https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629
"how do you view that phenomenon [laugh] that Amazon is worth more than Sears!? [condescending laugh]"
"a couple of geeks [laugh laugh], who sketched out some software, could destroy Sears Roebuck [laugh]"
same 60 minutes "expert", telling young Bezos, Amazon stock was wildly expensive
https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20
"Amazon is worth more than a major industrial company, like Texaco ... that didn't blow your mind?"
In fact they were only saved because he had secured financing mere months before the collapse, had that not happened Amazon would be listed among the likes of Pets.com.
But, the 60-minutes reporter didn't justify his claims based on risk or on math. He was skeptical because Sears is huge, and to him it was laughable [and yes, he did literally laugh many times in that interview] that Amazon can someday be worth more than Sears. To him it was "messed up", and a sign of things wrong with the world
Two years later it was trading at $10, and didn’t recover until 2007.
The interviewer was right; Amazon was over valued.
The reporter is supposed to be an expert in this field. That's why 60 minutes hired him, instead of someone else, for the job. I am sure there was no shortage of applicants who wanted this job.
Why couldn't he be more open-minded and supportive of a startup like Amazon? Instead of constantly laughing at Amazon and Jeff Bezos (like his choice of cars)
So why be a snob? As you said, no one knows what will happen. Why laugh at the little guy? You don't know what's going to happen
Being open minded and supportive is probably a stretch when something sounds so outrageous that you simply can't believe it's anchored to reality in any way. I assume this is how it felt back then. Probably there were situations where you yourself became derisive of certain things you simply couldn't conceive could be different only to be proven wrong some time later.
We are a seattle-native family. Through people we knew at the time, they asked her to invest in their company and she could have 10% of the company if she gave them money.
She discussed it with my grandfather and they both agreed: "Nobody is going to drink that much coffee." and rejected Starbuck's offer.
So if Sears invested in Microsoft in 1980, Sears of today could've been like Yahoo, whose investment in Alibaba kept Yahoo afloat a few more years but ultimately continued down the downward spiral?
I gather that the few people at Sears who were aware of the investment invite from Bill Gates may not even be alive, considering it was 39 years ago.
How is that in the interest of sears?
There were so many good ideas in the early 80s but Gates was such a genius that he understood how to separate which ones were coming first. He thought about things from first principles in a way that Musk does today. The Yankees knew databases and stuff, but they didn't know the future, but they knew that my dad thought in the same way. That he thought about the future. My dad was more of a telephony guy than a computer guy and he saw how much of a genius Gates was, so he roped him in to help out his Yankee friends.
Yikes, you just reminded me of a TV ad I saw in the late 90s, of a housewife using a device like that. I remember a CRT-style monitor, but it's faded enough that I can't remember any other details.
So my father and these Yankees told Gates that Microsoft should meet with these clueless Sears guys, since they'd probably move a number of computers over the next couple years and it would be helpful for them to think "Computers? Microsoft." So he begrudgingly did.
In the meeting someone brought up investment and Gates said they could have 20% for $8m. You never know how all these things go. Sometimes someone you never heard of tells you something true and your relative position stops you from seeing it.