Recently I read ...
> And to everyone, do we truly think that a $700 chair per employee
> caused any company to go out of business?
I do. Seriously, I really do!
The lack of concern for expenses wasn't restricted to Aeron chairs ... but that established a culture of spending without constraint. If you want to make a profit, you really have to ask yourself..
"Do we need this? How does it help us make money?"
You know, I am sick of people calling themselves entrepreneurs just because they managed to BS some VC's into forking over a few $million$ so they could waste it on superfluous crap ... and then spend it without ever acheiving profitablity.
You look at REAL entrepreneurs ... the folks who bootstrapped companies into profitability and managable growth ... shared computers, folding chairs and card tables ... and those will be the companies left standing after all of these IPO/Flip-Plays go under. Heck I walk into $300m/year media companies that are highly profitable and I see PowerComputing PCs, Mac Quadras, and offices out of a 1950's movie.
A friend of mine interviewed at one of those 'cool' internet companies back in '99 and was told that he "just didn't get it" about the new economy. This is a 47 year old guy who's been running business ops for twenty years being lectured to by some hipster ... well, that company is going under ... so I guess my friend GOT IT. Nice.
Every time I read a press release that says "we went out of business because we couldn't raise more money" I WANT TO PUKE! You went out of business because you didn't have the operations ability of a 7 year old selling Lemonade.
PDQuick could have rationally expanded into the Internet for 1/10th the money they spent by starting slow and seeing what worked. Likewise Kosmo might have made money sticking to big urban areas.
But these companies were not run to make a profit. They were run to unload some illrational business on the IPO market and make $$$$ for the speculators who funded this garbage. Greed triumphant over common sense.
To all of you so called entrepreneurs who wasted all of that capital .... go away ... just go away ... and stop your whining.
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