Ian Ippolito started Rent a Coder as an online marketplace for hiring technical talent. He quickly expanded to go beyond technical professionals and re-branded as vWorker. Ippolito built vWorker up to $11.5MM in annual revenue before he received an acquisition offer from Australia's Freelancer.com Freelancer.com had been courting Ippolito for months but their original offer was too low in Ippolito's view. That's when Ippolito decided the only way for him to get any real negotiating leverage was to seek out a second bidder. In this episode, you'll learn: the dangers of a proprietary deal what to do when you get a low-ball offer why a BATNA is critical to every deal how to time your exit strategic stalling and how to do it why 90% of earn-outs fail