How Startups Negotiate with Giants and Win

In business, your leverage in negotiations is directly proportional to your size. When you’re a startup, you’re freaking tiny. So how do you get a big deal done without giving away the company?

It’s rare that a startup will get a fair shake from a giant customer or partner. But these kinds of deals can mean the difference between success and failure, so we’ve got to go after them.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve learned that it really doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve accomplished, or how valuable your offering is to the bigger player. If their revenue outsizes yours by, say, 2x, they’ll have the upper hand. If that number is 10x, they’ll be in complete control. If it’s 100x, they’ll be straight tone deaf.

So how we negotiate is a critical factor. Here are a few tactics I’ve picked up that have helped me not only get the deal done, but also make it a win for both sides.

Make It Easy To Say Yes

In my perfect scenario, the gigantic partner or customer — whom I’ll just refer to as Goliath for the rest of the post — can get started with us immediately. There shouldn’t be any costs or work associated on their side. Not yet.

We want to keep the deal small and simple. We’re not interested in casting an outsized reward to Goliath…