4 ms·
A Cautionary Tale from the Startup World
- bigwally 16y ago>Curiously, the CEO hired an exceptionally attractive young woman to be his executive assistant, despite questionable qualifications.... -- Where have I heard this story before?
- deffibaugh 16y agoThe whole story seems like a big cliche.
- ardit33 16y agowhat's wrong on having a hot admin?
- ojbyrne 16y agoThis all sounds very familiar. Especially the bit about the conservative co-founder. When the hype is loudest, the voice of reason gets pushed to the side... and he who makes the biggest promises gets the biggest reward.
- rgrieselhuber 16y ago"The minute you start believing that you’re something special – that you’re the smartest, most talented guy in every room – is the minute things start to fall apart." So true. Paranoia and humility are your closest friends.
- lkrubner 16y agoAndy Grove had a point with the title of his book, Only The Paranoid Survive. That's what I admire most about Bill Gates, from the 1970s till maybe 2000 he managed to remain paranoid. (I say this as a compliment and something that I hope to emulate.) Most people with his level of success would become smug and over-confident. Like his successor, for instance.
- barmstrong 16y agoIf anyone knows the company he wrote about I'd be curious to know (whether it was the author's intention or not).
- lubos 16y agothe article is interesting but without context it's kind of pointless. how do we know he is not making this up? the company had supposedly revenue of 150mil with net loses of around 100mil. my guess is that this was some kind of online shop with very tiny profit margins. EDIT: who would be buying an online shop? the only company I know of is Amazon, could this company in the article be http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/30/woot-amazon/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/30/woot-amazon/ ?
- chamakits 16y agoI agree. I don't know why, cause I truly don't know enough about the company...but for some reason... I'm thinking Zappos.
- HectorRamos 16y agoThe emphasis on culture reminded me of Zappos, but the ratio of Zappos funding to the acquisition price doesn't match the one from the story.
- jbyers 16y ago"the ratio of revenues, losses, final price and outcome are, to my knowledge, accurate" The relative amounts are what matter. The story also now says he'll delete any comments on the blog speculating about the company in question.
- aneth 16y agoZappos sold for 15x the 60M investment, so seems unlikely.
- 16y ago
- shadowsun7 16y agoI think the lesson here is simpler: the company hit product-market fit, and assumed this would be the case forever. This wasn't true, of course. The founders hadn't optimized for this problem, they disagreed on what to do next, success got to their heads, and everything spiraled out of control. It's always harder to follow-up on a success, especially a huge one, like what the company in this story had.
- neworbit 16y agoThe only ones I can think of that ended up like this way have some notable differences - for example, managed to actually go public first, etc.