Negotiating When You Have No Cash

The lack of cash most entrepreneurs face does have a silver lining. It makes you a good negotiator. After all, you have few other options. Here’s our story on negotiation when you have no cash:

The dot com world was all the rage. Companies in Silicon Valley and all over the country were popping up with  crazy  valuations  on a daily  basis.  One of those companies,  Netcentives,  was not going after  the consumer like most dot coms of the day. They were going to provide an Internet-based platform to run the big loyalty programs in the country. They approached us about being their gift card reward partner. It was  good fit because we had no interest in the loyalty market. Netcentives started running some of the largest loyalty programs in the country like programs for airlines, credit card companies and banks. They had garnered  a huge valuation  and  hired thousands  of employees.  Individuals in their programs earned a lot of gift cards and as their reward partner we would ship gift cards directly to the individuals.  They were doing close to one million dollars in gift cards per month. As a result, at any time they might owe us north of $500,000, a huge amount for a company like ours.