风险融资谈判提速高招

    于是，我们邀请风险投资人、他们的律师以及我们的律师会和，大家一起来一页页地过这些法律文件，直到达成一致。

    让我惊讶的是，所有人都很不情愿。我意识到，他们的律师不愿意放弃自己的工作时间。他宁可凌晨1点在其他工作的间隙来回复这些文件。所谓“凌晨1点”，我说的是三天后的凌晨1点，而且还会推翻我们所有的意见。

    我的风险投资人也没那么起劲。

    但他们勉强同意了。我们在一间屋子里谈了好几个小时。中间休息了几次，以便各方私下商议。我们也给其他人打电话。多数时候，风险投资人回到谈判桌时的说法都是：“我们做了50笔交易，从来没有批准过这样的条款。”

    （边注：这句话可别当真。不管我们提出的意见是不是有道理。我已经多次听到风投家们说什么“我们从来没这么做过”）

    不管怎样。那是漫长的一天，但会议结束时我们终于达成了一致。律师们在48小时内完成协议起草，我们在72小时内完成了签字。一周后，2000年的股市大跌拉开了序幕，互联网市场一片惨淡，融资也随之降至冰点。

    要让交易各方同意在同一时间到达同一地点，并非易事。但如果能做到这点，我敢保证，它能大大加快敲定交易的的速度。

    而且，这一招显然不光适用于风险融资领域。

    马克•萨斯特2007年加盟GRP Partners，担任一般合伙人，此前他将自己的公司售予了企业云计算公司Salesforce.com。他专注于早期科技公司。他的博客

    译者：老榆木

    We asked the VC, their lawyer and our lawyer to join us for a working session where we could walk through our legal docs page-by-page until they were completed.

    I was surprised how reluctant everybody was. I realized that their lawyer much preferred not giving up his working hours. He would prefer to turn the docs at 1am between other stuff he was working on. And by "1am" I mean three days from now. And without agreeing all of our points.

    My VC wasn't that keen either.

    But they acquiesced. We spent several hours in a room. We took several breaks for each side to discuss issues privately that were in contention. We made phone calls to others. The VC mostly to come back and say some version of, "In all of the 50 deals we've seen in our portfolio we've never seen this term approved."

    [side note: please don't fall for that line. either the point makes sense or it doesn't. I have seen VCs hide behind this "we've never done it before" line many times]

    Anyway. It was a long day but at the end of the meeting we had a final agreement. The lawyers drafted it within 48 hours and we signed it in 72 hours. 1 week later the market crash of 2000 began and the dot com market began to collapse and financings with it.

    It's not always easy to get the various parties of your deal to agree to be in a room all together at one time. But if you can make it happen I promise it's a much faster way to get a deal done.

    And it obviously doesn't just apply to a VC financing.

    Mark Suster joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a general partner after selling his company to Salesforce.com. He focuses on early-stage technology companies. His blog