A crucial part of running a startup company is developing customers, sometimes much larger customers. This can lead to very lucrative revenue and growth. Also, a common exit option is to be acquired by a larger company. However, I want to offer a cautionary tale from my experience. A large engineering company whose products were lagging began buying large amounts of the newest product technology from our startup in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the large company’s strategy was to not pay their invoices, assuming that our company would become starved for cash, and eventually, the large company might be able to acquire our startup’s technology for a very small price.