Ask The Business Lawyer

Strategic alliances, joint ventures, collaborations . . . whatever you want to call them . . . are very delicate creatures.  Like other relationships, your "intended" wants to feel special, wants to be comforted in the knowledge that there is a meaningful reason your two companies have come together.  You don't want to find out that you were the also-ran, the back-up date in the event that your strategic partner's first choice for the prom fell through. 

That's why I enjoyed Joel Comm's instructive and amusing (because it's true!) post on "How Not to Propose a Joint Venture.''  Let's face it -- if you mass-emailed a bunch of people to ask them out on a date . . . and put all of their email addresses in the CC line of the email, what do you think the chances are that you'd get any takers?  Or any takers worth having?  My point exactly.