Welcome to the wild ride of dealing with large corporations. What you encountered here is absolutely standard -- in fact, I'd say it's actually better than what you'd get when dealing with most large companies, since Steve actually replied back at the end with a "not interested".
You may have put a lot of hope in the "if you've already incorporated, we could acquire your company" line but I can guarantee they didn't put a lot of thought into it.
They were just talking about hiring you (with "acquisition" as the legal mechanism, or not). Maybe with a bit of a hiring bonus.
The standard play when dealing with any large company is always "hurry up and wait". For whatever reason, this is just something you need to get used to.
Do you really expect either Steve or this engineering manager to be replying within 48 hours? I think the second you started badgering them and brought Steve back in the loop, you were toast.
Exactly, given the great opportunity he had a chance at the author should have been far more patient and dare I say a bit more professional.
The experience I've had with dealing with big corps is very much "hurry up and wait". Often this is a symptom of the structure and politics of bigger institutions, where you don't have to convince just the person you are dealing with but convince them to convince others. If they decide to try to bring you in it is their reputation on the line, a reputation that could be damaged even if the deal never goes anywhere.
I've been caught in the middle of some nasty office politics that have totally killed negotiations because I had the wrong guy championing my cause.
Oh and does it strike anyone else as a bit unprofessional to go posting correspondence to the world? I'd certainly think twice before dealing with anyone who had done this in the past, talk about burning bridges! Or am I alone in expecting a certain measure of privacy in my business comms?
> Do you really expect either Steve or this engineering manager to be replying within 48 hours?
It wouldn't be unreasonable for the engineering manager to get back to him within a few says. There are plenty of slow coasters and non-communicators in large organizations. Most people who are competent accept the beuracracy then find ways of routing around them to get things done. The good companies avoid hiring them in the first place.
It would have taken very little to:
* Real email sent specifically to them. I get a thousand plus emails a day and read every one of these within about 3 hours. My colleagues get way more but still do the same.
* Respond with 'completely snowed under, sorry, want to give this a few hours to look at properly' back to the poster.
That said, I don't think sending email to Steve was a good idea. Call or fax or whatever - if he's out, ask for an offsider to talk to. But bothering the CEO is inappropriate.
Not just large corporations. I've interviewed with tiny startups (a couple from YC) that couldn't be bothered to email me that they weren't interested.
My sense is that in practice the ethics of responding to email have simply loosened. It's no longer considered rude to leave email unresponded. It's just a fact of life.
Is it possible that the picture the author had in his head of "Being acquired" was skewing things here? I don't see any clear indications that an "Acquisition" was ever in the offing here. He emailed Steve, Steve forwarded it to an engineer who the author was lucky enough to hear back from at all.
Most likely they looked at what he was outputting and weren't impressed, or had another solution in mind. I'm assuming (and hoping for his sake) from my interpretation that he never submitted actual code to them - just output.
If you believe the OP the potential for acquisition was noted here: "Next he says that if I have incorporated the startup, Apple could acquire it or he could hire me to work with him."
Who knows.
I will say that it was handled very poorly. At the point they weren't interested they should have said it rather than just not responding to email.
You sound awfully pushy, and can't you just take a hint? I have been not called back by women, customers, partners, and everyone else. They have expressed interest and left me hanging.
At first, you be persistent, and you get more dates and more contracts because of it. But you also learn when to take a hint, and Apple gave you several.
If a woman said she's interested in you, never calls back, and says SHE will call YOU, you wouldn't have hope and stay interested?
I don't understand why this thread seems to be going out of their way to shit on this guy. It's not like Apple said "eh" and didn't respond, they kept saying they'd get back to him and never bothered.
It's called leading someone on, it's rude, and I'm startled at the number of excuses that are being made for this guy.
This is not what "almost getting acquired" looks like. At a stretch it might be what almost getting hired looks like, but even that would be pushing it I think.
Of course it would be nice if people would just tell you when they're not interested, but generally nobody does that. Adjust your filters accordingly - if someone doesn't seem excited, they're probably not interested at all.
