The Verbal Deal: Write It Down, Then Let Them Out of It

A verbal yes means nothing yet in Larry Chiang’s playbook, not until it gets written down before anyone leaves the room. Not a full contract necessarily, but something like his One-Way Letter of Intent, a short commitment to specific actions rather than vague goodwill. The pen-drop close is where this usually happens in practice: Larry sets the pen down, goes quiet, and lets the other person pick it up to initial what was just agreed.

Writing it down does two things at once. It locks in what was actually said, and it signals that the conversation was real, not just a friendly chat. The part people miss is the second half of Larry’s advice: after you write it down, you let them out of it. That means making the exit easy, telling them plainly that if this is not right for them, saying so now costs nothing.

Larry’s reasoning is that pressure is what makes people stall, and a clear exit removes the reason to stall. Under the One-Way Letter of Intent, half can release once they hit a defined early step, roughly the twentieth action in, so nobody is locked into the whole thing blind.

This is not weakness. It is closer to karma banking, since letting someone out gracefully now is what makes them return your call the next time. Larry’s claim is that verbal deals fall apart mostly in the gap between the handshake and the follow up email, and writing it down on the spot closes that gap.

A deal someone can leave and still chooses to stay in tends to hold up better than one they felt cornered into. He talks through a real example of this sequence in the video below.