other side, lying to investors these days about revenue, customers, or financials can get you screwed if things go south. Even if it's just in a pitch deck.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Reading this comment made me extremely sad, thinking about all the young geniuses who will be pitching their product to $NEXT_CORP but getting rejected because they didn't copy enough pages out of the Steve Jobs playbook. I weep for the future.
    - rexreed 5y ago
      Pitching your company to be acquired by the next corp is in itself a form of sadness. While exits are great when they have great outcomes, 9 times out of 10 (maybe more), these acquisitions end up providing less benefit for the founders that sell their company than they might expect. The sheer number of fire sales, acquihires, ripoff acquisitions, and more shows that acquisition by BIGCORP shouldn't be blindly seen as a success. In fact, when I see an acquisiton announcement from a company I really liked working with I can't help but feel sad for what I know will be a likely outcome: the death of the product I like so much. Focus on building things people want and building a sustainable company that can grow and continue to provide benefit. Not the tech startup equivalent of house flipping where you build something that's not meant to last in hopes of flipping for a return. When you raise venture capital, especially, these stakes are poor. Build to last. Build to compete. Build to make your customers thrilled. Never build to flip.
- mirker 5y ago
  To me it seems like there was way more leverage from Apple’s side, so the “negotiation” was really a nicety, which was subsequently reverted. The company was eventually sold at a loss rather than breaking even, so the true market value was ultimately less than what Jobs was offering when the claim was it was worth 3x more.
Balarny 5y ago
Even outside of the whole wider decades-long "Jobs: Sinner or Saint" discussion, it's interesting to see from this one incident just what kind of things don't even register as questionable in certain "dog eat dog" business circles. Both the OP and the replies not only pay little attention to the fact Jobs called OP a liar in a very aggressive way simply for using the almost intrinsically abstract English language in a subjective way ("I know" vs "I think"), they seem to almost think Jobs should be thanked for giving OP a character building experience. He could even have been blunt without sugar coating it: "I admire your conviction, but you won't ["I don't think you will"? lol] be able to make those targets and so we can't go ahead. Best of luck." To then go on to steal the idea anyway? That's just Grade A Hole. I understand large companies dealing with large amounts of money need to be ruthless, but I've always hated this kind of attitude (in general, not just Jobs) edit: to be clear I'm not saying OP didn't pull the figures out of his arse, just that it quite clearly wasn't an attempt to be deceptive based on the language he used around it
- coldtea 5y ago
  >simply for using the almost intrinsically abstract English language in a subjective way ("I know" vs "I think") If you use "intrinsically abstract English language in a subjective way" in multi-million dollar deals or in medicinal practice, and you stand to benefit from it, then you could very well be a liar, or if sincere extremely dangerous to others...
- martyvis 5y ago
  Actually, OP says here his intent was to deceive - and Jobs picked up on it. https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447324896904638467?t=ou-kcurB8RUUfgvZC1KHRw&s=19 https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447324896904638467?t=ou...
  - mattbee 5y ago
    I took from this that the OP assumed Jobs wouldn't be too price-sensitive. And that he would be happy to pay a small premium to get the feature into iTunes faster. And that a little - err - negotiating fudge in the opening meeting might fly under the radar. Jobs would have had an estimate of what it would take to copy the feature - way less than $50m, just not quite as quickly. It surely wouldn't have made a lot of difference (to Apple) if Jobs had laughed off the bluster, and negotiated back down to pretty much any number they liked, maybe even less than $50m. But the asshole vibe from Jobs comes from the fact that he clearly didn't value the feature that much. It was more valuable to wait for his own team to build it slower, and send the CEO away with a flea in their ear pour encourager les autres. So I'm sure that story got heard by plenty of other potential Apple acquisitions, and saved Apple a lot of money down the line.
huseyinkeles 5y ago
To make it somehow easier to read: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1447251334814523392.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1447251334814523392.html
- retSava 5y ago
  Thanks. First thing I do when I see a HN post being a twitter thread, check comments for link to this (since I never remember the name of threadreaderapp). After all, that's at least 24 tweets. But this horse has been so badly beaten to pulp...
  - krallja 5y ago
    How is this a better experience? Threadreader puts ads in the middle of the tweet stream – on Twitter you can just read the thread, by scrolling. What is the point?
    - p49k 5y ago
      Twitter doesn’t load on iOS if you have even basic content blockers enabled. I’m guessing they are artificially crippling the site to make you disable ad blocking. Once you disable Adblock, you realize that clicking on almost anything will show a modal asking you to create an account (feels like playing minesweeper to find the links that will work). That modal - once opened - is unclosable until you make the account or start over. It’s incredibly frustrating to repeatedly enter this unclosable UI. You think it’s all over once you’ve disabled Adblock and created an account? Nope! Now you are harassed at every opportunity to “download the app”
plasma 5y ago
Reminds me of this story by Andy Miller who sold his company to Apple, and almost lost the chance during the meeting. https://youtu.be/k7f-51oy0OA https://youtu.be/k7f-51oy0OA Starts at 26m50s
- moreira 5y ago
  Off-topic, but if you do https://youtu.be/k7f-51oy0OA?t=26m50s https://youtu.be/k7f-51oy0OA?t=26m50s instead of typing the time separately, it'll load the video straight at the right time. Edit: Loved watching it by the way, thank you for the link!
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  Steve may have changed the world, and Andy would have made a lot of money... but life is too short - I promised myself to never work for an asshole ever again and so I cringed watching these two in the video glorify Steve's asshole behavior. If Steve leaned over to me and changed price during negotiation, or told me to fire everyone who didn't want to move from Boston to Cupertino (if that wasn't part of the original deal), I would have walked. But that laugh, saying a project would have taken 6 months but only given 4 weeks... stop glorifying martyrdom people!
  - mempko 5y ago
    The problem with people in general is we don't know how to deal with sociopaths. Unfortunately we seem to glorify them here on HN. As a computer person who loves them, Steve made them worse not better. We live in a world where most computers are now locked down, spyware laden, ad serving, micro transaction sucking, subscription rent seeking, pieces of garbage. When I look at iPhones and iPads I get sad for the children.
