We had an application that was getting interest from a company that wanted to license the tech and add the product to their portfolio. I felt their licensing deal was convoluted and left too much room for us to get screwed. I then picked what I thought was a best-case kind of number and it ended up being so much higher than they were thinking that they didn't even want to counter.
It is hard to recover from that.
So I guess the lesson is that just like it is hard to raise your first price, it can also be hard to lower it.
In hindsight we would have taken 1/5 of what our number was and been happy. A win is better than nothing.
It sounds like they may not have really wanted you to begin with and used your high number as their out. If they really wanted your tech/app/whatever they would have come back with something closer to what they wanted to pay.
It is hard to recover from that.
So I guess the lesson is that just like it is hard to raise your first price, it can also be hard to lower it.
In hindsight we would have taken 1/5 of what our number was and been happy. A win is better than nothing.