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Comment by mvkel | Hacker News Reader

What an awful email. Reads like a lazy VC associate trying to do as little work as possible to pass along metrics to higher ups.

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It's amazing how even when buying a company, people can't be bothered to use proper capitalization or even spell out the word "please". Wow.

I must have slept through the English class where they told me this was OK.

I think it's a power thing because they're manoeuvring for negotiation.

Translation: "I can't be bothered to spell because you're teensy and I have another $1B to spend today on companies 100x bigger than yours. Make with the paperwork chop chop."

Then, confirmation: "Give me your mobile so I can call you any time I feel like to make you jump, because you're the bitch now."

Yeah. My reply to that message would have been "I only give my mobile phone number to friends. Please use my office line between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM EST."

But honestly, a lot of people seem to like doing business deals while walking around with their cell phones, so perhaps this is not actually a power play.

Hey Benny, I couldn't comment on your comment directly because you're in ban hell. But I get what you're saying.

It's funny how they refer to Schmidt, Page and Breslin as "the board" since it's obviously just 3 people :) In any large company you only use the "board" wording for a committee that's at least 15-20 people.

The actual wording he used was "executive board" -- perhaps this is different from the "board of directors."

What?

They had already met once. Given the context, it sounds like a continuation of the conversation, casual in nature, from a biz person to an engineer.

Why does casual need to mean "communicate poorly"? When I type out emails, casual or not, they're designed to at least get the message across.

For something as important as an acquisition, I wouldn't want to feel like I'm dealing with an intern.

Give me an example of how you would do it while still maintaing the tone with a person you've only met once and want something from.

Well, put it this way: I could be on the receiving end of an email like this, and my gut would be telling me something is up.

Or almost like a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity from a Nigerian bank clerk.

I think this was intended to read the way it does. Google A/B tests everything, including how well canned messages work vs. more personal messages like this.

I honestly thought this _was_ a canned message; one from a 'sales associate' eager to get a commission.

It was 2007. Maybe he was typing it on a blackberry?

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