I've never been in this position, but this story reminds me of PG's "startups in 13 sentences" (http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html) and more precisely the 13th rule:
13. Deals fall through.
One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don't, but because it makes them less likely to.
If you follow the advice to "treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminate" then you won't "lose months of traction" when an acquisition deal falls through.
Couldn't agree more. Even in my very short experience I noticed that there is a trend for deal talks to consume a lot of time and energy, and to fall through. If the deal is very interesting it's difficult to treat it as a background process, but at least you should never put yourself in the position where your future depends on the deal closing.
I recall another post by pg (probably one of his essays) where he warns against letting VC courtship get in the way of building the product and getting users.
Comments
vague lessons to learn
I've never been in this position, but this story reminds me of PG's "startups in 13 sentences" (http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html) and more precisely the 13th rule:
13. Deals fall through.
One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don't, but because it makes them less likely to.
If you follow the advice to "treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminate" then you won't "lose months of traction" when an acquisition deal falls through.
Couldn't agree more. Even in my very short experience I noticed that there is a trend for deal talks to consume a lot of time and energy, and to fall through. If the deal is very interesting it's difficult to treat it as a background process, but at least you should never put yourself in the position where your future depends on the deal closing.
I recall another post by pg (probably one of his essays) where he warns against letting VC courtship get in the way of building the product and getting users.