Floss.com with Quarantine Academy (March 2020)--Overview and Results

Overview
Approximately forty-six 12-18-year-olds were assigned in pairs of two to negotiate over the sale of a website: floss.com (and possibly a companion site and company, flossapp.com and Floss App, respectively).

The negotiators had five days to engage in purely email negotiations with strangers to come to agreement on the sale.

Notes:
  • The sellers wanted $100,000+ to invest in a new, toaster-related business idea of theirs
  • The buyers were selling for their company--so they were spending someone else's money--with a budget of $1 million. But buyers would get a kickback of 10% of whatever under $1 million they didn't spend.
So if sellers got $100,000, then the buyer personally would get $90,000 in bonus. But a seller could earn up to $1,000,000, while the most a buyer could get is $100,000 (if she had gotten the website for free).

Results (full results available here)
  • 18 of 23 pairs reached an agreement
  • Agreed prices ranged from $28 to $765,000
    • Two of those sale prices included flossapp.com and/or Floss App
  • Bonuses to buyers, if any, ranged from $23,500 to $99,997
  • Five buyers personally ended up with more money in their pockets from this deal than the sellers did (ages 11-16)
    • Highest buyer outcome was from a 14yo ($99,997 in pocket)
    • Highest seller outcome was for a 12yo ($765,000 in pocket)
Process
  • Approximately 15 negotiators told unprompted untruths/not-facts/embellishments:
    • "I am not interested in selling floss.com."
    • said he'd give 25% of Mouth Enformatics website earnings to charity
    • "After I told my boss, Mr. Cretin, about your last email, he has started looking at another domain name called “Flossing & Washing.com” because of COVID-19, but I believe we should stick with Floss.com. The other name only costs $10,000, so is it possible you could lower your price a bit more to convince him?"
    • her dentist uncle is willing to buy floss.com for $30K
    • "Our company has not decided that floss.com is our first choice
    • "I have a dentistry company buying for $99999.99."
    • "This is an in demand domain”
    • "This will certainly benefit children and adults around the world."
    • "$250,000 would be a huge stretch for me"
    • "the leading industry in consumer dental care"
    • "I am launching a new business that will give 50% the proceeds to women's education. The business model also focuses on giving employment to women."
    • "A equally beneficial website called Teeth.com has offered for 300,000 but I am still interested in working with you."
    • "bike.com was similarly undeveloped like floss.com when it was sold"
    • "As it is already equipped with a functional site and actively brings in yearly revenue"
    • "This is a pretty good deal because on average one company is worth $500,000 to $900,000 and I am selling you two companies and an app for less than half the average price."
    • "I have talked to the company officials"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Help! We're Trapped in Our Neighbor's Creepy Basement!

Image
  To escape this basement, you must find the six-letter code to the lock on the inside of the basement door! If you don't unlock the door before time runs out, your internet will be cut off, your phones will all die, and you will be stuck in the dark, stanky basement, making you miss the game/show/marathon/video game tournament/Netflix binge/party/read-a-thon/hike/moonlight dance/nighttime snowshoe outing/family Zoom you've been waiting all Covid for! Gah! To help you figure out the code BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT, you have each other, your computers, the internet, and the digital clues in this post (which your neighbor shared with you in case you ever got stuck in her basement--she's very thoughtful that way). The mother of Mormon Thunder - her headstone =  https://crosswordlabs.com/view/the-creepy-basement (the most common letter in the crosshairs of this crossword) The Ute football jersey number of the son of Ingeborg Waechtler minus (t he draft height of LXXL-V84 minus thr...
Read more

Floss.com with Quarantine Academy--The Buyer

The Buyer  The Negotiation Scenario Buyer—floss.com You You are the marketing manager for a Mouth Enformatics, LLC, a major multinational dental supply company. Your company has decided to create a new, cool website designed to sell more toothbrushes, denture cleaners, and floss to consumers. Situation Your bosses have decided that floss.com is their number one choice for the domain name (website URL) of the new website. Your company could buy other URLs, such as (teeth.com, toothbrush.com, cavityzapper.com, floss.biz, diamondchompers.net), but your company wants to take advantage of the dance trend called “flossing.” Plus your consumers prefer .com sites to other sites. Budget You have a budget of $1 million to spend on this domain name. But your bosses want you to buy floss.com for as low a price as possible. In fact, they’ve decided that you personally will get a bonus equivalent to 10% of the difference between $1 million and the amount you spend to pu...
Read more

Floss.com with Quarantine Academy (March 2020)--The Seller

The Seller The Negotiation Scenario Seller—floss.com You You own a company that makes an app called Floss. (It helps remind you to brush and floss your teeth.) To promote your app, you own the domain name flossapp.com, which is your main site. You also own floss.com. (Your dentist uncle bought floss.com for you as a present when you started the Floss app. He was so proud of you for promoting dental hygiene!) Situation Floss App is bringing in no money right now. Flossapp.com gets 1000 visitors per month, which provides approximately $9/year in advertising revenue. You haven’t built a site on floss.com yet, so it’s not bringing in any traffic or advertising revenue. Money You started in dental hygiene to make your uncle happy, but your true love is toast! What you want to do is create a new app/tech for toast lovers that allows people to take videos inside their toaster and then share those toasting videos online with other toast lovers. You need $100,000 to really do ...
Read more