Startups

I was at Amzn early '00s when we lost 95% of our market cap. Later at FB I negotiated a down-round in '09, and then in '12 our stock dropped 50% post-IPO. I was on the board of a public company that went bankrupt (Borders) and a start-up that went under (Hello). Some lessons:

You need 2 types of people to keep early-stage startups from stagnating: - someone who’ll shamelessly sell the product before it’s fully ready to be sold - someone who’s embarrassed by this and will push to improve the product faster

Two thoughts: The best startups are masters of asymmetric warfare -- they don't fight on the battlefield the incumbent selects. And, users often understand their problems well but are horrible at suggesting features to solve these problems.