How 2 egotistical dbags went from running a $10M start-up to facing bankruptcy and laying everyone off
ยท 2 min read
It took me way too long to realize the our business culture just isn't equipped to deal with two types of people.
- Stupid people with money
- Greedy people with high opinions of themselves
The intersection of these two groups causes a tremendous amount of waste and efficiency in the economy.
Things I've seen:
- Older folks playing shell games, trying to keep checks from investors clearing just long enough to reach retirement. This typically involves grandiose promises that will be impossible to keep, alongside waves of excuses (it's the economy! Not us!). When the company inevitably does fail and everyone ELSE is screwed, they go on LinkedIn and become "thought leaders" and "mentors" - obsessed with how amazing they are despite being retired and unemployable.
- Complete idiots who are running companies due to nepotism, fraternity connections, and so on. These companies bleed money and are abject failures, but serve the very perplexing purpose of "giving my daughter's idiot husband something to do (a company to run into the ground) so she doesn't bother me about him" - which one of those things only the ultra-rich have to worry about.
- Executives locked in golden handcuffs marching towards the impending sale of the company. No matter how bad things are, they literally zone out as if hypnotized, because for legal reasons they can not acknowledge bad news publicly. Instead, they look out for their own interests by gutting the company's assets and sabotaging its long-term prospects in order to make it look better on paper for the pending sale. Then, the sale happens and they ride off into the sunset with obscene bonus checks for their trouble.
- The same company sold like clockwork every 2-3 years between different owners, all of whom walk in convinced that they can find savings and efficiencies (e.g. layoffs) and re-sell the company for more money. After the 4th or 5th time the hot potato is passed, the company is in such poor condition that its necessary to out-right mislead future owners in order to convince someone else to except it before it explodes.