

Bob Cringely Fired from His Startup - rfreytag
http://www.cringely.com/2010/03/another-new-gig-for-bob/

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eapen
This is good to know. I originally signed up for the Home-Account after seeing
his recommendation and was very disappointed with the service. It seemed to
have changed its tune from when it first started up. And then they started
billing me monthly without sending an email or any sort of notification. Their
refund policy requires sending in a whole bunch of documentation that would be
a big pain in the neck.

I cancelled right away and still occasionally get emails from them. Odd!
Anyway, I really think they have become a Scam service now. Has anyone had any
good experiences with them?

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wmeredith
I had a similarly scammy/scummy/shammy experience with <http://Home-
Account.com>.

When I used their recommendations for lenders to apply for lower APR home
refinancing (the core service they offer). I did it twice and neither bank
ever even got back to me. It was like the form I filled out on the home-
Account site just went to no where. Scary stuff when you're submitting a lot
financial data. Anyway, I cancelled my account after that and changed some
passwords elsewhere and moved on.

I then had to ask them three times over the next few months to stop billing
me. Finally had to get someone on the phone which took several calls. I will
say the CSR I spoke to was great, but the product is so hopelessly broken
otherwise it doesn't factor.

So... Terrible experience with Home-Account. It's too bad, too. They're stated
business model _really_ solves a problem a lot of people had/have, their
execution is just awful.

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kanwisher
He really has gone down hill since that great movie he had "Triumph of the
nerds", was really interesting seeing the history of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
starting their companies. Probably one of the better things I've seen on PBS

~~~
toni
He also had a very interesting follow-up series "Nerds 2.0.1"
<http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/> which is the history of the early
internet. Make sure to watch that too!

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e1ven
I ended up buying a ebay copy of the VHS for 2.0.1, but I've never seen it on
DVD- Were you able to find a copy that I'd missed?

~~~
toni
No, probably it was never released on DVD. I always wondered why he didn't
continue the series with, say, Nerds 2.1 (The Fall of The Nerds) covering
after-the-bubble internet and Nerds 2.5 (A New Dawn) about web 2.0

It looked like a solid and successful storyline, so much so that he could
eventually become a nice cliche. Really pity he stopped working on the series.

Did he ever give any explanation as to why he never made another sequel?

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happenstance
How does a founder get fired? So, the CEO says "you're fired". Well, I'm
guessing that if you're a founder then that means you're a co-owner. So, don't
you just tell the CEO, "um... no"?

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notauser
Sure, if you hold 51% of the equity, and even then it would get messy.

The power to hire and fire is (usually) the CEOs, devolved from the board. The
board is (usually) appointed by the equity holders.

For some set ups reversing a CEOs decision might require 50%+ of the
shareholders deposing 50%+ of the board and replacing them with tame board
members who fire the CEO and appoint someone else.

That's going to look pretty bad to the staff, any investors who don't agree,
anyone you might try and hire as the new CEO, customers and any potential
future investors. And after all of those people have run away as fast as they
can how much of a company is really left?

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slapshot
In many venture-backed companies, the Series A (and B, C, ...) shareholders
are guaranteed a certain number of board seats--solely by virtue of holding
preferred stock. The founders (who hold common stock) have no control over how
the preferred shareholders use their board seats.

If the preferred shareholders have an outright majority on the board, it's
black and white that they can effectively fire the founders.

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dnsworks
Cringely actually does something besides writing broadly over-generalized
predictions that end up totally missing the mark?

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tptacek
You can do better than that comment, Michael.

