edit: I had a total brain malfunction as pointed out below. Do not be candid, use skepticism and protect your private information.
"Candid" here might be a typo or might not be the word you're looking for. "Cautious" seems to be more fitting for what you're saying in the rest of the sentence.
My company is just me. They have 4 founders and will be hiring 5-10 people soon.
Both companies had successful crowdfunding campaigns but neither is shipping a product yet.
That sounds like you might have to refund some or all of your contributors. After the acquisition, your project will cease to exist. It's unlikely that both crowdfunding promises were exactly the same. Even if the intention is to fold your product into theirs, the realistic outcome is that your employers will ship the product as they intended, leaving your supporters with little to nothing. You need to clean this up now, rather than later.
I wouldn't call it "bootstrapped", then.
For me, a company is bootstrapped if it makes enough money from its products to sustain itself and its founders/employees.
"We've bootstrapped the company so far, but we don't think we will ship a MVP without taking at least a seed round" wouldn't draw any protests of misuse, in my experience.
You are correct that most bootstrapped companies that have launched end up supporting themselves; that's survivor bias in action.
Then when you go back to talk to these folks, give them the rationale and the small numbers rather than (just) the big number. If they have issues with your methodology you can likely work it out.
This is largely covered by the book, "Getting to Yes". Short and helpful.
http://www.quora.com/What-is-a-typical-deal-structure-of-an-...
Instagram had 13 employees and was acquired for $1BN. Ptch had 3 employees and was purchased for $6.5M. In those cases the technology and product took up most of that value. If the acquirer is actually going to use your technology, that will obviously be a large factor in determining the sale price.
If there's no leverage, the chances of negotiating a better deal than described above are relatively slim.
This is very interesting. I hope you don't mind me quoting you.
Now, having said that, you have to determine your goals and how to synthesize an ideal set of negotiating levels.
Typically these levels are:
There are several methods used for calculating acqui-hire or acquisition: If I were looking at buying you, I'd consider it fair if I Can "buy" you for less than you'll make me, including opportunity costs.You're going to have give out more (anonymous) details before most people can help you too much:
If you're a one man shop with an app that's generated $30k this year, I'd buy you for $60k and pay you $140k with a non-compete for 2 years. I don't know if you thin that's fair, but it would be to me.Remember, a negotiation is a game in which both people agree things are fair, or both people agree that they get screwed equally.
After the negotiation, if you have to work with the person, then try to focus on the former case.