To me this seems like the "reality distortion field".

There's just no amount of "good negotiation" that is going to get Apple up from $50m to $150m here. Apple was willing to pay an acquihire amount of money and Ali wanted an acquisition that respected the last couple years of work they put in. The two sides were pretty far apart. So they didn't make a deal. That's all there is to it.

Steve Jobs somehow pulled a trick, though, convincing Ali that the reason everything went sour is that Ali was a bad negotiator. Just because he's Steve Jobs doesn't mean he knows the "correct" valuation of your startup! He's just trying to bully Ali into revealing whether there are other offers on the table.

The principles of negotiation here are simple... Ali had to find another company willing to pay a lot more than $50m. There's no way that a lot of talking to Apple is going to change how they view a small acquihire target.

I mean, saying "I know X" when in reality you aren't 100% confident... that's completely a Steve Jobs move! How many times did he say a product was absolutely amazing, when actually it's kind of just a middling quality Apple product?

OP says he would have taken less than $150m ("we tried in vain to negotiate some lower number"). Whether that lower number would be under Apple's highest number, is unknown. So your point is well taken that "bad negotiator" is a bit subjective and assumes that a deal could have been struck.

Was it a mistake? In retrospect it would have made Ali more money, but I don't know, maybe iLike still had some chance of succeeding on its own at that point. Maybe it was just a calculated risk that didn't pan out.

Maybe the perfectly charismatic negotiator could have squeezed an extra 10% out of Apple but that just isn't that important compared to the decision of "should we sell the company for approximately 50m, or not?"

What I consider soft is lashing out over the smallest emotional slight, which Steve was famous for. I wish we would all stop pretending that the platonic ideal of a leader is having the emotional maturity of a toddler.

Exactly. The lesson of this encounter wasn't anything more than: Steve Jobs had power and was willing to use it at the drop of a hat to puff up his ego over a tiny thing. Maybe there was something strategic behind that or maybe he just had anger issues and enough power that he didn't have to do anything about them.

And this huge analysis about deceptive intent makes no sense. Of course the startup wanted a price as high as they can get.

Yet this story increased my esteem for Jobs.

Jobs knew going in that Apple could build the feature set themselves, and invited the company on the chance that they could do it faster with an aqui-hire. He'd prepared and knew his numbers also, although he didn't need or intend to discuss them.

Now, everything goes swimmingly, and then this guy asks about numbers and expresses concern that his investors won't accept that. Fair enough, legit, and Steve instantly responds "Don't worry, we'll make sure they accept it." That should be WAY MORE than enough of a statement from someone like Jobs - he and his team obviously have huge experience at this, and the guy should have dropped it, and taken back that information, now more prepared. He should also have read the room and noticed that the tenor had changed and that's as far as it should be pushed.

Now, he goes ahead and doubles down basically demanding more money. It is now just about the money. Had he stopped at "I think we're worth more", it probably would have just ended at Steve saying "I don't think so", and leaving it to Eddy, maybe they'd make a deal, maybe not.

But then he instantly doubled down again, saying "I Know it is" - basically saying he had a competing term sheet at that value — when he had nothing. If he'd actually had a $150MM term sheet, Steve might have said, "ok, we'll consider it", or "you should take that deal".

But when Steve saw that there was nothing to back up the statement, what earthly reason could he have to want to even talk with the guy anymore? His time is too valuable to talk to liars, and he instantly lost any interest in acqui-hiring them.

It's impressive how Jobs instantly saw the BS and adjusted his attitude to the new reality.

Perhaps it'd be a tad better had Jobs not flashed anger at his wasted time and interacting with liars, but instead expressed sadness at the opportunity lost - could be a bit softer, but why? The situation is the same - SJ will not want you in the company even at a $1 aqui-hire.

It's critical to understand the level of game being played, and play it well. This guy played like he was in some college seminar instead of the top pro level, and he got burned. Good he's taking it so realistically.

Very few negotiators can reverse their positions in nanoseconds and realize the better deal is no deal at all.