This post starts a series which reflects our struggles and lessons of the important aspect of negotiation.
After rounds and rounds of testing of DealStreet, we took the next step in April 2010. Like designing a board game from scratch, this too was new for us. After googling around, we found our first lead Mr X1.
Overall, we were confident about our game. Having tested the game 'n' times, we knew that it was something that people jump, laugh and fight while playing. Having simplified the game to the extent that it could be played by school schildren. So we were optimistic about hitting the home run.
We called MR X1, told him about DealStreet. Conversation:
Me: am xyz calling from intuitive learning, we have come up with this ... tested at ... can be used .. we found your contact ... we would want to understand how to launch and about manufacturing.. and maybe distribution..
Them: ok.. It is difficult to say now, why dont you bring it over.
Whether his ok was sincere, not sincere, we were excited and thought that we had got an easy entry. We then had Karan, ‘our man in black’ prepare an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) which simply stated that Dealstreet is the property of Intuitive Learning and any information divulged, cant be used without out permission. We found people to be extremely sceptical before signing this, more on this in another post though.
D-Day came: We took our prototype to the meeting. We were excited that if we cracked this meeting, we would be ready to hit the market. But I guess that we forgot about what Confucius' age old proverb was telling us.
We sold our game completely: Demoing the game for an our, talking about the design,game concepts, useful features of the game, etc. We saw the look of "Wow" on their face and thought that we had made the breaktrhough. We talked about the nuances of the game. What got us to design such a game financial literacy, etc. By this time out of an hour we had talked for about 45 mins and he had hardly said anything useful.
When we started asking questions, how to manufacture, what is the cost, how to distribute, how to market, etc - he just said "I AM NOT INTERESTED". Your game is great but board game market in India is small and scattered. Games get killed day-in & day-out. It's very tough out there. A lot of investment is required in manufacturing. We suggest you partner or sell off rights. However, if you place a big enough order, then you can come to us. Why don’t we discuss more when your game is near ready to launch??
So overall, we had revealed lots of information in chatting, presenting and cajoling them, and they had revealed nothing. He managed to kill our bubble, reflected on our dependency on them and didn’t reveal a thing about real estimates on cost, margin, and distributors. Ofcourse he never signed an NDA and told us he could not care less and still kept a foot in the door.
Lessons: we spoke, we divulged, he never had to question us, we shot 20 questions in anxious shape in 45 minutes and he dodged them all and now we were unsure of whether we can even launch without losing rights and is 3000 man hours worth it !!!
The negotiation series will continue in the future...
Meanwhile, some DealStreet trivia: it took us 5000 man hours to build it (including testing, designing, legal, etc).