Om Malik
To take full advantage of Flickr, you should use a JavaScript-enabled browser and
install the latest version of the Macromedia Flash Player .
Comments
I guess this guy must be a great entertainer,
because reading your blog entry, I don't
quite understand your enthusiasm for this
speaker.
"If we forget about money, we get
companies like Enron, WorldCom, and
Pets.com!"
Don't Enron and WorldCom strike you as
having been exclusively about money?
Here's an experiment: the next time you run
into someone who says they knows the rules
for success, ask them to make a prediction
about the future, not just explain in
hindsight why existing successful products
"made it".
Posted 27 months ago.
( permalink
)
Yes, he is a great entertainer. He used that
to get across simple but important lessons,
one of these being that if you ignore money,
you are not building a business. In the Enron
and Woldcom cases, sure, they thought about money, but not how their business
would make it in a sustainable, legitimate
way. In each of those cases, the businesses
made money by scamming -- in other words, the
businesses themselves were broken. The
reports of Enron after its collapse said that
its trading floors (where it was supposed to
make its money) were empty, and that they
would staff these with staff from random
departments whenever visitors arrived to give
them a big show.
Pets.com had the same problem from another
angle -- sending 50lb bags of kitty litter
with free shipping could never be profitable.
Had they focused on the fundamentals of the
business, and not tried to sell every
unprofitable pet product, they would have had
a shot.
I'm sure if asked, Om could predict which
companies are more likely to succeed than to
fail based on their approach to money. It's
not a difficult analysis -- when you see a
company spending significant revenue on
things that do not offer a return, you know
that they are not optimizing their chances of
success.
Posted 27 months ago.
( permalink
)
Would you like to comment?
Sign up for a free account, or sign in (if you're already a member).
This photo also belongs to:
Additional Information
Some rights reserved
Anyone can see this photo