Their psychic abilities failed? A coin flip came up tails but they bet on heads?
“Do you care to know why I'm in this chair with you all? I mean, why I earn the big bucks?
I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear - a - thing. Just... silence.”
-John Tuld, Margin Call
is "we're a fast growing business but this cannot last indefinitely, let's not overexpand" ´really too much to ask for? It's constantly happening to tech companies because of their internal fantasies.
Isn't it interesting how we want to absolve execs of all blame when they bet wrong and get unlucky, but declare them geniuses and masters of business when they bet right and get lucky?
But overall Stripe has A+ execution -- of which very little was luck -- and the founders deserve credit for that.
Not surprising to see execs and founders on here patting each other on the back and trying to convince everyone that they deserve their millions because of how innovative they are all the "value" they create. Looks like the old HN to me.
This is the norm I've witnessed. They're rewarded for making bold bets, whether or not they pay off.
Just to be sure, there is a big difference between a bold bet based on your market or product insights vs putting everything on black on the roulette table.
If leaders were rewarded for being conservative instead of making bold bets, Linux and open source would never have taken off, nor would most tech startups.
That is because any exec worth her salt would negotiate a generous golden parachute even before starting the job. And why is she able to do that? Because there are very few competent candidates available in the market. If you think the job is easy, just go and get one of those exec positions and you will learn.
Just because you're hired for one of those positions doesn't mean you're competent.
Do you have an idea to judge exec competence effectively? If so, you can have a very successful company based on that.
Such execs are usually already so wealthy that they never have to work another day in their life, no matter what happens or how much they screw up.
They can always find other prestigious, high paid jobs, and sometimes even get rewarded with huge amounts of money from the very companies they screwed over.