
A Cautionary Tale from the Startup World - dshah
http://randfishkin.com/blog/60/cautionary-tale-startup-world
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rgrieselhuber
"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
Andy 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.

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barmstrong
If anyone knows the company he wrote about I'd be curious to know (whether it
was the author's intention or not).

~~~
lubos
the 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/> ?

~~~
AlexMuir
Pretty sure it's Woot. Coincidences?

1\. See if you can find anything on the VCs who backed Woot. There's nothing
on Crunchbase and nothing on Google. No-one is trumpeting it as a success, or
even mentioning it in their (previous) portfolios.

2\. Purchase price was reportedly $110m in cash - exact same number as in this
post.

3\. Post says firm was founded by close friends. He seems to live in Seattle,
which is where Woot is/was based.

4\. Current CEO of Woot, and presumably CEO at the time, has protected his
tweets.

~~~
CoachRufus87
Woot is based in Dallas, TX

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ojbyrne
This 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.

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shadowsun7
I 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.

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neworbit
The 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.

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bigwally
>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
The whole story seems like a big cliche.