    - mcphage 5y ago
      > We live in a world where most computers are now locked down, spyware laden, ad serving, micro transaction sucking, subscription rent seeking, pieces of garbage. When I look at iPhones and iPads I get sad for the children. Interesting in that some of those items Apple pushes for, and some of those items Apple pushes very hard against.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
molbioguy 5y ago
The lesson is about greed. Risk always accompanies greedy moves and you have to calculate that risk before taking action. Without solid facts to back him up, going in so hot against Steve Jobs and Apple was too risky.
- Someone1234 5y ago
  The lesson is about leverage. $50M isn't greed when that amount was already invested into the venture. You accept that offer you're repaying your investors and walking away with nothing. Apple was leveraging their position to lowball a smaller company. Ultimately the smaller company upset the bigger one, and even the "charity" was withdrawn, and the bigger company used their vast wealth/resources to crush the smaller.
  - microtherion 5y ago
    I think the mistake was to try negotiating the price with Steve, who was known for hardball negotiation tactics, and for lowball offers. Once Steve's position was out there, it was difficult for other Apple execs to negotiate a more reasonable price, especially considering, as you say, what little leverage the smaller company had. And the smaller company had no real incentive to take the lowball offer at the time.
  - molbioguy 5y ago
    Leverage is the risk. Asking for 3 times what's initially offerred is greed. Greed isn't bad, per se, it just entails a risk.
    - Someone1234 5y ago
      The suspect the problem with the point you're trying to make is that you're using the term "greed." Greed has implied immorality to it. It wasn't "greedy" to ask for over $50M, because $50M was what was already invested into the company. When another company wants to acquire you, it is normal and expected for you to make profit on that acquisition. 3x current valuation isn't, to me, "greedy." Quite reasonable in fact.
raverbashing 5y ago
Yeah, this was an easy blunder to make, especially if you're inexperienced. Jobs's reaction is the least important part of the story. It is, as someone else said, about leverage. And board-room dynamics. Jobs probably did not care if it was 50Mi, 150Mi or 1Bi. He cared it was a fair price, sure. But he was there to seal the deal, not to worry about peanuts or negotiate that. He probably didn't even care about the actual numbers if it was under 1Bi. And after all it's what, 50Mi for a sidebar? They just rebuilt it. It's a feature not a product. Take the money.
numair 5y ago
This guy had an inside deal with Facebook for his platform app, yet he claims that Facebook somehow screwed him over and ... wait ... did he really state in writing that he thinks his company came up with the Like button? Oh my God, where do we even go with this. It’s amazing what people will say to look good to others — if Facebook wasn’t considered evil (finally!) I’m sure he’d be telling us of how he was so lucky to have an “insider view” on the company, as so many used to humble-brag years ago. FriendFeed didn’t really go anywhere but they did in fact pioneer the use of “like” as an interest graph builder within the context of a social network. If you’re at YC, I am sure Paul can tell you the real story on this (which I don’t know myself, but I’m sure it’s good). In terms of the basic concept of the like action, however — there was a failed dotcom (like.com I think?) that really started the whole idea in the web world. Well, that and all of the fake profiles people were creating on Friendster and MySpace for the things they liked, which everyone involved in the industry was noticing as an “emergent behavior.” This guy’s claim is almost as comical as all of the people who claim they came up with the Facebook Platform, yet can’t come up with a compelling platform strategy to save their lives, or the lives of any of their employers. I guess Steve was right (and I’m sure he walked into that meeting with some background intel).
- dustintrex 5y ago
  (deleted, I was wrong)
  - p49k 5y ago
    He does in fact make this claim directly in the tweet thread: ...Facebook copied our signature feature: the “iLike button.” (They were kind enough to call in advance to inform us.)
SiVal 5y ago
Yes, well the same Steve Jobs who denied being the father of his daughter, who dumped the burden of supporting his daughter on ordinary working taxpayers while he counted his first hundred million, this was the guy who called someone who was convinced his company was worth more a liar for saying he knew it. And even got the guy to feel bad about his sin. Amazing. It was all part of his extraordinary toolbox of manipulative tools, the "reality distortion field" that his admirers spoke of. I got to see him behind closed doors in meetings when he was at NeXT. If you want to see Steve Jobs in a private meeting, watch the scene in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross where Alec Baldwin tells the salesmen that they are losers because the Baldwin character drives a more expensive car. Steve literally did that in one meeting, answering a question about why he didn't do such-and-such with a "I drive a Porsche and you drive a General Motors car" as his argument for why his superior wisdom must not be questioned by losers.
- jccc 5y ago
  > called someone who was convinced his company was worth more a liar for saying he knew it. No, that wasn’t the lie. From the horse’s mouth: “I was intentionally pretending we had another offer, and he detected it.” https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447324896904638467 https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447324896904638467
  - SiVal 5y ago
    You're making a good point while still, I think, missing mine. You, the author, I probably all tell ourselves and others things that we "know" that we mostly hope for. "I know I'm going to lose ten pounds before Christmas." Do you really "know"? Do you have a time machine? And maybe one friend expressed support, so, "...and other people agree with me!" Well, you're implying more than one person, probably without feeling bad about it unless someone challenges you. "How many people? What are their names?" Oops. Now, we're in trouble. My point is the irony of feeling bad and learning a lesson about being completely honest when caught by a master famed for "reality distortion". Reality distortion is almost literally truth stretching. No doubt the master of doing it was a master at detecting it, but that didn't mean he was deeply committed to the truth himself. He was deeply committed to and famously skilled at manipulating but not being manipulated, which is not at all the same thing.
seanwilson 5y ago
> I replied, “I don’t think our investors would accept this.” (We’d been hoping to raise new money at a $150M valuation, and had floated this to potential new investors. There’d been some interest, though no serious takers.) > And then, my terrible mistake, a moment that I’ve regretted ever since: “Actually, I know we’re worth three times as much.” /14 I don't see how it's reasonable at all to pounce on this as a lie if you mean it in the sense of having a strong belief and say this when asked to clarify.
- traceroute66 5y ago
