Recently, a friend came back from a scratch-n-sniff session
with a potential acquirer--an established internet search
engine that's hunting for ways to keep their heavy web
traffic from clicking off to some other site too soon. He's in
this year's piquant category, streaming internet radio,
which seems a likely solution to the search site's needs.

Consider: the average stay on their web site is 7 minutes,
while the average listening period on his web site is 35
minutes.

"They hated me," he sighed. "I've never been so
antagonized in my life."

I immediately suspected otherwise. He has a
background in the financial side of the music industry, so
he's a little new to the customs of the technology sector. I
asked him to elucidate how he had been "antagonized."
Wasn't it true, they had pointed out, that over a 28K
modem the sound hiccupped when the system was
overloaded? Wasn't it true that record labels still weren't
providing complimentary CDs for his programming? Wasn't
it true that search engines were focussed on deals with
online retailers, who earned non-advertising revenue? On
and on the inquisition went. New staffers wandered into the
room and fired another round of questions at him. Was his
software scalable? With the transition to 56K modems,
wouldn't his revenues stay the same but his server costs
significantly increase?

He just shook his head with regret. "Boy, it seemed like
not only were they combing for every conceivable reason
not to buy me, they actually seemed to be trying to talk me
into quitting my own business."

I assured him he was in good shape. He thought I was
just trying to cheer him up.

"They loved you," I insisted. "You'll hear from them
tomorrow."

Their interrogation style was just how people talk out
here. People love socratic interplay, utilizing active conflict
to improve ideas. Arguing is fun. Arguing is the whetstone
for the high-tech brain--it keeps it sharp. Playing the devil's
advocate and trying to talk someone out of their idea is a
role-playing form of friendship. Interrogating my friend was
their way of showing keen interest.

I gave him a quick lesson on Silicon Valley
conversational techniques that he might encounter as he
works towards a deal.

1. There's No Agreeing to Disagree
Having trained themselves to debug programs, these
rational minds feel an obligation to correct even the
slightest inaccuracies in any comment voiced in their
direction. Two engineers who might 98% agree on (for
instance) their analysis of a new Oliver Stone movie might
nevertheless cause a tumultous incident in a restaurant
discussing the film.

This makes dangerous the pledge that your team will
"iron out the details later." Common meeting dialogue--

Frustrated Project Manager: "Can we just try to develop
some consensus around here?"
Engineer: "Define 'consensus.'"

2. The Hunt for Protocol
Also known as the "Are you for real?" conversation. When
two companies agree on the strategic value of some
cooperative deal, it's conditioned on having "my engineers
talk to your engineers." The purpose of this discussion is
to ensure that neither side's product is jerry-rigged hype.
When two tech workers meet, they go through this sort
of cascade of language syntax, negotiating like two
modems, trying to find the most efficient level of
conversation they can hold. It ends up sounding like the
dueling banjo scene from *Deliverance*:

Programmer: Hi, nice to meet you. Hey, that's a sweet
access router over there. Wow, both Ethernet and
asynchronous ports?
Webmaster: Yeah, check this baby out--the Ethernet port
has AUI, BNC, and RJ-45 connectors.
Programmer: So for packet filtering you went with TCP,
UDP, and ICMP.
Webmaster: Of course. To support dial-up SLIP and
PPP.
Programmer: Set use User_Name ifilter Filter_Name.
Webmaster: Set filter s!.out 8 permit 192.9.200.2/32
0.0.0.0/0 tcp src eq 20.
Programmer: 001011011000101110010011101100001.
Webmaster: . .. . .. . .. ... ... . ..... .. .. .... .. .. . .. . .. ... ... . ....
Programmer: Really? Wait, you lost me there.

3. Soap Bubblers
At some point in the negotiations, a crisis of faith will
occur, and both sides will want to retreat to their corners to
seek advice from their favorite guru, asking "Am I doing the
right thing?" The rate of Gurus-per-Capita (GPC) is higher
in Silicon Valley than any other industry. Because of the
attack-dog atmosphere described above, gurus have
discovered the only way for their meme-like principles and
utopian visions to avoid persecution is to set every
prediction in the far off future, where nothing can be
disproved. They don't talk about the real world of
megabytes and baud rates. Their minds are occupied with
neural nets and terabytes. (A terabyte is 1,000 stegabytes,
and a stegabyte is 1,000 tricerabytes, and somewhere in
there is gigabytes. So you get my point--it's hard to argue
when you can't pin down the facts.)

When caught in conversation with one of these gurus, a
good way to respond is, "Hmmm ... I've been rethinking
Toffler. Perhaps, one thousand years from now, we will see
that the industrial age and the information age were really
just the trough and crest of the same wave, not separate
waves."

4. Blowing smoke is safe as long as you don't inhale
Since one's command of technical jargon is a status proxy,
less technically-inclined personnel attempt to mimic the
computerese syntax of the hardcore. A company's
salesforce, for example, will create it's own terminology to
impress clients. (As soon as the clients pick up on the lingo
though, the sales terminology will upgrade, to ensure
continued confusion).

Atlanta Rep: Set battery recharge zero minus ten for link
upload?

Chicago Rep: Approve conditional route switch for #1
download.

*Translation: I'm hungry, wanna get a hot dog in ten
minutes? Okay, but I have to go pee.*

What this means for a merger/acquisition is that the new
combined salesforce won't be able to converse for awhile.
Give it time, be patient. They may have to speak standard
English for a few hours, but within a day a new terminology
will emerge.

5. When to ask for help
Never. Never ask for help. Just kidding. There are actually a
few cases when it's not inappropriate. For instance, since
asking for help is a good way to acknowledge someone
else's superiority, do so only when your actual intent is to
pay someone a compliment.

If you happen to actually need help, do it over the
phone. And disguise your voice.

6. Safe Bases
If all this scares you, don't worry. There are a few topics of
conversation that you can always talk about with anyone
you meet, sort of the way Minnesotans talk about the
weather. In the early days, the universal conversation
gambit was rather pathetic: "Are you a Mac person or a PC
person?" This has evolved only slightly over the years.
Today's equivalents are: "So, do you think Apple will
survive on its own?," and "So, you think the government
has a case against Microsoft?"

The good news was, my friend did get a call back from the
search engine the next day. The bad news was, they
expressed their interest.