Highlighted by Eric Koh
From When Should You Allow Exclusivity in Deals? by Mark Suster
2. Named Competitors — Often buyer exclusivity agreements start very broad and your job is to narrow them. I usually try to win the “named competitor” argument because in actuality most buyers usually only really care about a handful of competitors that they’re trying to one-up. If you win this argument then you preserver a whole lot of wiggle room to still sell in your customers general industry. So if you’re selling a service to Virgin America you might start by carving out just Southwest Airlines and JetBlue in your negotiation but be willing to add names as required while avoiding “cannot sell to any US airline.”