  > I don't see how it's reasonable at all to pounce on this as a lie if you mean it in the sense of having a strong belief and say this when asked to clarify. Did you read the entire Twitter thread ? Higher up in the thread the guy said that Steve asked him > “how much is your revenue?” And also, “what was your last financing valuation?” To which the guy gave him the answers. For the guy to then go back and arrogantly say “Actually, I know we’re worth three times as much.” I would call that a lie, wouldn't you ? He only just gave Steve the hard numbers a few minutes before, and now he's claiming he "knows" they are worth more ? I'm afraid I'm on Steve's side on this one, i.e. "Don't waste my time and I won't waste yours". Business negotiations should always take place around hard facts and figures. If you start to try to introduce fluffy subjective nonsense that you cannot back up with facts into the discussion, like this guy did, you'll most likely be shown to the nearest door.
  - seanwilson 5y ago
    > If you start to try to introduce fluffy subjective nonsense that you cannot back up with facts into the discussion I get that, but labelling someone a liar is much stronger than this.
    - traceroute66 5y ago
      I guess we could talk till the cows come home about interpretations of English language and things that get said in the heat of the moment. Ultimately in this story I think the crux lies in the guy's failure to take the "work out the details with Eddy" hint. That was the real point of no return, everything else after that was just a case of when, not if, the things would fall apart. Eddy (or the Eddy like character in other scenarios) is the guy who has more time for you than the CEO and is likely more willing to give you more rope to hang yourself in terms of exploring things like valuation boundaries. By seeking to go above the Eddy in the room and negotiate "right there" with the CEO in the room you are only opening yourself up to being eaten for breakfast. The CEO has a million things on their mind and likely doesn't have the time or mental capacity for the details. By openly seeking to go above the Eddy in the room, you are openly both stepping on Eddy's toes and potentially sending a message to the CEO that you don't trust the Eddy. Thinking you can close an M&A deal then and there with the CEO just like you would sell a widget is a bit arrogant and naïve.
Invictus0 5y ago
I've seen that "piercing look" as he calls it--in business, trust is everything. Of course everyone is posturing and throwing their weight around to get the best deal, but as soon as you even hint of telling an outright lie it would be the death of you.
MontyCarloHall 5y ago
>Steve focused his gaze on me and asked, “how much is your revenue?” And also, “what was your last financing valuation?” >I replied that our last round had been two years earlier, pre-launch, at a $50M valuation. >Steve said, “we’d probably acquire you for $50 million.” My heart sank. I couldn’t imagine telling our team that their years of work had created no new value. The biggest mistake was conflating valuation on paper with liquid value. The team’s years of work had turned an entirely theoretical $50M into $50M in cash. The value created was $50M minus however much the funders actually gave the company. As an extreme example, suppose I offer to buy a one billionth share of a startup for $1 today, thereby giving the startup a $1B valuation on paper. It would be insane to call it a failure if that startup actually managed to sell itself for $1B or even $500M two years down the road.
- kovek 5y ago
  This is the discussion I’m curious about. Is there some theory around valuing something? Are we declaring that a company will be worth X Net capital in Y years? Actually, I believe investors try to maintain a P/E of around 15 (or 20-30 these days?). So, the question “how much is your revenue?” makes sense, which we don’t know if it was answered by iLike. Another question is, what will the employees pursue once they know that their acquisition strategy will not work? I’m sure the employees are skilled, so I would hope they have an alternative: 1. pivot, 2. Show off their achievements when applying to other companies
- buescher 5y ago
  But then your dollar, two years down the road, is worth... $1 or even $0.50. Smells like failure to me, except to those who paid less than $0.50 for their shares. Would you invest with them again?
  - MontyCarloHall 5y ago
    From the company’s perspective, either case is a success story: you walk away with $999,999,999 or $499,999,999.50. From the investor’s perspective, while certainly not a resounding success, not necessarily an abject failure either. Perhaps in those two years the nature of the market the company competes in becomes clear and the investor realizes that they had grossly overvalued the company. Perhaps the company is actually worth $10. Then, by some miracle, someone offers to buy the company at something close to its initial overvaluation. Breaking even or even losing 50% of your investment is preferable to losing 100% of it. In this particular case, given that both Apple and Facebook were both able to implement this company’s entire product in a matter of weeks, I’d say the investor’s initial valuation was inflated, and they should have been happy to break even.
tcskeptic 5y ago
Seems to me the wrong lesson was taken -- they were prepared for a presentation not a negotiations. They unwisely jumped the gun into a negotiation at the end of a negotiation. They got their ass handed to them for being unprepared. What they said was not out of line, just unprepared.
gary17the 5y ago
I will never understand why people allow themselves to be humiliated, stressed and abused in the name of "being educated" by so called technological geniuses, who are narcissistically used to being worshiped by everyone around them just because they are (ephemerally) famous and have a ton of money. IMHO, neither iPhones in particular, nor smartphones in general have really altered the course of the world in any meaningful way. A couple of generations of youngsters will, indeed, spend half of their lives with their faces glued to mobile screens, but then some new technological trend will arrive replacing the old one or perhaps dumping technology altogether will become the new riot. Sooner or later no one will even remember who Steve Jobs was (while names like William Shakespeare or Ernest Hemingway will deservedly live forever, BTW).
- simonh 5y ago
  The guy knowingly, intentionally tried to deceive Steve. That was the explicit intent, and Steve picked up on it and didn't like it. How is that Steve abusing someone? That's some pretty impressive reality distortion you've got going on there. To be clear it took a lot of stones for this guy to tell his story and clarify what his intent was. Deep respect.
  - gary17the 5y ago
    So the guy panicked and bluffed during business negotiations that he wasn't really trained for - so what? Could happen to anyone under pressure and facing disappointment of an unexpectedly low offer. Jobs, supposedly an experienced business professional, could have just coldly smiled, Warren Buffet -style, and could have sent the rookie on his way with a 2/3 offer just to make a point and educate him. Instead, Jobs started calling the poor guy a liar in front of his co-founders, stormed out of the meeting and, in the end, screwed every single person in the entire startup by shamelessly copying their product. To me, it seems like behavior of a Yet Another (Proverbial) Silicon Valley Narcissistic A-hole (YAPSVNA).
