<i>"... Four years ago, when my brother and I launched the very first beta version of Oodles.com, we actually received an offer from Wotif.com to acquire the business. Not surprisingly, we popped the champagne. But we didn’t stop there. Even though nothing was signed at this stage, we actually put our stuff in storage and moved to Brisbane to continue negotiations. To top things off, I even sold shares in a competing business so as to avoid any conflict of interest. Of course, the deal fell through. Wotif.com was immersed in preparation for its $400 million IPO and felt the acquisition would become too much of a distraction.  ..."</i><p>Heard that stumble before, #13 <i>"we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated"</i> ~ <a href="http://paulgraham.com/13sentences.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/13sentences.html</a>