Story

New Acquisition

New Acquisition

You are the Vice President of a private investment firm.
Recently you acquired a software company for $5 Million and were able to turnaround within one year. Now you want to acquire another software company. You meet the owner and he too is interested to sell.
During next couple of weeks, you make him a offer, however the seller says it is too low. His asking price is $15 Million, which in your opinion is too high.
How do you plan to make a deal?
Photo adaptation/Flickr/foxypar4
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The mistakes we make in our everyday life

• We are hardwired to make these mistakes • Few biases are simply evolutionary • These errors affect all of us including the bright ones • Experience is just not enough to overcome • but expertise is required to recognize and overcome

Few of biases as below · Anchoring - When an individual depends too heavily on an initial piece of information during decision making · Fixed pie - When we assume that our interests conflict with the other party's interests and we play adversarial · Framing - When we decide on our options differently when the options are presented with positive or negative connotations · Vividness – When we pay attention to strong features at the expense of less, that could be more impactful · Over confidence – When our subjective confidence is greater than the objective accuracy · Escalation – When initial decision is followed up with an irrational decision to justify the initial decision

Few ways to mitigate these biases are · Learn to recognize the bias · Use slow, effortful and logical thinking (System 2) · Avoid fast, automatic and effortless thinking (System 1) · Avoid negotiations which are thrust upon when not ready · Learn through use of stories, examples, exercises · Bring an outsider perspective