    - analognoise 5y ago
      Yeah, who would praise somebody so undeveloped emotionally? What a small, small man. Then you read about how he treated his family and his employees - he was just a tiny thing of a human being. It's sad - like a self-contained parable about how to not live your life.
tim_cookie 5y ago
The guy was bullshitting and got caught. Period. But the kind of mental gymnastics people in the comments section do to defend Steve is impressive. I'll have you know I'm not that rude in meetings like Steve was :P
thatguy0900 5y ago
I was expecting this to be about his "elevator meetings", where he would ask people in the elevator with him what it was they did and decide whether to fire them or not.
smoyer 5y ago
O.T. but every time I see "baited breath" I imagine the Sardine Bait and Tackle" shop in "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" putting a lure in the speakers mouth. What's worse, "bated breath" doesn't mean what the speaker really intends - https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bated https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bated.
hartator 5y ago
I think the team unwillingness to discuss pricing with Eddy was a dick move to Eddy.
stared 5y ago
It looks like anchoring - since he mentioned a $50M valuation, this number stuck in Steve's mind. In this way, negotiating upwards (by a factor of 3) is an uphill battle.
jmkni 5y ago
Interesting thread. I can't help but think this deal would have fallen apart sooner or later anyway. At one point somebody from Apple would have asked the questions Steve Jobs asked, the same offer would have been made and the response would have been the same (we are worth more, etc).
mirker 5y ago
I don’t know much about acquisitions, so what is the incentive of the acquisition from the buyer’s side? Apple and Facebook seemed to create clones of the functionality pretty easily, so the main purchase benefit seems risk over implementation timeline. What am I missing?
- emaginniss 5y ago
  The acquisition can bring along customers and partnerships that would be difficult to create from scratch, especially when facing an entrenched competitor.
tomthecreator 5y ago
Pretty sure the "you're a liar" is just a convenient way to blow it off without going into details. The buy was probably already questionable even for $50m, a number Steve probably already knew even before they entered the room. The exchange showed that the founders were going to be stubborn about the price. So in the end this isn't "trust is everything in business, and Steve was offended" but simply "don't jump into negotiations with your pants down".
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  I think this is reasonable. What I think is slightly unreasonable and probably a sub text a few people is that anyone, the CEO of this company or not, thought that their value added to customers was worth $150 million to Apple. It was music suggestion and a like button. Clearly nothing the Apple couldn’t and didn’t just copy. $150 million for that? Perhaps another explanation is that Steve Jobs heard that number, realize the after enough of these meetings and acquisitions that dollars had lost their meaning, but this wasn’t worth it.
julienchastang 5y ago
Somewhat OT, but funny to see Ali P. on HN this AM. I went to high school with Ali and his twin brother. They were salutatorian and valedictorian (don't remember in which order). I think they (or one of the two) went on to do very well co-founding a company with the late Tony Hsieh.
SllX 5y ago
I remember years ago hoping Apple would acquire iLike. I was one of their earlier users that was at first just using the iTunes sidebar plug-in with a few friends and if I recall correctly this was shortly before Facebook announced they were becoming a platform, possibly before my first Facebook account where iLike was at least for a very short time one of the more popular widgets you could stick on your profile. Well all this time later, it’s fairly interesting to see how that Apple acquisition I wanted to see didn’t come to be. Ah well. What did we get instead. I think iLike went to MySpace, and Apple announced Ping?
fairity 5y ago
Outcomes like this happen when you don't have a strong BATNA. Maybe I'm being naive, but I'd rather spend my time securing a solid BATNA instead of learning how to become a skillful negotiator. After all, I'm never going to be nearly as good at negotiating as these corporate M&A honchos. But, if I have multiple interested parties or a solid fallback plan to a non-outcome, negotiating is pretty straightforward: "We'll just let the market decide on price."
karmakaze 5y ago
> I replied that our last round had been two years earlier, pre-launch, at a $50M valuation. Since then, we’d amassed 50M+ active users. > Steve said, “we’d probably acquire you for $50 million.” My heart sank. I couldn’t imagine telling our team that their years of work had created no new value. It was probably the valuation that was incorrect, or is invalidated by recent market changes. It could have been worth that much then, the value of the then-static product/users decreased, value was created since, but it's still only worth the same now. > “Did you say you ‘know’ you’re worth more? You have another offer?” Steve Jobs's gaze pierced holes through me. “Bullsh*. You’re lying to me. You’re full of sh*. We’re done here.” Steve had keen senses and didn't appreciate being lied to. Basically if you don't have another offer, how could you 'know' that?
- hnarn 5y ago
  It sounds like this guy just assumed that the initial valuation had to be correct, which is of course a childish way to look at the value of something. The value of anything, whether that's a multi-million dollar company or a Snickers bar, is decided by the market at the time it's placed in the market. If Apple is offering you $50M and everyone else is offering you less (or nothing), guess what, you're worth $50M. Maybe that's because you didn't sell yourself very well, but regardless your value is what other people are willing to pay.
  - karmakaze 5y ago
    I agree. I can also see how it would be so easy to fall into this logical trap. Having your past value anchored in your mind at 50M for so long while you continue to show value and users added then adding up to 50M would be hard to reason about and emotionally accept on the spot. Still saying "Steve, I think [...] Actually, I know we’re worth three times as much." was clearly outside the lines, speaking to someone with much more experience valuing companies being acquired.
kjkjadksj 5y ago
When are we going to stop posting twitter threads to this board?
DemocracyFTW 5y ago
Christ what an asshole.
_skzr 5y ago
A board member once gave me advice ahead of my first major acquisition meeting with the CEO of a mega corp. “You’re meeting the CEO. No matter what you talk about - Never, ever, ever discuss price with the CEO. You both have people who will do that for you.”
- weeblewobble 5y ago
  Yeah I've never been anywhere near M&A but that was my takeaway too. Steve blessed the acquisition, that's all you need from him. Seems like this guy would have been much better off keeping his mouth shut and letting the negotiations play out slowly. Truly a story of a social faux pas with huge consequences.
forgotmypw17 5y ago
https://nitter.kavin.rocks/apartovi/status/1447251334814523392 https://nitter.kavin.rocks/apartovi/status/14472513348145233...

