My last offer

Posted on:March 10 2011

Since I started my company Ambiera a few years ago, it was a lot of fun. And as several people predicted, I also had a lot of strange experiences. One of them happend some weeks ago:

A guy approached me and seemed to be interested in buying my companies flagship product, CopperCube. But he didn't want to buy a license for the editor, but the editor itself, so he can sell it himself. Basically, I'm open for all kinds of business requests, even if this is selling one of my main products. If the buyer guarantees to continue development on the product so that the customers are kept happy, and maybe even has more resources for this than me, I think I would be ok with that too. But it went like this (drastically shortened):

Guy: I want to buy your editor. You transfer all rights of it to me and I go on developing it and sell it on my own. Is this possible?
Me: With some restrictions, basically yes. But it's one of my main products, and that means that this won't be very cheap.
Guy: I can give you 500 euro.
Me: Seriously? You realize that this is less than two professional licenses for the editor?
Guy: I can offer you 20% of all sold licenses additionally.
Me: Ahem. So you say you want to transfer all exclusive rights of my software to you for basically nothing, and offer me a fifth of what I get now? Why should I do that?
Guy: 25%. My last offer.
Me: No, thanks.

I'm still not sure if I have become the victim of a troll. Or if the guy at the other end was slightly confused. But this is a good example of the strange things which happen to you from time to time when running a software company. You basically sit there wondering about what just happened. :)

Comments:

Funny :)))

IPv6

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2011-03-10 13:40:00

I'll give you 1000 euro and 30% of all sold licenses. What do you say? :D

Well I guess he was just a troll...

Sylence

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2011-03-10 14:45:00

"Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider!" --George Carlin

pc0de

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2011-03-10 15:36:00

Well, you solved the same problem before, regarding questions for a link in your blog: Just ask riddiculous high prices and they won't bother you anymore ;)

Telepath

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2011-03-10 15:42:00

I think he simply asked for a ridiculous deal WTTM. It could have worked if you were a fool. A fool with a longstanding business. How long do fools stay in business? :)

hermitC

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2011-03-10 19:24:00

He was either a trolling idiot or a non-trolling idiot, but who cares? Go publish his contact data on 4chan!

Plonk

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2011-03-10 20:57:00

I'm pretty sure that this was some sort of minor businessman living in his own little world, and not having any real grasp of software production.

pubesz

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2011-03-11 00:05:00

Funny though, thank you for sharing it with us.

pubesz

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2011-03-11 00:06:00

Bah, he's so cheap. I would have considered an offer of $5 billion dollars. ZWR dollars are fine, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar

Saa

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2011-03-11 07:43:00

This would only have been a good deal if he was in the position to sell WAY more licenses of the software than you do.

Tazo

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2011-03-11 10:12:00

"This would only have been a good deal if he was in the position to sell WAY more licenses of the software than you do."

At least four times more. And who could possibly guarantee he would keep his word?

Nostaw

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2011-03-11 13:07:00

This dialog is extremely hilarious. :-D

TheMiss

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2011-03-12 15:38:00