Matthias Schranner
CEO
Sessions (2)
Sessions featuring Matthias Schranner at Bits & Pretzels 2026 | Founders Festival in Munich
Negotiate Through the Hard Moments
Matthias Schranner’s core message is that difficult negotiations are not won by overloading the room with facts, guessing the other side’s position, or defaulting to cooperative habits from a “win-win” world. They require tactical preparation for stress, uncertainty, pressure, and irrational demands. The session opened by framing negotiation as a daily founder skill: founders negotiate with customers, investors, suppliers, and even family. The hosts introduced Schranner through a hostage scenario in Munich, noting that he had been the human negotiator who answered the phone, and positioned the talk as a master class in handling tough moments rather than routine dealmaking. Schranner began by grounding his credibility in crisis negotiation. He described his background as a former hostage negotiator and police officer who worked undercover in Munich’s drug enforcement agency before joining a Negotiation Task Force. He then explained that his current work translates crisis-negotiation knowledge from law enforcement into business contexts such as startups, investors, governments, humanitarian organizations, and peace negotiations. He mentioned arriving from New York City after discussions with the United Nations and humanitarian organizations about new approaches to difficult negotiations. The main conceptual shift he introduced was from value-based negotiation to interest-based negotiation. In the “old world,” he said, parties often assumed shared values such as cooperation, partnership, and long-term orientation. In the “new world,” he argued, that assumption no longer holds. He used negotiations between the United States and Canada, and comments about the Trump administration, to illustrate the danger of treating concessions as cooperative signals when the other side may interpret them as weakness and escalate demands. For Schranner, this is why negotiators must adapt to interest-based dynamics rather than relying on shared-value assumptions. He then narrowed the lesson to the human factor and the founder’s own mistakes. Across peace, police, government, business, startup, investor, and AI-related negotiations, he said the decisive element remains the person negotiating: their skill set, weaknesses, stress response, and tactical ability. He warned that startups are often overprepared on content but underprepared strategically and tactically. The practical warning was to stop “guessing games” and avoid negotiating with yourself before the discussion begins. In a high-pressure investor scenario involving irrational demands, low cooperation, and threats to walk away, he emphasized that stress peaks early and the biggest first-minute mistake is committing too soon by saying either yes or no.
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The Art of the deal
Matthias Schranner’s core message was that difficult negotiations have changed: in the environments he advises on, including business, politics, and peace negotiations, negotiators should stop relying on shared values and persuasive arguments and instead prepare clear demands around interests and risk. Introduced as a former police-trained hostage negotiator who now advises the UN, governments, and global corporations through the Schranner Negotiation Institute, he framed the session around how startups can negotiate with larger corporates and how corporates should prepare when startups understand the negotiation game. He argued that negotiation is moving from a “value based” approach built around cooperation, partnership, and long-term alignment toward an “interest based” approach. Using the example of negotiations between the USA and Canada under the Trump administration, he said concessions can now be interpreted not as cooperation but as weakness, which may invite more pressure. For Schranner, the practical implication is that negotiators should not try to prove they are right or persuade the other side with arguments. In his view, arguments often signal that the other party is wrong, which triggers counterarguments rather than agreement. Schranner contrasted two negotiation philosophies: starting with “low hanging fruit” versus putting “the fish on the table.” He recommended naming what you want early, respectfully and clearly, rather than hiding the difficult issue until later. He also emphasized that future negotiations in the CIO and corporate environment are not mainly about price or money, but about risk: managing risk, sharing risk, and negotiating risk. The first demand, he said, should clarify what the negotiator wants from a risk perspective. In the interview with Niels, Schranner identified three recurring mistakes: committing too early before all information is available, trying to convince the other side, and arriving with only one demand so there is nothing left to trade at the end. His practical rules for founders included never negotiating with yourself, avoiding guessing games about what the other party might accept, and not assuming the larger corporation automatically has all the power. If a big company is in the room, he said, it wants something too. When faced with pressure such as a 30% discount demand, he advised not saying yes or no immediately, but using responses such as “difficult,” “interesting,” or “noted” to keep the negotiation open while gathering information.