On a smaller scale I knew people like Jobs. They constantly lied about things but at the same time really resented when others lied. One guy who constantly cheated on his wife was totally outraged when she did the same once. And because they were experienced liars themselves they were good at assessing others. That's how the story reads to me.

analognoise 5y ago
Yup, and it's a manipulation tactic to make you show your belly - which this guy still does, years later.

siva7 5y ago

So jobs never lied to advance his company? Or is the message more like to not lie at the wrong moment?

yoz-y 5y ago
Don't lie to the wrong people I guess. Or don't get caught.
swalsh 5y ago
It is perhaps why he is acutely aware of the danger.
shultays 5y ago
I guess the point is "just don't get caught, at least until the lie does not matter. be wary of the stakes when you lie"
smiley1437 5y ago
It’s like being a good poker player. Listen to Kenny Rogers
- stormking 5y ago
  In poker, you'd call a bluff. You wouldn't get mad at the other player and call him a liar.
rexreed 5y ago
The better you are at strategic deception, the easier it is to smell out others who are deceiving. Is it a lie? Is it an exaggeration? Is it a forward-looking prediction? Is it just a fabrication? Does it matter? When you're in the room with someone who is clearly a master of wielding the Reality Distortion Field, don't think you can go in as a rank amateur and beat him as his own game. It would have been better to just say "make us an offer" without making any claims at all, and then leave it up to the negotiation. On the other side, lying to investors these days about revenue, customers, or financials can get you screwed if things go south. Even if it's just in a pitch deck.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Reading this comment made me extremely sad, thinking about all the young geniuses who will be pitching their product to $NEXT_CORP but getting rejected because they didn't copy enough pages out of the Steve Jobs playbook. I weep for the future.
  - rexreed 5y ago
    Pitching your company to be acquired by the next corp is in itself a form of sadness. While exits are great when they have great outcomes, 9 times out of 10 (maybe more), these acquisitions end up providing less benefit for the founders that sell their company than they might expect. The sheer number of fire sales, acquihires, ripoff acquisitions, and more shows that acquisition by BIGCORP shouldn't be blindly seen as a success. In fact, when I see an acquisiton announcement from a company I really liked working with I can't help but feel sad for what I know will be a likely outcome: the death of the product I like so much. Focus on building things people want and building a sustainable company that can grow and continue to provide benefit. Not the tech startup equivalent of house flipping where you build something that's not meant to last in hopes of flipping for a return. When you raise venture capital, especially, these stakes are poor. Build to last. Build to compete. Build to make your customers thrilled. Never build to flip.
mirker 5y ago
To me it seems like there was way more leverage from Apple’s side, so the “negotiation” was really a nicety, which was subsequently reverted. The company was eventually sold at a loss rather than breaking even, so the true market value was ultimately less than what Jobs was offering when the claim was it was worth 3x more.

Balarny 5y ago

Even outside of the whole wider decades-long "Jobs: Sinner or Saint" discussion, it's interesting to see from this one incident just what kind of things don't even register as questionable in certain "dog eat dog" business circles. Both the OP and the replies not only pay little attention to the fact Jobs called OP a liar in a very aggressive way simply for using the almost intrinsically abstract English language in a subjective way ("I know" vs "I think"), they seem to almost think Jobs should be thanked for giving OP a character building experience. He could even have been blunt without sugar coating it: "I admire your conviction, but you won't ["I don't think you will"? lol] be able to make those targets and so we can't go ahead. Best of luck." To then go on to steal the idea anyway? That's just Grade A Hole. I understand large companies dealing with large amounts of money need to be ruthless, but I've always hated this kind of attitude (in general, not just Jobs) edit: to be clear I'm not saying OP didn't pull the figures out of his arse, just that it quite clearly wasn't an attempt to be deceptive based on the language he used around it

coldtea 5y ago
>simply for using the almost intrinsically abstract English language in a subjective way ("I know" vs "I think") If you use "intrinsically abstract English language in a subjective way" in multi-million dollar deals or in medicinal practice, and you stand to benefit from it, then you could very well be a liar, or if sincere extremely dangerous to others...
martyvis 5y ago
Actually, OP says here his intent was to deceive - and Jobs picked up on it. https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447324896904638467?t=ou-kcurB8RUUfgvZC1KHRw&s=19 https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447324896904638467?t=ou...
- mattbee 5y ago
  I took from this that the OP assumed Jobs wouldn't be too price-sensitive. And that he would be happy to pay a small premium to get the feature into iTunes faster. And that a little - err - negotiating fudge in the opening meeting might fly under the radar. Jobs would have had an estimate of what it would take to copy the feature - way less than $50m, just not quite as quickly. It surely wouldn't have made a lot of difference (to Apple) if Jobs had laughed off the bluster, and negotiated back down to pretty much any number they liked, maybe even less than $50m. But the asshole vibe from Jobs comes from the fact that he clearly didn't value the feature that much. It was more valuable to wait for his own team to build it slower, and send the CEO away with a flea in their ear pour encourager les autres. So I'm sure that story got heard by plenty of other potential Apple acquisitions, and saved Apple a lot of money down the line.

huseyinkeles 5y ago

To make it somehow easier to read: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1447251334814523392.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1447251334814523392.html

retSava 5y ago
Thanks. First thing I do when I see a HN post being a twitter thread, check comments for link to this (since I never remember the name of threadreaderapp). After all, that's at least 24 tweets. But this horse has been so badly beaten to pulp...
- krallja 5y ago
  How is this a better experience? Threadreader puts ads in the middle of the tweet stream – on Twitter you can just read the thread, by scrolling. What is the point?
  - p49k 5y ago
    Twitter doesn’t load on iOS if you have even basic content blockers enabled. I’m guessing they are artificially crippling the site to make you disable ad blocking. Once you disable Adblock, you realize that clicking on almost anything will show a modal asking you to create an account (feels like playing minesweeper to find the links that will work). That modal - once opened - is unclosable until you make the account or start over. It’s incredibly frustrating to repeatedly enter this unclosable UI. You think it’s all over once you’ve disabled Adblock and created an account? Nope! Now you are harassed at every opportunity to “download the app”

plasma 5y ago

Reminds me of this story by Andy Miller who sold his company to Apple, and almost lost the chance during the meeting. https://youtu.be/k7f-51oy0OA https://youtu.be/k7f-51oy0OA Starts at 26m50s

