Great article -- both in terms of the general message and the specific story about the bully.<p>One thing that helps a lot in a situation like that is having advisors (or board members) you can trust to talk with in situations like this. If they all also say "you don't know the Way It Works", then it's worth listening. More likely, though, they'll say something more along the lines of "Wow, that guy's an asshole. Look, you're confident about your business model, and here are some other examples of companies who don't offer bulk discounts. He's just being a roadblock. Here are some sales techniques that might help in a situation like this."<p>At my startup back in the 1990s, we had gotten to verbal agreement on a $200K deal. The paperwork hit a snag and our CEO headed off on vacation to a place with no FAXes or FedEx, but no problem: I was a naiveish techie, but I wa also founder/CTO and had signing authority. So we agreed that I'd fly to their location onsite, sign the contract, and get going. Once I got there, surprise: a couple of new terms! And no, we couldn't get started without a contract.<p>I said, y'know, I'm not comfortable with this. They said "but that means you'll just have to turn around and fly home." The deal was pretty key to our success and I didn't want to let it go but you have to draw lines. So I called up one of my board members, who agreed. They said "stick around for lunch, let's talk this through." After lunch they decided that the new terms didn't have to be there after all. Funny how that worked.
It seems like part of the problem with procurement was not clearly illustrating that a discount had been applied after all.<p>PM: Well I’m going to need some kind of discount. How about 30%?<p>Me: As it says on our website, we don’t discount.<p>PM: But I’m buying 400 seats!<p>Me: Yes, and we already provide a nice discount for bulk orders, which is already included on the invoice and documented on the website.<p>I.e. he was wrong to say 'we don't discount'. The answer is actually - 'yes, I've already applied your discount. Because you are buying so many seats, you get our discount of x%. If you bought another y, you'd get z%'. Sounds like it could have been communicated better.
Running a startup rarely makes sense. You are pushing on and on despite all warning signals telling you not to.<p>You barely have money left. Most of your friends have been reduced to ghosts and memories, You can't recall the last time you saw some of your family and you are constantly working. Working instead of eating, working late into the nights and beyond, working when you're supposed to be taking time of and resting. It's so easy to get tunnel vision and descending down the rabbit hole if you are not careful. Easy to forget to check if you're doing the right things properly. Easy to ignore or rationalize having blown every single deadline and budget you made.<p>When you compare startups with usual 9-5 salary work, it's actually amazing how much risk founders take and how incredibly hard they work. And people wonder why startup founders - the very few that actually make it - get so much more money than the employees.
"It is never as bad as it appears and it is never as good as it seems, and I truly believe that."<p>- Bill Cowher (former Pittsburgh Steelers football coach)
Wouldn't the logical entrepreneur maybe take a moment and say:<p>* This is a $200,000 contract.<p>* I can pay my own d-bag $35k / year to just yell "Smokey, This is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules."<p>Then, if he doesn't oblige, read from this script:<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?qt0464765" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?qt0464765</a><p>Seems like the finances still would work out, and you can sip a pina colada on the beach somewhere instead of crying about it.
Startups are definitely emotionally draining, and while I would like to believe in my resiliency, if I didn't have two awesome co-founders there in the trenches with me, I'm not sure I'd still be fighting the good fight (Thanks Ricky and Mark!).<p>I can't seem to find all of the details about Smart Bear, but it sounds like it was a bootstrapped, solo founder operation (not sure how quickly he hired those 4 people). That amazes the hell out of me. Solo founders in general seem like magical Django ponies with how they're able to juggle and prioritize product, customers, etc. But the hardest part of being a solo founder must be not having the emotional support of a team working till all hours of the morning with you. I know Ray of Ginzametrics has said that his family is a huge help almost to the point where his wife is almost like a cofounder. Any solo founders out there, I'm interested to hear how you recharge/support yourself emotinally.
In the context of enterprise sales/consulting, this is all pretty standard stuff. One helpful investor told us early on that everybody always wants a discount, and you have to give out discounts, so you just bake that into your price. Anything else is wishful thinking and will harm your startup.
Thank you, no, really really thank you. Just got a call this morning for a negotiation round with a big pharma corporation. I would have not read this article yesterday, I would have been falling flat. So, I gave a bit, but definitely not as much as I would have if I had not read this article. Again, thank you!
I'd like to imagine that if faced with such a situation, I'd pride myself with being a good person who actually creates something of value in the world, he's just some jerk peon who's doomed to live the rest of his life treating people like shit, yada yada.<p>But I've never had to go through anything like that. After putting your heart into something and some guy whose job is to make you feel worthless makes you feel worthless, I don't know if I could. That kind of thing can break a man.