5 ms·

Like Radio Shack seamlessly turned into makerspaces, as the maker movement came out, where people could 3d print, design things together, and whatnot? Turning

by wegs 6y ago

Like Radio Shack seamlessly turned into makerspaces, as the maker movement came out, where people could 3d print, design things together, and whatnot? Turning businesses around is HARD. I hope they do something, but I'm not optimistic.

iso1631 6y ago
> Turning businesses around is HARD. Not turning them round is harder.
- wegs 6y ago
  Not really: * CEO gets a golden parachute and finds a new job. A competent CEO will always find a job. A turn-around is risky, and a failed turn-around will have exposes and will ruin a career. Easier to stay-the-course. * Workforce is laid off, struggles for a few weeks, and usually finds new jobs. The layoff sucks, but turn-arounds involve equal layoffs (and indeed can be harder to find jobs after; my employer went out-of-business is a mighty good reason to leave a company). Employees also hate change; in many cases, finding new jobs like old jobs is easier than re-qualifying. * Shareholders lose a little bit of money, but are pretty diversified, and from a 50 trillion market, GME even at its inflated valuation is around 1/20th of a percent. ... and new ventures come in and fill the gap. Capitalism is built on survival-of-the-fittest. If a company is not fit, it's sometimes more humane to kill it and replace it with a fitter company than to keep it straggling along. Companies aren't people; they're abstractions. There's no moral remorse to replacing a company with a better one. If you're running DBCorp which has a mediocre, buggy product, and a mismanaged workforce, and I run DBInc which takes your customers, hires your workforce, and has a high-quality product and well-managed workforce, in the end, everyone often ends up happier.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    If your goal is to keep the company going, you have to adapt to survive. Yes it's tricky, and you can simply jump off the bridge if you want, or you can actually try. Vultures might want to pick the bones, and many owners might not care, but some do. Of course if you think it's hard you're free not to bother.
    - wegs 6y ago
      Owners. What a concept. The owners are the shareholders. GameStop was started as a side gig by Riggio, who was also the founder of Barnes and Noble. He has bigger things to worry about, like his retirement. It's been run by professional executives for the most part. DeMatteo is still around, but I think that's it for the founding team. If you can call a series of merges a founding. Yeah, if I own a company, I'll sweat and bleed to make it successful. That's the #1 founder / startup advantage. That's not true for publicly-traded companies. Those are an abstraction. If a CEO is making $35 mil and someone offers them $50 mil, guess where they're going? A lot of startups don't realize that as a source of advantage, but it's a big one. It's a lot of where the agility comes from too. A professional CEO need to first worry about keeping their job, then about their next job, and finally, the organization. For a founder, for the most part, those are one and the same. If you gave me a failing public business as an owner -- with no accountability, no board to please, no existing executive team to back stab me, and all the upside -- I'd do better than most CEOs in turning it around. That's not because I'm more qualified or competent, but because I'd have the freedom of being an owner. The original CEO, if properly incentived, would usually do a better job than I would, in turn.
me_me_me 6y ago
Actually thinking about it, they have massive opportunity. They are on the brink of maker movement event. Potential end of covid (or at least restrictions), people will look for places to meet and chill together. Its not going to be easy, but they have an angle here i think.

by wegs 6y ago

iso1631 6y ago

> Turning businesses around is HARD. Not turning them round is harder.

wegs 6y ago
Not really: * CEO gets a golden parachute and finds a new job. A competent CEO will always find a job. A turn-around is risky, and a failed turn-around will have exposes and will ruin a career. Easier to stay-the-course. * Workforce is laid off, struggles for a few weeks, and usually finds new jobs. The layoff sucks, but turn-arounds involve equal layoffs (and indeed can be harder to find jobs after; my employer went out-of-business is a mighty good reason to leave a company). Employees also hate change; in many cases, finding new jobs like old jobs is easier than re-qualifying. * Shareholders lose a little bit of money, but are pretty diversified, and from a 50 trillion market, GME even at its inflated valuation is around 1/20th of a percent. ... and new ventures come in and fill the gap. Capitalism is built on survival-of-the-fittest. If a company is not fit, it's sometimes more humane to kill it and replace it with a fitter company than to keep it straggling along. Companies aren't people; they're abstractions. There's no moral remorse to replacing a company with a better one. If you're running DBCorp which has a mediocre, buggy product, and a mismanaged workforce, and I run DBInc which takes your customers, hires your workforce, and has a high-quality product and well-managed workforce, in the end, everyone often ends up happier.
- iso1631 6y ago
  If your goal is to keep the company going, you have to adapt to survive. Yes it's tricky, and you can simply jump off the bridge if you want, or you can actually try. Vultures might want to pick the bones, and many owners might not care, but some do. Of course if you think it's hard you're free not to bother.
  - wegs 6y ago
    Owners. What a concept. The owners are the shareholders. GameStop was started as a side gig by Riggio, who was also the founder of Barnes and Noble. He has bigger things to worry about, like his retirement. It's been run by professional executives for the most part. DeMatteo is still around, but I think that's it for the founding team. If you can call a series of merges a founding. Yeah, if I own a company, I'll sweat and bleed to make it successful. That's the #1 founder / startup advantage. That's not true for publicly-traded companies. Those are an abstraction. If a CEO is making $35 mil and someone offers them $50 mil, guess where they're going? A lot of startups don't realize that as a source of advantage, but it's a big one. It's a lot of where the agility comes from too. A professional CEO need to first worry about keeping their job, then about their next job, and finally, the organization. For a founder, for the most part, those are one and the same. If you gave me a failing public business as an owner -- with no accountability, no board to please, no existing executive team to back stab me, and all the upside -- I'd do better than most CEOs in turning it around. That's not because I'm more qualified or competent, but because I'd have the freedom of being an owner. The original CEO, if properly incentived, would usually do a better job than I would, in turn.

me_me_me 6y ago

Actually thinking about it, they have massive opportunity. They are on the brink of maker movement event. Potential end of covid (or at least restrictions), people will look for places to meet and chill together. Its not going to be easy, but they have an angle here i think.