How can you negotiate with a big client when you're a startup? Long story short, we have a startup that offers a service. Early on, we found a really big client that was responsible for a majority of the revenue, and for a long enough time, the relationship was ok, services provided on time, money coming in. But due to internal problems, the client has been difficult to say the least.
Early on, knowing that there is a huge risk with the majority of rev coming from a single source, we prepared an air-tight contract. It has been 100% respected up to a point where due to internal problems of the client, their board of directors changed to an extremely hawkish ones. So, overnight, they simply decided they won't respect the contract, and used a very classy tactic of "what are you gonna do about it" as a negotiation tactic in bleeding us dry in the form of constant pressure into renegotiating worse and worse conditions for the same services, missed payments, etc. and worse of all - threats of ending the contract due to our fault - which is complete nonsense and that argument hasn't a leg to stand of legally.
And to be honest, that is a scarily effective tactic. True, our legal department and hired consultants say: if it goes to court you will win 100%. But the thing is, we cannot afford for it to go to court. These types of cases take at least a year or two, and our startup, while it has other things on the plate, would simply have to let a lot of people go, lose momentum, drop the morale of the ramaining troops, and take the available time energy away from building and growth and into a legal battle. We are not big enough for this, and they have enormous resources compared to us.
What do you do in a case like that? Obviously a mistake was to take on a big client so early on in its life, without "f*ck you" money. But it is what it is. Has anyone been through something like that?
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