20 hours ago
- Corporate Development (corp dev) is the group within companies responsible for acquiring other companies.
- Startups should generally only engage with corp dev if they are either doing extremely well or extremely poorly, as the middle ground often leads to wasted time and distraction.
- Conversations with corp dev can be highly distracting and demoralizing, undermining a startup's focus and morale.
- Corp dev professionals often use aggressive tactics, including lowball offers and renegotiating agreed prices, to buy companies cheaply.
- Founders often mistakenly meet with corp dev out of flattery or wishful thinking, even when they do not want to sell.
- The best protection against the negative effects of engaging with corp dev prematurely is to simply refuse the first meeting unless a sale is desired immediately.
- The essay advises founders to avoid talking to corp dev in the first year unless they are certain they want to sell.