
The Deal on the Table (1994) - lpolovets
https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_32.html
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paulsutter
Autodesk stock is up 28x since the "1987 high" mentioned in the article (so
that forgone $37M could be $1B now)

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ADSK/](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ADSK/)

~~~
golergka
Hindsight is 20/20\. Decisions should only be evaluated based on the
information available at the time of the decision. Was Autodesk that
successful at the time of that negotiation?

~~~
x0x0
> _at the time of these negotiations, generating sales equal to the size of
> the deal every month and generating after-tax profits close to the size of
> the deal every quarter._

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Kiro
> But, our Distinguished Financial Advisor informed us that this would
> constitute ``shopping the deal'' when ``a deal was on the table'' which was
> right out by the genteel standards of the venture community

What does this mean?

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lpolovets
Shopping a term sheet means that when you get an investment offer, you go shop
the term sheet around to other VCs to try to get a better offer. As you might
expect, VCs don't like that. [http://cdixon.org/2009/09/02/dont-shop-your-
term-sheet/](http://cdixon.org/2009/09/02/dont-shop-your-term-sheet/)

~~~
noja
VCs might not like competition, but maybe it would be good for them!

~~~
sslayer
Agreed, Considering the "C" stands for Capitalist, a competitive market
shouldn't scare them. IMO they want you to play by their own rules, not "free"
market rules.

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Nanite
Would be very interesting to see the evolution of term sheets over the last
few decades. The shifting power balance between founders & investors, seeing
novel provisions become boilerplate etc.

~~~
lpolovets
Cooley and Fenwick track a lot of term sheet trends. See
[https://www.fenwick.com/topics/pages/topicsdetail.aspx?topic...](https://www.fenwick.com/topics/pages/topicsdetail.aspx?topicname=vc%20survey)
and [https://www.cooleygo.com/trends/](https://www.cooleygo.com/trends/).

The Fenwick reports go back at least a decade. Maybe someone will a lot of
free time will put them on a graph someday :)

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rodrigocoelho
[OT] And since you're there, try their "yoursky" tool:

[https://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/)

~~~
owenversteeg
Saying this because I didn't know it for years: Fourmilab isn't a "they", it's
just the personal website of John Walker, the founder of Autodesk and a
fantastically interesting person. Not to be confused with "fermilab" of
course, which is a United States national lab that does high-energy particle
physics.

There are a ton of very interesting things on his site, including a DIY RNG
that uses a radioactive source and an event counter:
[https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/hardware.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/hardware.html)

I wonder if anyone else has built a similar device to this, it seems like it'd
be very popular among hackers.

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elmar
the actual date is 1984 not 1994.

~~~
jasode
Yes, there are 2 dates:

1984: the date of the actual events

1994: the date of the online book (4th edition) describing those events:
[https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/)

