If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.
Objectively speaking, Traf-O-Data was a failure as a company. Right as our business started to pick up, states began to provide their own traffic-counting services to local governments for free.
The paradox explored in my book 'The Innovator's Dilemma' is that successful companies can fail by making the 'right' decisions in the wrong situations.
Starting a business is risky. Half of all new businesses fail to experience a fifth anniversary. And everyone knows that you could lose all the money you've invested in your new company and then some. Those are the obvious risks of trying to be an entrepreneur.
All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
We're losing our companies; we're losing jobs; they devalue us out of business - China and these other countries.
When companies fail, shareholders bear the losses. It's just the way our system is supposed to work.
Any bailout of a private company is a bad decision by our federal government. Private companies have the right to succeed, but they also should have the right to fail.
I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that.
We have no companies now, not in the sense that I know, that nurture actors. It's very depressing that, given the money they get, the companies today don't number up in my estimation. They should be bringing on young talent, and they don't.
In technology, most things fail. Most companies fail.
Business people get many undeserved prizes - golden parachutes and bonuses even when companies fail. I don't think people should get rewarded for screwing up.
Amazon drove Borders out of business, and the vast majority of Borders employees are not qualified to work at Amazon. That's an actual, full-on problem. But should Amazon have been prevented from doing that? In my view, no.
The small companies who feel that the majors are a threat, or are predators, will use that as an excuse for their eventual downfall. Don't blame others for your own inadequacies.
In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps - college students and new graduates - to do what little was left of the work of the employees they'd laid off.
I made so many mistakes in running the company so far, basically any mistake you can think of I probably made. I think, if anything, the Facebook story is a great example of how if you're building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes
Do I think it is good policy for the government to own companies? Normally, I'd say 'no.' But in my world, if a firm puts itself in a position that it needs a last minute rescue, and the future is uncertain at best, then the investor who steps into that breach ends up owning the company. Full stop.
The annals of business are filled with stories of companies that thought they had it made and could milk their enterprises without having to bother about improving their products or services. It's amazing how fast they found their markets disappearing.
Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could - I'm searching for the right word - could, could die.
A lot of airlines have come and gone.
Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is.
So all of these companies that are going for the big growth, if it continues for any length of time, will outlast their resources and outlast their customers and go belly-up. And that's why these huge companies have massive layoffs all the time.
Generally speaking, companies get into bankruptcy as a kind of meritocracy. Somebody made some sort of big mistake, to get into bankruptcy, and very often, a part of the mistake is too much leverage.
Many companies don't exist after 25 years. It's a rarity. Or if they do exist, they're like IBM, with a totally changing personality.
People are starting companies at young ages. They fail fast, learn a lot, and keep going.
