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There are very few examples of companies turning down large offers and subsequently regretting it. There has to be something pretty good going on to get an offer like that.

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I worked for one, Pointcast

I can think of no other Internet company that was so far (a decade?) ahead of its time.

I loved that damn product so much. This has nothing to do with the thread, but I just want you to know that you had at least one rabid fan from 1994 - 1998.

thank you - it was a good product, but sadly the company melted down, took something that worked and decided to spend a year re-writing it in COM; meanwhile portal sits like Yahoo! came along and eat their lunch. A disastrous CEO that turned down a huge exit opportunity was replaced with an equally disastrous one that spent most of his time worrying about what particular rain forest he wanted chopped down to have this desk made from.

for a much larger example, see Microsoft flirting with Yahoo before they bought out bing. It will be rather a long time before Yahoo is again worth as much as Microsoft was willing to pay.

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