Why would you want them to fail? please tell me how that (closure) is more advantageous than a company making improvements and thriving with consumers benefiting from that change. There are many examples of companies that have turned themselves around. Changed the product, improved customer relations and in the end, expanded the business line, here are a few. Would you say that consumers would be better off without these companies or their products?
Apple is one of the greatest comeback stories in tech history. Founder Steve Jobs was fired from the company in 1985. In the 12 years that followed, Apple found itself operating at a loss as it inched towards bankruptcy. Needing a refresh, Apple hired back Jobs in 1997 and he orchestrated a partnership with Microsoft to invest in $150 million into the company. A year later, the company introduced the iMac and for the first time since 1995, returned to profitability. The rest is history
Tesla and SpaceX both hit cash shortages just as the economy was tanking in 2008. "I could either pick SpaceX or Tesla or split the money I had left between them,” Musk told Bloomberg's Ashlee Vance. SpaceX applied for a contract with NASA as its last hope to bail itself out — and it won. The $1.6 billion contract has kept Musk's space dream afloat. At the same time SpaceX was crashing, Tesla was burning through about $4 million in cash a month. Instead of playing Sophie's choice, Musk made a bet that SpaceX would win the contract and keep both his space and car dreams alive. He took out a loan from SpaceX, and scrounged around for $20 million. After a bluff to his investors, they agreed to match the $20 million he raised, and the deal closed on Christmas Eve in 2008 — hours before the company would have gone bankrupt.
I for one felt national pride when I saw those rockets land on the platform. No other company or nation has ever achieved that before.
Airbnb was founded in 2008 by three guys who had an idea to rent out air mattresses in living room floors. To founder Brian Chesky's dismay, though, investors weren't as enthused with the homesharing business as they are now. Chesky received seven rejections from VCs and subsisted on cereal until the company finally was accepted into Y Combinator. That air mattress on the floor startup is now worth a whopping $25.5 billion. Our Au Pair uses this company every time she goes away for the weekend with other Au Pairs from our area.
Phil Libin had made the decision to lay off all of his employees and shut down Evernote in 2008. Checking his email one last time at 3 a.m. before going to bed, Libin found an email from a man in Sweden who loved the product and offered to invest. A wire transfer for $500,000 helped the company avoid a complete shut down and gain enough traction for it to take off. Evernote is now valued at more than $1 billion.
Founded in 1999 by Tim Westergren, Pandora was able to raise some money right before the dotcom bubble burst. Once that money ran out, however, Pandora struggled to raise more cash as Westergren's pitch to more than 300 VCs during that period fell on deaf ears. He laid off the staff unless they worked for free, but eventually it paid off. Pandora went public in 2011.
