The people who do this are smart, confident and charismatic. It is clearly a negotiating strategy. But in reality, the only thing that matters is who controls the flow of money. If they control the money then it doesn’t matter what they said, they can do what they damn well please. They know this up front, and they count on it.
Despite these setbacks I’ve done alright for myself, but honestly, I’m really bummed out about how useless I am when it comes to judging people and creating businesses where I’m free to actually do my best work.
Anyway, I don’t know if that helps you, but you asked and honestly it has helped me a bit to vent even if it’s all in the abstract.
Even before Omidyar stepped down from Craigslist’s board, his appointed agent, Garrett Price, started bullying Craigslist’s owners. In an email to Buckmaster, Price wrote that Craiglist was “driving [eBay’s] execs (especially Meg) to distraction.” He told Buckmaster that eBay’s takeover was “inevitable” and that Craigslist needed to accept their fate, telling “Buckmaster that he and Newmark were mortal, but eBay was not, and eBay would acquire 100 percent of craigslist whether it took decades and, if necessary, over Newmark’s and Buckmaster’s dead bodies.”
Buckmaster replied by reminding Price that when they negotiated the sale of their stake, eBay had agreed to abide by a three-year “courtship period” during which time, if Craigslist felt their two cultures were incompatible, eBay had agreed it would sell back its shares.
Price’s response to Buckmaster:
“that was then, this is now.”
It's been one thing for me to be on the receiving end of bad behaviour and to form an opinion and suspicions about what happened.
But it's quite another to see it played out deliberately, in the large, using trust and friendship as a weapon to defeat a group of people who aren't even playing the same game.
The remarkable thing for me is that people really are capable of this kind of shitty behaviour; that it can be entirely intentional, and planned well ahead of time. And that it doesn't matter how rich some people are, they are happy to cheat and steal just to get a little bit more. It's disgusting.
Thanks again for linking to it.
From what I’ve seen, openness and honesty are highly regarded in technical work but these traits are considered disadvantages in business.
oh I am 100% with you on this. I tried to elaborate but I just sound bitter and twisted, and that's probably true. But I've spent the last few years unlearning things I thought I knew. It has been a painful and expensive set of lessons.
long story short: I think we judge people's reaction to a situation by projecting how we would act... but that's not how people actually act.