And when you negotiate with anyone else, distrust is the default. That’s what I’m starting to realize.
I suck at negotiating; never had to do it. As a software engineer in training, it’s just not something I’ve ever had to do in school and rarely in life. The one place where negotiation can happen a lot in life is when you’re bargaining for a better price e.g. on your insurance or an expensive purchase, but as someone who spent the majority of their life in the bubble of school, those situations never come up.
A conversation I had with a close software engineer friend went something like this:
me: Looks like I might be doing business with ABC him: Don't forget to negotiate me: Yeah, I suck at negotiating though him: Yeah me too...that's a mistake I made during XYZ both: *sigh*
I don’t know if this applies to many other engineering types, but I tend to have a diplomatic personality where if I respect someone enough to do business with, then I tend to lead towards trusting them. Often I would try and think about how to maximize the benefit to both of us rather than just myself. This is dangerous when the other person doesn’t behave the same way. It’s very easy to get short changed on a deal. When you trust someone, you’re more likely to agree with them. When you trust someone that you want a long term relationship with, it’s easy to let your guard down and let them take an upper hand while subconsciously thinking it’ll help build trust in the relationship, but if they’re experienced in negotiating, then you’re just a sucker who can’t negotiate.
Apply this to finding a co-founder and I can see why it’s good advise to start companies with your best friends rather than someone you’ve just met. When you talk with a friend, trust is the default. There are no incentives to deceive because the person you’re going to be working with is a friend–you’re happy when they’re happy and vice versa, so you both optimize for mutual benefit. The deal you agree to will often end up being the most fair regardless of each others negotiation skills. Without an initial trust, there’s a huge incentive to negotiate to maximize your own benefit, and that’s a game where the better negotiator wins. If you know you’re not the better negotiator, then you have to get better at it. Otherwise the only winning move is not to play because if either party feels shortchanged in this critical stage of the business relationship then you’ve already lost.
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