Everybody loses sleep over the big stuff:

🏢 Rent
🧑‍💼 Salaries
⚕️ Benefits

What they often forget about are the thousand paper cuts from software fees.

They compound slowly over time, and people don’t realize that you almost always get a significant discount...
This year, we started @BuyerInc to help companies negotiate without all the associated stress.

It’s Negotiation As A Service.

Just CC them and they do the rest.

Here’s a recent example:
A customer was implementing an enterprise ERP.

2 days till deadline for end of quarter discount. They already got them down from $115k to $85k.

Buyer came in and brought it down to $72,600.

First year savings: $12,700

3 year savings: $28,666.

Just by asking.
Try it out: Buyer.co

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More from @awilkinson

2 Dec
In 2013 I got a call from @stewart.

His gaming startup, Glitch, had failed.

He seemed gutted. They had burned through millions and laid off their entire staff.

He had an idea he wanted us to help with.

A last ditch effort to get his investors money back...
It was an IRC-inspired chat app.

Womp womp.

There were already similar chat products like Campfire and HipChat.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him, but it seemed like a “me too” product.

I didn’t really get it. I thought it had low odds of success...
They called it “Slack” internally.

He hired @Metalab to help turn it into a launchable product.

Because of the situation, he could only afford to pay us $60,000 to do everything.

For a logo, marketing site, mobile and web apps—the works.

medium.com/@awilkinson/sl…
Read 7 tweets
23 Nov
I got a lot of pushback on this tweet from people who said they don’t want to raise money and have a gun to their head.

People think there are two options:

Bootstrap every penny or VC

In reality, there are tons of much more mellow investors with realistic expectations...
It also doesn’t mean equity. It could also be some conservative debt.

My point is if your rocket needs fuel. Either you can compound that fuel from profits or you can buy it.

Buying enough fuel for your journey often requires external cash

Not buying enough fuel is dangerous
Places you can go for non-gun to the head money to grow:

- Friends and family
- Bank debt (be careful)
- Private investors (small PE)
- Family offices (rich families)
- SaaS lenders (pipe etc)

Most of these would be fine with steady earnings growth vs VC 100x IPO.
Read 4 tweets
16 Nov
1/ We just acquired another company...

One of the worst parts about getting big is that you can't do as much small stuff.

The small stuff is chaotic, but sometimes it's the coolest.

For example:

Slack was only 3 people when @metalab designed the first version.
2/ But it was a TINY project. I think we lost money on it.

About 2 years ago, we realized that, while MetaLab still works with tons of startups, we were turning away a lot of cool projects due to project size...
3/ We had endless demand from incredible startups and small and medium-sized businesses, but we had to turn most of them away.

So we had an idea...
Read 7 tweets
13 Nov
1/ Someone recently told me that they think it's impossible for somebody to become a billionaire without doing evil things/being inherently bad.

Let's dig into this...

I'd argue that like any pool of people, there are good billionaires and bad billionaires...
2/ There are three primary ways people become billionaires:

1. They start a business that gets huge

2. They inherit a lot of money

3. They get lucky (early employee at a huge company, a wild speculative investment, etc)
3/ There can be wonderful people and jerks in any of those three buckets, and there is nothing inherently evil about any of them...
Read 10 tweets
10 Nov
1/ Four types of people buy internet businesses:

🤩 Strategics buy your business because you solve a problem for them or add to their existing offering in some way. Less about the business vs. the problem you solve/team. Your business/brand may disappear. (Public/Private Corps)
2/ 🤗 Holders buy your business and hold it for the longterm, making tweaks (sometimes aggressive, sometimes not) along the way. Your business and team likely continue to exist. (Holding Companies/Conglomerates/Family Offices)
3/ 👩‍💼 Flippers quickly boost results in the short-term, then re-sell/flip the business within a few years. The changes might be difficult for your team and Your business/brand/team could change radically when it's re-sold. (Traditional Private Equity)
Read 5 tweets
5 Nov
1/ There are certain universal skills that apply across almost every business.

@BrentBeshore calls it the "everything tastes like chicken" layer of business. The broad strokes that apply in most places...

Some of my favorites:
2/ How to read financial statements

khanacademy.org/economics-fina…

How to write compelling copy

amazon.com/Made-Stick-ide…
3/ How to delegate and build systems

amazon.com/dp/B000RO9VJK/…

Sales/marketing best practices

amazon.com/Getting-Everyt…
Read 5 tweets

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