In selling off their reason for being, companies are admitting they have no hope of survival, so consequently they don't have much bargaining power. San Francisco's Conscium, now attempting to sell its collaborative financial document technology to a competitor, said the company has almost no leverage in naming a price because it can't hold out any longer. The flood of inventory from desperate firms has created a buyers' market. He estimated that 70 percent of Diablo's clients are tech companies, many which signed on during the past six months as the stock market soured. The financial backers who supported the technology in the first place now say they seek any return possible on their investment.
Intellectual property has the potential to be among the most valuable asset of a tech company.
However, many startups, organized hastily and grown rapidly, may not even know what intangible assets they possess, experts said. The longer they wait, the less likely they will be able to find a buyer for technology supposed to move at Internet speeds. Web traffic, too, dies off once the site stops updating, causing a further decline in value of the URL and its content. The market doesn't care how hard you worked. Who owns what can be confusing during the last days of a company, as relationships turn acrimonious.