Exactly. Startups get acquired because the executives at the big company like the founders and have been friends with them for a long time, not because they've solved some semantic problem. The poster doesn't really seem to understand how these things work.
I think continuing to email Steve was his fatal mistake. It shows a manager that you are willing to jump rank at a moments notice. Some times you have to, but in this case 3 days go by and the manager says he is sick. Take him at face value and understand that managers of large corporations are extremely busy. I am sure that Steve told the manager to pull back after receiving secondary emails, realizing that this would be a high maintenance relationship in which he felt that he could ping Steve at a moments notice (a person who is even more busy)
The manager said he was sick on May 4. On May 14 he said he was caught up and would get back next Monday (which is May 17). There was another nudge on Wednesday, May 19. Almost a week after that, on May 25, Steve gets CCed again.
While I grant that 3 days out due to sickness excuses some tardiness, the manager was given lots of time to catch up, many opportunities to respond, and over a week past the promised response time before Steve got CCed again.
I was going to say the same thing. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy blew any chance he had of being "acquired" (read: hired) by Apple by that political maneuver. The "cc someones superior on a follow-up e-mail" move is smarmy no matter what, in this situation it was suicidal. What did he expect to happen?
As someone who's been through this many times, here's a tip:
Any time someone emails you about acquiring you, hiring you, sponsoring you, etc, just assume the actual odds of it happening are about 1%, and be happily surprised if something eventually comes of it.
If they really, really want you, they'll be hitting you up every chance they get.
I think this is true but there's also a whole range of people who are on the fence and can be influenced, and to ignore them is a suboptimal and (imo) losing strategy.
I actually thought the Apple engineer, Patrick Gates, was super polite - a lot of people wouldn't even have bothered to respond. And I don't think anyone ever wanted to acquire anything.
How is lying being polite? I'd rather get no response than a flat out lie.
If you email Steve Jobs and he says, "I'm sending you a new iPad in the mail. Just send us your address." Are you happier that he responded then if he hadn't (except for the fact that you now have a good blog story to tell).
Being polite would have been "thanks for contacting us. As you can imagine we're swamped with work, but we are interested in this. I'm going to have to put this on the backburner and get back to it when I can. No promises. I'll follow up with you when it looks like there's a good fit schedulewise. Thanks."
I bet every entrepreneur here would loved to see your startup get acquired, but buddy there were no hint of an acquisition in this guy's communication. You should have been patient, launch your app and keep the communication going. Then maybe, maybe, after 2 years they would look into you.
I feel for this guy -- this is a case of not "speaking American." As an American who works with foreigners a lot, I hear a lot of complaints about how we try to let people down nicely instead of being direct. My middle-east coworkers especially hate this.
The interest dropped off right after he submitted the results of the algorithm. So perhaps the algorithm simply wasn't good. Emailing the CEO with a novel algorithm idea and then sending in the results is classic crackpot behavior, not unlike sending your theory of everything to the head of the MIT physics department. I'm surprised anyone responded at all to the initial email.
"Given that search is their strength, it will be imperative on Apple to provide a more intuitive itunes/app store search and discovery solution to its users"
No matter if you are right or wrong, I can imagine that Apple doesn't like being taught about what they should do. I imagine they think they have a fairly good idea as to what they should do. Maybe your attitude turned them off a little. Just a guess, though.
IMO you were extremely lucky to get any response whatsoever. If I am Patrick I would have quickly dumped you in the pester / annoyance category. Bringing Steve jobs into the mix the second time was fatal, regardless of time frame this is not something to bother him with.
Even if Apple almost "acquired" you (I don't really get that impression), I'd say that penning a blog entry complaining about it is not the most productive thing to do (and might even cause investors in the future to think twice about getting involved with you).
What I expected: OP in negotiations with some technology that Apple would like to pick up to improve its product. OP says something like: "Google and Adobe do this better. You should talk to them."
What I got: OP at the level of spam mailing Apple saying that he is the #1 superstar Ace to improve iTunes only to be told to "Get Bent."
You didn't really have any leverage in this situation. If you did, you didn't express it in a meaningful way.
It's business, not personal. They have so many things going on, it's a bit like trying to get your resume noticed.
