Let's just for a second pretend that I'd be an interested party (I won't be bidding).
I would assume that most of the people bidding are not 'players', I'd assume that they would just try to get it for a song and a bit, the equivalent of buying Manhattan from the Indians because they're not aware of what it's worth.
Mark is a smart guy so he won't be going for that.
The second group of potential buyers would be more savvy and would bid higher, they'd be outbidding each other bit by bit, probably in increments of 1,000 $US until they ran out of steam.
With the last moment of the bidding already announced the real players would wait until the very last moment and would then bid based on what the highest of the second group has bid using that as a way to guide their decision, in the hope that nobody else would be bidding a similar amount.
In a 'blind' bid like this, assuming a party really wants to get their hands on it they will have to decide what it's worth to them to get it, rather than to let the market do their valuation work for them. This may very well lead to substantially higher bids.
If I were Mark I'd add two things (if he decides to make the bidding public, which I would not advise him to do):
- Extend the bidding with 15 or 30 minutes after every new highest bid
- keep the identity of the bidders secret, just show the highest bid
Since he's already under way and it is difficult to change the rules once the game has started I don't think that is a viable option any longer anyway.
Sometimes the market works against you -- if the public bids stall out at a certain level, then one big buyer knows exactly what to pay. Private bid makes buyers guess against an idealized competitor.
This would probably help to increase the bid amount. Otherwise you're going to have a lot of people bidding the same things, or lower than the current highest bid. This will include a lot more email correspondence than required. Although, that might be better because it allows you to arbitrarily inflate the "current bid" on a per-bidder basis. So you can kind of inflate the bid behind the scenes too.
Disagree with public bids in this case. Perhaps the right approach for something that will be priced based on fundamentals or intrinsic value, but in this case the value will come from finding a visionary/strategic buyer. By definition these will be outliers thus public bids would put downward pressure on perceived value.
Comments
Making the bids public would definitely be a good idea (one person bids x, person 2 bids x+500, etc).
No, it would not be a good idea at all.
Let's just for a second pretend that I'd be an interested party (I won't be bidding).
I would assume that most of the people bidding are not 'players', I'd assume that they would just try to get it for a song and a bit, the equivalent of buying Manhattan from the Indians because they're not aware of what it's worth.
Mark is a smart guy so he won't be going for that.
The second group of potential buyers would be more savvy and would bid higher, they'd be outbidding each other bit by bit, probably in increments of 1,000 $US until they ran out of steam.
With the last moment of the bidding already announced the real players would wait until the very last moment and would then bid based on what the highest of the second group has bid using that as a way to guide their decision, in the hope that nobody else would be bidding a similar amount.
In a 'blind' bid like this, assuming a party really wants to get their hands on it they will have to decide what it's worth to them to get it, rather than to let the market do their valuation work for them. This may very well lead to substantially higher bids.
If I were Mark I'd add two things (if he decides to make the bidding public, which I would not advise him to do):
- Extend the bidding with 15 or 30 minutes after every new highest bid
- keep the identity of the bidders secret, just show the highest bid
Since he's already under way and it is difficult to change the rules once the game has started I don't think that is a viable option any longer anyway.
Sure, he could just run it like Swoopo.com and charge people for each bid they make
Couldn't he use anchoring (e-bay style) with a minimum price?
Sometimes the market works against you -- if the public bids stall out at a certain level, then one big buyer knows exactly what to pay. Private bid makes buyers guess against an idealized competitor.
This would probably help to increase the bid amount. Otherwise you're going to have a lot of people bidding the same things, or lower than the current highest bid. This will include a lot more email correspondence than required. Although, that might be better because it allows you to arbitrarily inflate the "current bid" on a per-bidder basis. So you can kind of inflate the bid behind the scenes too.
Disagree with public bids in this case. Perhaps the right approach for something that will be priced based on fundamentals or intrinsic value, but in this case the value will come from finding a visionary/strategic buyer. By definition these will be outliers thus public bids would put downward pressure on perceived value.
While this would be a great idea for a car or vase, he probably wants the "winner" to be someone he talks to first rather than the highest bidder...
It would be nice to see the bids, at a certain level this would be great to own, but no idea if it had passed that level