moreira 5y ago
Off-topic, but if you do https://youtu.be/k7f-51oy0OA?t=26m50s https://youtu.be/k7f-51oy0OA?t=26m50s instead of typing the time separately, it'll load the video straight at the right time. Edit: Loved watching it by the way, thank you for the link!
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
Steve may have changed the world, and Andy would have made a lot of money... but life is too short - I promised myself to never work for an asshole ever again and so I cringed watching these two in the video glorify Steve's asshole behavior. If Steve leaned over to me and changed price during negotiation, or told me to fire everyone who didn't want to move from Boston to Cupertino (if that wasn't part of the original deal), I would have walked. But that laugh, saying a project would have taken 6 months but only given 4 weeks... stop glorifying martyrdom people!
- mempko 5y ago
  The problem with people in general is we don't know how to deal with sociopaths. Unfortunately we seem to glorify them here on HN. As a computer person who loves them, Steve made them worse not better. We live in a world where most computers are now locked down, spyware laden, ad serving, micro transaction sucking, subscription rent seeking, pieces of garbage. When I look at iPhones and iPads I get sad for the children.
  - mcphage 5y ago
    > We live in a world where most computers are now locked down, spyware laden, ad serving, micro transaction sucking, subscription rent seeking, pieces of garbage. When I look at iPhones and iPads I get sad for the children. Interesting in that some of those items Apple pushes for, and some of those items Apple pushes very hard against.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

molbioguy 5y ago

The lesson is about greed. Risk always accompanies greedy moves and you have to calculate that risk before taking action. Without solid facts to back him up, going in so hot against Steve Jobs and Apple was too risky.

Someone1234 5y ago
The lesson is about leverage. $50M isn't greed when that amount was already invested into the venture. You accept that offer you're repaying your investors and walking away with nothing. Apple was leveraging their position to lowball a smaller company. Ultimately the smaller company upset the bigger one, and even the "charity" was withdrawn, and the bigger company used their vast wealth/resources to crush the smaller.
- microtherion 5y ago
  I think the mistake was to try negotiating the price with Steve, who was known for hardball negotiation tactics, and for lowball offers. Once Steve's position was out there, it was difficult for other Apple execs to negotiate a more reasonable price, especially considering, as you say, what little leverage the smaller company had. And the smaller company had no real incentive to take the lowball offer at the time.
- molbioguy 5y ago
  Leverage is the risk. Asking for 3 times what's initially offerred is greed. Greed isn't bad, per se, it just entails a risk.
  - Someone1234 5y ago
    The suspect the problem with the point you're trying to make is that you're using the term "greed." Greed has implied immorality to it. It wasn't "greedy" to ask for over $50M, because $50M was what was already invested into the company. When another company wants to acquire you, it is normal and expected for you to make profit on that acquisition. 3x current valuation isn't, to me, "greedy." Quite reasonable in fact.

raverbashing 5y ago

Yeah, this was an easy blunder to make, especially if you're inexperienced. Jobs's reaction is the least important part of the story. It is, as someone else said, about leverage. And board-room dynamics. Jobs probably did not care if it was 50Mi, 150Mi or 1Bi. He cared it was a fair price, sure. But he was there to seal the deal, not to worry about peanuts or negotiate that. He probably didn't even care about the actual numbers if it was under 1Bi. And after all it's what, 50Mi for a sidebar? They just rebuilt it. It's a feature not a product. Take the money.

numair 5y ago

This guy had an inside deal with Facebook for his platform app, yet he claims that Facebook somehow screwed him over and ... wait ... did he really state in writing that he thinks his company came up with the Like button? Oh my God, where do we even go with this. It’s amazing what people will say to look good to others — if Facebook wasn’t considered evil (finally!) I’m sure he’d be telling us of how he was so lucky to have an “insider view” on the company, as so many used to humble-brag years ago. FriendFeed didn’t really go anywhere but they did in fact pioneer the use of “like” as an interest graph builder within the context of a social network. If you’re at YC, I am sure Paul can tell you the real story on this (which I don’t know myself, but I’m sure it’s good). In terms of the basic concept of the like action, however — there was a failed dotcom (like.com I think?) that really started the whole idea in the web world. Well, that and all of the fake profiles people were creating on Friendster and MySpace for the things they liked, which everyone involved in the industry was noticing as an “emergent behavior.” This guy’s claim is almost as comical as all of the people who claim they came up with the Facebook Platform, yet can’t come up with a compelling platform strategy to save their lives, or the lives of any of their employers. I guess Steve was right (and I’m sure he walked into that meeting with some background intel).

dustintrex 5y ago
(deleted, I was wrong)
- p49k 5y ago
  He does in fact make this claim directly in the tweet thread: ...Facebook copied our signature feature: the “iLike button.” (They were kind enough to call in advance to inform us.)

SiVal 5y ago

Yes, well the same Steve Jobs who denied being the father of his daughter, who dumped the burden of supporting his daughter on ordinary working taxpayers while he counted his first hundred million, this was the guy who called someone who was convinced his company was worth more a liar for saying he knew it. And even got the guy to feel bad about his sin. Amazing. It was all part of his extraordinary toolbox of manipulative tools, the "reality distortion field" that his admirers spoke of. I got to see him behind closed doors in meetings when he was at NeXT. If you want to see Steve Jobs in a private meeting, watch the scene in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross where Alec Baldwin tells the salesmen that they are losers because the Baldwin character drives a more expensive car. Steve literally did that in one meeting, answering a question about why he didn't do such-and-such with a "I drive a Porsche and you drive a General Motors car" as his argument for why his superior wisdom must not be questioned by losers.

jccc 5y ago
> called someone who was convinced his company was worth more a liar for saying he knew it. No, that wasn’t the lie. From the horse’s mouth: “I was intentionally pretending we had another offer, and he detected it.” https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447324896904638467 https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447324896904638467
- SiVal 5y ago
  You're making a good point while still, I think, missing mine. You, the author, I probably all tell ourselves and others things that we "know" that we mostly hope for. "I know I'm going to lose ten pounds before Christmas." Do you really "know"? Do you have a time machine? And maybe one friend expressed support, so, "...and other people agree with me!" Well, you're implying more than one person, probably without feeling bad about it unless someone challenges you. "How many people? What are their names?" Oops. Now, we're in trouble. My point is the irony of feeling bad and learning a lesson about being completely honest when caught by a master famed for "reality distortion". Reality distortion is almost literally truth stretching. No doubt the master of doing it was a master at detecting it, but that didn't mean he was deeply committed to the truth himself. He was deeply committed to and famously skilled at manipulating but not being manipulated, which is not at all the same thing.

