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>it comes down to lack of experience in dealing with negotiations of this level Yeah, the conversation is so cringe. Why is he beating around the bush so much

>it comes down to lack of experience in dealing with negotiations of this level Yeah, the conversation is so cringe. Why is he beating around the bush so much ? He wants to sell, shut down, or whatever for a $10M payout. It sounds easy to make that proposition. Instead, he uses terrible verbiage like, "go quiet, I'm joking, opportunity cost, Bob's your uncle, yada yada". Why is he so terrible at talking ? Nothing in the call resembles a sales pitch if he is actually trying to sell a product for $10M.

madeofpalk 3y ago
> Why is he so terrible at talking ? He's a 20-something year old developer. This isn't his comfort zone and did not expect himself to be in this position. I know I would be terrible if I was in his shoes.
- bubblethink 3y ago
  Fair enough. It just isn't the slam dunk that the post makes it out to be. He made some extremely vague proposition that can easily be misinterpreted and it was ultimately unproductive.
  - skeaker 3y ago
    The claim still stands, given that in the same call Reddit immediately and openly admitted that they misinterpreted him, only to later turn around and lie about it.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    It’s not like the person on the other end of the line had no idea exactly what he was proposing. Even if the dev isn’t experienced at negotiating something like this you can bet the person on the other end of the line was.
    - bubblethink 3y ago
      Actually, I'm not sure if it's entirely clear to anyone on the other side (or even the world at large) how to value something. To a large extent, Reddit has drunk the cool aid and internalized that APIs are worth X. So going to a meeting with the implicit assumption that everyone knows that pricing is BS is not a safe assumption. They've already had the pricing discussion, so throwing more oblique references to BS pricing is not productive. It's like in a normal human argument. Once you are at an impasse, throwing more facts or presenting a logical paradox doesn't change the other person's mind.
      - Aeolun 3y ago
        The actual amounts were irrelevant to the offer. The author was clearly trying to feel out whether Reddit would be open to a buyout. The response seems to be a resounding no.
- karmelapple 3y ago
  If he was even entertaining the idea of maybe selling his company, the least he could have done was get a negotiator with mergers and acquisitions experience. If he's making reasonably good money off of Apollo, he could have afforded a few hours of a good attorney. This call was awful to hear as an entrepreneur. He is not at all clear about what he wants, and I think he's honest when he says it's "mostly a joke" - I'm getting the sense he threw out a strangely-worded scenario hoping that he could perhaps get some money. If he was serious about getting money, and he's primarily a software developer and not a negotiator, it would've been lovely if he had gotten proper counsel for this negotiation.
  - s3p 3y ago
    He wasn't expecting to float the idea! This literally came up during the call. He did not decide days before that he was going to offer to sell his company. He cannot hire outside counsel for something he is not thinking about.
  - rxzer0 3y ago
    Was the full call released somewhere? As i've only heard the 3 minute snippet.
Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
> Why is he beating around the bush so much ? He is asking for clarification, something you do when you have a good business relationship with someone. > He wants to sell, shut down, or whatever for a $10M payout. He doesn't. He is saying that 20$M is clearly overpriced and that if it was true then reddit would come up with a ludricous number like 10M to make that API be turned off. He just uses quiet because reddit described the API use as Loud. It's not an offer, it's calling someone's bluff out. Think in poker someone says "my hand is worth 20 million" and you got pretty good cards you would tell them "go all in because I am gonna keep covering whatever you raise" and then they do not go All In, you got a pretty good case to think their initial comment was not true.

madeofpalk 3y ago

> Why is he so terrible at talking ? He's a 20-something year old developer. This isn't his comfort zone and did not expect himself to be in this position. I know I would be terrible if I was in his shoes.

bubblethink 3y ago
Fair enough. It just isn't the slam dunk that the post makes it out to be. He made some extremely vague proposition that can easily be misinterpreted and it was ultimately unproductive.
- skeaker 3y ago
  The claim still stands, given that in the same call Reddit immediately and openly admitted that they misinterpreted him, only to later turn around and lie about it.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  It’s not like the person on the other end of the line had no idea exactly what he was proposing. Even if the dev isn’t experienced at negotiating something like this you can bet the person on the other end of the line was.
  - bubblethink 3y ago
    Actually, I'm not sure if it's entirely clear to anyone on the other side (or even the world at large) how to value something. To a large extent, Reddit has drunk the cool aid and internalized that APIs are worth X. So going to a meeting with the implicit assumption that everyone knows that pricing is BS is not a safe assumption. They've already had the pricing discussion, so throwing more oblique references to BS pricing is not productive. It's like in a normal human argument. Once you are at an impasse, throwing more facts or presenting a logical paradox doesn't change the other person's mind.
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      The actual amounts were irrelevant to the offer. The author was clearly trying to feel out whether Reddit would be open to a buyout. The response seems to be a resounding no.
karmelapple 3y ago
If he was even entertaining the idea of maybe selling his company, the least he could have done was get a negotiator with mergers and acquisitions experience. If he's making reasonably good money off of Apollo, he could have afforded a few hours of a good attorney. This call was awful to hear as an entrepreneur. He is not at all clear about what he wants, and I think he's honest when he says it's "mostly a joke" - I'm getting the sense he threw out a strangely-worded scenario hoping that he could perhaps get some money. If he was serious about getting money, and he's primarily a software developer and not a negotiator, it would've been lovely if he had gotten proper counsel for this negotiation.
- s3p 3y ago
  He wasn't expecting to float the idea! This literally came up during the call. He did not decide days before that he was going to offer to sell his company. He cannot hire outside counsel for something he is not thinking about.
- rxzer0 3y ago
  Was the full call released somewhere? As i've only heard the 3 minute snippet.

Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago

> Why is he beating around the bush so much ? He is asking for clarification, something you do when you have a good business relationship with someone. > He wants to sell, shut down, or whatever for a $10M payout. He doesn't. He is saying that 20$M is clearly overpriced and that if it was true then reddit would come up with a ludricous number like 10M to make that API be turned off. He just uses quiet because reddit described the API use as Loud. It's not an offer, it's calling someone's bluff out. Think in poker someone says "my hand is worth 20 million" and you got pretty good cards you would tell them "go all in because I am gonna keep covering whatever you raise" and then they do not go All In, you got a pretty good case to think their initial comment was not true.