business development people,...
business development people, lawyers, accountants, all of them.
They gave a presentation about how much they liked the company and this
and that, and they said they wanted to buy us and placed an offer of $160 million.
I knew that that was the opening shot and I said, “Thank you very much
for making an offer. We really, really like your company and like the fact that
you like us so much. We’ll go back to our board and discuss this and get back to
you.”
And the CFO said, “C’mon, is that in the right ballpark?” He wanted me to
open my mouth, but I was told beforehand that if I opened my mouth, there
was no way I could negotiate with so many people. It was just the three of us:
Jack Smith, myself, and our VP of marketing.
Livingston: The VCs gave you the liberty to negotiate, right? That surprises
me.
Bhatia: Luckily it was very early on; had we been burning through a lot of cash,
had we been around for a while, they probably would have put pressure on us.
But we were under no pressure at that point in time.
Livingston: What drove you to keep on negotiating until you got the $400
million?
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