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by orthecreedence 4463 days ago
We were working towards a grassroots licensing platform on my last company, Musio. We actually had really great traction and progress, including the ear of a lot of publishers and artists. The CEO was really involved in the music scene and had an incredible ear for the market. Unfortunately a bad initial structure and a few blowhard members of the board essentially stonewalled any funding for the company and we had to shut down. If it sounds insane that an investor would sooner take a 100% loss (and force a loss on the other investors) than restructure the company, that's because it is. Oh well.
1 comments
fencepost 4463 days ago
The decisions people make are generally completely rational from their viewpoint. To you their decisions may seem insane, but perhaps they also have a stake in the current system and all of the proposed options would hurt them more in that arena than the possible or probable benefits in the area you're looking at.
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orthecreedence 4463 days ago
As much as I wish you were right about our situation, you aren't. We looked for meaning and reasons inside and out. There were none.

It was actually just one asshole who couldn't admit he was wrong. He even told as much at one point towards the end, that he would sooner lose everything he invested than backpedal on his initial decisions.

Just a jackass with too much money.

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fencepost 4462 days ago
Yep, a jackass who'd rather lose money than face. It's a value decision that we may not agree with in this case, but it's a legitimate value decision for him.

I'd regard this as having three areas you'd "score" to decide: Financial impact on me, Personal impact on me (including reputation), impact on others. If "impact on others" is a non-issue for you and the personal financial impact isn't much compared to your personal wealth, you could easily make your decision on something like this based entirely on ego.

Not caring about the impact on others may be a bit sociopathic, but there's nothing criminal about that and in fact there are quite a few very successful CEOs and financiers who just don't give a rat's ass about the little people.

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