Do something crazy, or obnoxious, or out of the blue that will get you noticed NOW. Then show them how, if they don't pay attention to you, it will cost them money.
The Apple engineer made the mistake of casually talking about "acquiring" or "hiring". That would greatly raise anyone's expectations and subsequent anxiety. The other guy made the mistake of being pushy, especially when he cc'ed Steve - it likely pissed off the Apple engineer and certainly would not have made a good impression on Steve.
"It is unethical in all cultures to keep someone waiting while you flout the time commitments."
I think you mean "impolite", not "unethical". Keeping someone waiting doesn't really have a moral value one way or another.
Secondly, unless you are Margaret Mead or an anthropologist of equal stature, you're not qualified to talk about what is polite in ALL cultures. It might be impolite in YOUR culture, but that doesn't necessarily apply to other cultures.
Well if it helps, we held 4 in-person meetings with a company with keen interest before they went totally cold. Took a few months to get a clear "no."
This wasn't too bad. All things aside, I don't think Apple was interested in acquiring you. You did the best you could. They did the best they could. I really don't think you pestering them would matter much if they really wanted your technology.
Something I still have yet to understand is how people who develop for and want to improve apple products repeatedly get screwed over by apple. (Granted he may have been a bit quick to jump to the top in this case)
Then they keep going right back to develop and improve apple products. Why keep going back?
Then they keep going right back to develop and improve apple products. Why keep going back?
Sunk cost? By the time you've mastered the intricacies of Objective C and a gazillion NextStep toolbox calls (or whatever they're called nowadays) what else are you gonna do?
[+] [-] drusenko|16 years ago|reply
You may have put a lot of hope in the "if you've already incorporated, we could acquire your company" line but I can guarantee they didn't put a lot of thought into it.
They were just talking about hiring you (with "acquisition" as the legal mechanism, or not). Maybe with a bit of a hiring bonus.
The standard play when dealing with any large company is always "hurry up and wait". For whatever reason, this is just something you need to get used to.
Do you really expect either Steve or this engineering manager to be replying within 48 hours? I think the second you started badgering them and brought Steve back in the loop, you were toast.
[+] [-] hartror|16 years ago|reply
The experience I've had with dealing with big corps is very much "hurry up and wait". Often this is a symptom of the structure and politics of bigger institutions, where you don't have to convince just the person you are dealing with but convince them to convince others. If they decide to try to bring you in it is their reputation on the line, a reputation that could be damaged even if the deal never goes anywhere.
I've been caught in the middle of some nasty office politics that have totally killed negotiations because I had the wrong guy championing my cause.
Oh and does it strike anyone else as a bit unprofessional to go posting correspondence to the world? I'd certainly think twice before dealing with anyone who had done this in the past, talk about burning bridges! Or am I alone in expecting a certain measure of privacy in my business comms?
[+] [-] nailer|16 years ago|reply
It wouldn't be unreasonable for the engineering manager to get back to him within a few says. There are plenty of slow coasters and non-communicators in large organizations. Most people who are competent accept the beuracracy then find ways of routing around them to get things done. The good companies avoid hiring them in the first place.
It would have taken very little to:
* Real email sent specifically to them. I get a thousand plus emails a day and read every one of these within about 3 hours. My colleagues get way more but still do the same.
* Respond with 'completely snowed under, sorry, want to give this a few hours to look at properly' back to the poster.
That said, I don't think sending email to Steve was a good idea. Call or fax or whatever - if he's out, ask for an offsider to talk to. But bothering the CEO is inappropriate.
[+] [-] lkozma|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] othermaciej|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|16 years ago|reply
It is unethical in all cultures to keep someone waiting while you flout the time commitments.
One thing that I noticed: he never told them where he got his feed data from. I would have taken that as stonewalling from him.
[+] [-] akkartik|16 years ago|reply
My sense is that in practice the ethics of responding to email have simply loosened. It's no longer considered rude to leave email unresponded. It's just a fact of life.
[+] [-] megablast|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rit|16 years ago|reply
Most likely they looked at what he was outputting and weren't impressed, or had another solution in mind. I'm assuming (and hoping for his sake) from my interpretation that he never submitted actual code to them - just output.