seanwilson 5y ago

> I replied, “I don’t think our investors would accept this.” (We’d been hoping to raise new money at a $150M valuation, and had floated this to potential new investors. There’d been some interest, though no serious takers.) > And then, my terrible mistake, a moment that I’ve regretted ever since: “Actually, I know we’re worth three times as much.” /14 I don't see how it's reasonable at all to pounce on this as a lie if you mean it in the sense of having a strong belief and say this when asked to clarify.

traceroute66 5y ago
> I don't see how it's reasonable at all to pounce on this as a lie if you mean it in the sense of having a strong belief and say this when asked to clarify. Did you read the entire Twitter thread ? Higher up in the thread the guy said that Steve asked him > “how much is your revenue?” And also, “what was your last financing valuation?” To which the guy gave him the answers. For the guy to then go back and arrogantly say “Actually, I know we’re worth three times as much.” I would call that a lie, wouldn't you ? He only just gave Steve the hard numbers a few minutes before, and now he's claiming he "knows" they are worth more ? I'm afraid I'm on Steve's side on this one, i.e. "Don't waste my time and I won't waste yours". Business negotiations should always take place around hard facts and figures. If you start to try to introduce fluffy subjective nonsense that you cannot back up with facts into the discussion, like this guy did, you'll most likely be shown to the nearest door.
- seanwilson 5y ago
  > If you start to try to introduce fluffy subjective nonsense that you cannot back up with facts into the discussion I get that, but labelling someone a liar is much stronger than this.
  - traceroute66 5y ago
    I guess we could talk till the cows come home about interpretations of English language and things that get said in the heat of the moment. Ultimately in this story I think the crux lies in the guy's failure to take the "work out the details with Eddy" hint. That was the real point of no return, everything else after that was just a case of when, not if, the things would fall apart. Eddy (or the Eddy like character in other scenarios) is the guy who has more time for you than the CEO and is likely more willing to give you more rope to hang yourself in terms of exploring things like valuation boundaries. By seeking to go above the Eddy in the room and negotiate "right there" with the CEO in the room you are only opening yourself up to being eaten for breakfast. The CEO has a million things on their mind and likely doesn't have the time or mental capacity for the details. By openly seeking to go above the Eddy in the room, you are openly both stepping on Eddy's toes and potentially sending a message to the CEO that you don't trust the Eddy. Thinking you can close an M&A deal then and there with the CEO just like you would sell a widget is a bit arrogant and naïve.

Invictus0 5y ago

I've seen that "piercing look" as he calls it--in business, trust is everything. Of course everyone is posturing and throwing their weight around to get the best deal, but as soon as you even hint of telling an outright lie it would be the death of you.

MontyCarloHall 5y ago

>Steve focused his gaze on me and asked, “how much is your revenue?” And also, “what was your last financing valuation?” >I replied that our last round had been two years earlier, pre-launch, at a $50M valuation. >Steve said, “we’d probably acquire you for $50 million.” My heart sank. I couldn’t imagine telling our team that their years of work had created no new value. The biggest mistake was conflating valuation on paper with liquid value. The team’s years of work had turned an entirely theoretical $50M into $50M in cash. The value created was $50M minus however much the funders actually gave the company. As an extreme example, suppose I offer to buy a one billionth share of a startup for $1 today, thereby giving the startup a $1B valuation on paper. It would be insane to call it a failure if that startup actually managed to sell itself for $1B or even $500M two years down the road.

kovek 5y ago
This is the discussion I’m curious about. Is there some theory around valuing something? Are we declaring that a company will be worth X Net capital in Y years? Actually, I believe investors try to maintain a P/E of around 15 (or 20-30 these days?). So, the question “how much is your revenue?” makes sense, which we don’t know if it was answered by iLike. Another question is, what will the employees pursue once they know that their acquisition strategy will not work? I’m sure the employees are skilled, so I would hope they have an alternative: 1. pivot, 2. Show off their achievements when applying to other companies
buescher 5y ago
But then your dollar, two years down the road, is worth... $1 or even $0.50. Smells like failure to me, except to those who paid less than $0.50 for their shares. Would you invest with them again?
- MontyCarloHall 5y ago
  From the company’s perspective, either case is a success story: you walk away with $999,999,999 or $499,999,999.50. From the investor’s perspective, while certainly not a resounding success, not necessarily an abject failure either. Perhaps in those two years the nature of the market the company competes in becomes clear and the investor realizes that they had grossly overvalued the company. Perhaps the company is actually worth $10. Then, by some miracle, someone offers to buy the company at something close to its initial overvaluation. Breaking even or even losing 50% of your investment is preferable to losing 100% of it. In this particular case, given that both Apple and Facebook were both able to implement this company’s entire product in a matter of weeks, I’d say the investor’s initial valuation was inflated, and they should have been happy to break even.

tcskeptic 5y ago

Seems to me the wrong lesson was taken -- they were prepared for a presentation not a negotiations. They unwisely jumped the gun into a negotiation at the end of a negotiation. They got their ass handed to them for being unprepared. What they said was not out of line, just unprepared.

gary17the 5y ago

I will never understand why people allow themselves to be humiliated, stressed and abused in the name of "being educated" by so called technological geniuses, who are narcissistically used to being worshiped by everyone around them just because they are (ephemerally) famous and have a ton of money. IMHO, neither iPhones in particular, nor smartphones in general have really altered the course of the world in any meaningful way. A couple of generations of youngsters will, indeed, spend half of their lives with their faces glued to mobile screens, but then some new technological trend will arrive replacing the old one or perhaps dumping technology altogether will become the new riot. Sooner or later no one will even remember who Steve Jobs was (while names like William Shakespeare or Ernest Hemingway will deservedly live forever, BTW).

simonh 5y ago
The guy knowingly, intentionally tried to deceive Steve. That was the explicit intent, and Steve picked up on it and didn't like it. How is that Steve abusing someone? That's some pretty impressive reality distortion you've got going on there. To be clear it took a lot of stones for this guy to tell his story and clarify what his intent was. Deep respect.
- gary17the 5y ago
  So the guy panicked and bluffed during business negotiations that he wasn't really trained for - so what? Could happen to anyone under pressure and facing disappointment of an unexpectedly low offer. Jobs, supposedly an experienced business professional, could have just coldly smiled, Warren Buffet -style, and could have sent the rookie on his way with a 2/3 offer just to make a point and educate him. Instead, Jobs started calling the poor guy a liar in front of his co-founders, stormed out of the meeting and, in the end, screwed every single person in the entire startup by shamelessly copying their product. To me, it seems like behavior of a Yet Another (Proverbial) Silicon Valley Narcissistic A-hole (YAPSVNA).
  - analognoise 5y ago
    Yeah, who would praise somebody so undeveloped emotionally? What a small, small man. Then you read about how he treated his family and his employees - he was just a tiny thing of a human being. It's sad - like a self-contained parable about how to not live your life.

