Irrational Persistence

7 If a Fortune 500 Company Calls, Take the Call

All’s Well That Ends Well

—William Shakespeare

What’s it like to sell your startup to a Fortune 500 Company? What is the actual process involved? What twists and turns do you encounter along the way? How do you arrive at a price?

We didn’t know it at the time, but we were about to find out. It would turn out to be our biggest adventure of all.

Jack and I were invited to be the keynote speakers at the 2014 Michigan Grocers Association’s annual meeting. The event was held in the impossibly gorgeous northern Michigan town of Traverse City, about a four-hour commute from Detroit.

We were driving up in Jack’s enormous GMC Yukon Denali. When you’re 6-feet 5-inches tall, you need all the room you can get, and this thing had every bell and whistle you can imagine, plus tons of storage spaces, seemingly everywhere. I was behind the wheel, as I usually was when we were on long trips in the car together, so that Jack could take his occasional nap.

Just before dozing off he says to me: “Lift up the door to that compartment.” I did and was both startled and a bit mortified.

“You’re packing heat?”

There was a huge Glock resting there.

“Yeah. You know it just makes me feel more secure. I bought three of them, and Annette and I are going to shooting ranges a couple times a week. She’s actually getting pretty good at it.”

Knowing Jack as I did, I remember saying to myself: “This isn’t going to be good for anybody.”

I noticed the gun discussion ...