[+] [-] kenjackson|16 years ago|reply
Who knows.
I will say that it was handled very poorly. At the point they weren't interested they should have said it rather than just not responding to email.
[+] [-] andrewljohnson|16 years ago|reply
At first, you be persistent, and you get more dates and more contracts because of it. But you also learn when to take a hint, and Apple gave you several.
[+] [-] drivebyacct|16 years ago|reply
I don't understand why this thread seems to be going out of their way to shit on this guy. It's not like Apple said "eh" and didn't respond, they kept saying they'd get back to him and never bothered.
It's called leading someone on, it's rude, and I'm startled at the number of excuses that are being made for this guy.
[+] [-] abstractbill|16 years ago|reply
Of course it would be nice if people would just tell you when they're not interested, but generally nobody does that. Adjust your filters accordingly - if someone doesn't seem excited, they're probably not interested at all.
[+] [-] Alex3917|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kls|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btilly|16 years ago|reply
The manager said he was sick on May 4. On May 14 he said he was caught up and would get back next Monday (which is May 17). There was another nudge on Wednesday, May 19. Almost a week after that, on May 25, Steve gets CCed again.
While I grant that 3 days out due to sickness excuses some tardiness, the manager was given lots of time to catch up, many opportunities to respond, and over a week past the promised response time before Steve got CCed again.
[+] [-] gfodor|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaosmachine|16 years ago|reply
Any time someone emails you about acquiring you, hiring you, sponsoring you, etc, just assume the actual odds of it happening are about 1%, and be happily surprised if something eventually comes of it.
If they really, really want you, they'll be hitting you up every chance they get.
[+] [-] zackattack|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sriramk|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|16 years ago|reply
If you email Steve Jobs and he says, "I'm sending you a new iPad in the mail. Just send us your address." Are you happier that he responded then if he hadn't (except for the fact that you now have a good blog story to tell).
Being polite would have been "thanks for contacting us. As you can imagine we're swamped with work, but we are interested in this. I'm going to have to put this on the backburner and get back to it when I can. No promises. I'll follow up with you when it looks like there's a good fit schedulewise. Thanks."
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|16 years ago|reply
Email makes it even worse.
[+] [-] starkfist|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|16 years ago|reply
No matter if you are right or wrong, I can imagine that Apple doesn't like being taught about what they should do. I imagine they think they have a fairly good idea as to what they should do. Maybe your attitude turned them off a little. Just a guess, though.
[+] [-] mkull|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smcl|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maukdaddy|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yumraj|16 years ago|reply
Maybe this dude would do something for Android where his time and effort would, hopefully, be more appreciated.
[+] [-] jgoewert|16 years ago|reply
What I got: OP at the level of spam mailing Apple saying that he is the #1 superstar Ace to improve iTunes only to be told to "Get Bent."
[+] [-] endlessvoid94|16 years ago|reply
It's business, not personal. They have so many things going on, it's a bit like trying to get your resume noticed.
Do something crazy, or obnoxious, or out of the blue that will get you noticed NOW. Then show them how, if they don't pay attention to you, it will cost them money.
[+] [-] raheemm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] portman|16 years ago|reply
I think you mean "impolite", not "unethical". Keeping someone waiting doesn't really have a moral value one way or another.
Secondly, unless you are Margaret Mead or an anthropologist of equal stature, you're not qualified to talk about what is polite in ALL cultures. It might be impolite in YOUR culture, but that doesn't necessarily apply to other cultures.
[+] [-] zaidf|16 years ago|reply
This wasn't too bad. All things aside, I don't think Apple was interested in acquiring you. You did the best you could. They did the best they could. I really don't think you pestering them would matter much if they really wanted your technology.
[+] [-] CoryMathews|16 years ago|reply
Then they keep going right back to develop and improve apple products. Why keep going back?
[+] [-] hugh3|16 years ago|reply
Sunk cost? By the time you've mastered the intricacies of Objective C and a gazillion NextStep toolbox calls (or whatever they're called nowadays) what else are you gonna do?