In this situation, do you hire someone to negotiate with or for you? I'm thinking the intention here was to sell the company for $10 million and that came across as a threat because of the language that was used. You would not record the call [1] and then publish it if you actually were blackmailing them for $10 million. I'm not faulting the guy here at all, I just think it comes down to lack of experience in dealing with negotiations of this level. He clearly has an awesome product if you look at any of the HN/Reddit comments.
He probably could have walked away will at least a few million vs shutting it down if there was a small level of negotiation that took place here. I'm not sure who was on the other end of the call but strategic accounts normally get pretty seasoned sales folks assigned to them. They are used to having hard conversations around pricing and pissed off customers. That's all part of negotiation.
That call was brutal to listen too.
Or, is saying you're shutting down part of negotiation too? This likely took it too far if it was, in that you're making reddit look like the bad guy very publicly now. So, it's probably worth it for reddit to cut ties and force people into the reddit app.
No winners here:
* Apollo the company is gone.
* Apollo users are gone.
* Reddit has no customer paying money.
* Reddit cannot reference them.
* Reddit users are ticked off.
This is a case study in bad negotiation tactics on both sides. Reddit tried to squeeze them pretty hard right off the bat. Should have tried a 3 year contract or something with heavy discounts. This is wild.
[1] http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-3...
He probably could have walked away will at least a few million vs shutting it down if there was a small level of negotiation that took place here. I'm not sure who was on the other end of the call but strategic accounts normally get pretty seasoned sales folks assigned to them. They are used to having hard conversations around pricing and pissed off customers. That's all part of negotiation.
That call was brutal to listen too.
Or, is saying you're shutting down part of negotiation too? This likely took it too far if it was, in that you're making reddit look like the bad guy very publicly now. So, it's probably worth it for reddit to cut ties and force people into the reddit app.
No winners here:
This is a case study in bad negotiation tactics on both sides. Reddit tried to squeeze them pretty hard right off the bat. Should have tried a 3 year contract or something with heavy discounts. This is wild.[1] http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-3...