tim_cookie 5y ago

The guy was bullshitting and got caught. Period. But the kind of mental gymnastics people in the comments section do to defend Steve is impressive. I'll have you know I'm not that rude in meetings like Steve was :P

thatguy0900 5y ago

I was expecting this to be about his "elevator meetings", where he would ask people in the elevator with him what it was they did and decide whether to fire them or not.

smoyer 5y ago

O.T. but every time I see "baited breath" I imagine the Sardine Bait and Tackle" shop in "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" putting a lure in the speakers mouth. What's worse, "bated breath" doesn't mean what the speaker really intends - https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bated https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bated.

hartator 5y ago

I think the team unwillingness to discuss pricing with Eddy was a dick move to Eddy.

stared 5y ago

It looks like anchoring - since he mentioned a $50M valuation, this number stuck in Steve's mind. In this way, negotiating upwards (by a factor of 3) is an uphill battle.

jmkni 5y ago

Interesting thread. I can't help but think this deal would have fallen apart sooner or later anyway. At one point somebody from Apple would have asked the questions Steve Jobs asked, the same offer would have been made and the response would have been the same (we are worth more, etc).

mirker 5y ago

I don’t know much about acquisitions, so what is the incentive of the acquisition from the buyer’s side? Apple and Facebook seemed to create clones of the functionality pretty easily, so the main purchase benefit seems risk over implementation timeline. What am I missing?

emaginniss 5y ago
The acquisition can bring along customers and partnerships that would be difficult to create from scratch, especially when facing an entrenched competitor.

tomthecreator 5y ago

Pretty sure the "you're a liar" is just a convenient way to blow it off without going into details. The buy was probably already questionable even for $50m, a number Steve probably already knew even before they entered the room. The exchange showed that the founders were going to be stubborn about the price. So in the end this isn't "trust is everything in business, and Steve was offended" but simply "don't jump into negotiations with your pants down".

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I think this is reasonable. What I think is slightly unreasonable and probably a sub text a few people is that anyone, the CEO of this company or not, thought that their value added to customers was worth $150 million to Apple. It was music suggestion and a like button. Clearly nothing the Apple couldn’t and didn’t just copy. $150 million for that? Perhaps another explanation is that Steve Jobs heard that number, realize the after enough of these meetings and acquisitions that dollars had lost their meaning, but this wasn’t worth it.

julienchastang 5y ago

Somewhat OT, but funny to see Ali P. on HN this AM. I went to high school with Ali and his twin brother. They were salutatorian and valedictorian (don't remember in which order). I think they (or one of the two) went on to do very well co-founding a company with the late Tony Hsieh.

SllX 5y ago

I remember years ago hoping Apple would acquire iLike. I was one of their earlier users that was at first just using the iTunes sidebar plug-in with a few friends and if I recall correctly this was shortly before Facebook announced they were becoming a platform, possibly before my first Facebook account where iLike was at least for a very short time one of the more popular widgets you could stick on your profile. Well all this time later, it’s fairly interesting to see how that Apple acquisition I wanted to see didn’t come to be. Ah well. What did we get instead. I think iLike went to MySpace, and Apple announced Ping?

fairity 5y ago

Outcomes like this happen when you don't have a strong BATNA. Maybe I'm being naive, but I'd rather spend my time securing a solid BATNA instead of learning how to become a skillful negotiator. After all, I'm never going to be nearly as good at negotiating as these corporate M&A honchos. But, if I have multiple interested parties or a solid fallback plan to a non-outcome, negotiating is pretty straightforward: "We'll just let the market decide on price."

karmakaze 5y ago

> I replied that our last round had been two years earlier, pre-launch, at a $50M valuation. Since then, we’d amassed 50M+ active users. > Steve said, “we’d probably acquire you for $50 million.” My heart sank. I couldn’t imagine telling our team that their years of work had created no new value. It was probably the valuation that was incorrect, or is invalidated by recent market changes. It could have been worth that much then, the value of the then-static product/users decreased, value was created since, but it's still only worth the same now. > “Did you say you ‘know’ you’re worth more? You have another offer?” Steve Jobs's gaze pierced holes through me. “Bullsh*. You’re lying to me. You’re full of sh*. We’re done here.” Steve had keen senses and didn't appreciate being lied to. Basically if you don't have another offer, how could you 'know' that?

hnarn 5y ago
It sounds like this guy just assumed that the initial valuation had to be correct, which is of course a childish way to look at the value of something. The value of anything, whether that's a multi-million dollar company or a Snickers bar, is decided by the market at the time it's placed in the market. If Apple is offering you $50M and everyone else is offering you less (or nothing), guess what, you're worth $50M. Maybe that's because you didn't sell yourself very well, but regardless your value is what other people are willing to pay.
- karmakaze 5y ago
  I agree. I can also see how it would be so easy to fall into this logical trap. Having your past value anchored in your mind at 50M for so long while you continue to show value and users added then adding up to 50M would be hard to reason about and emotionally accept on the spot. Still saying "Steve, I think [...] Actually, I know we’re worth three times as much." was clearly outside the lines, speaking to someone with much more experience valuing companies being acquired.

kjkjadksj 5y ago

When are we going to stop posting twitter threads to this board?

DemocracyFTW 5y ago

Christ what an asshole.

_skzr 5y ago

A board member once gave me advice ahead of my first major acquisition meeting with the CEO of a mega corp. “You’re meeting the CEO. No matter what you talk about - Never, ever, ever discuss price with the CEO. You both have people who will do that for you.”

weeblewobble 5y ago
Yeah I've never been anywhere near M&A but that was my takeaway too. Steve blessed the acquisition, that's all you need from him. Seems like this guy would have been much better off keeping his mouth shut and letting the negotiations play out slowly. Truly a story of a social faux pas with huge consequences.

forgotmypw17 5y ago

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/apartovi/status/1447251334814523392 https://nitter.kavin.rocks/apartovi/status/14472513348145233...