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Comment by mirntyfirty | Hacker News Reader

I’ve seen a couple examples of a somewhat opposite scenario where founder does well, sells to MBA for a lot, business struggles, founder repurchases for much less, then brings business back to profitability

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I remember some of the founders of the first startup I worked for commenting after its acquisition that before being acquired they had been terrified that the huge acquirer would just go "Oh, we should do that" and assign a dozen software engineers to design, implement and ship a rival product, but after acquisition from inside the huge corporation they could see they had nothing to worry about, assigning a dozen software engineers to go ship a rival product would have needed board level determination and nobody in the board knows the first thing about the actual product so that's not going to happen.

DELL and Apple are a good example of your scenario. And Microsoft and Google are examples where the founders handed the company to an MBA and the companies profits greatly increased. But I've seen these happen much less.

You got Microsoft in the wrong category. Gates gave the reins to Ballmer, an MBA, which tanked the stock. Ballmer was never a founder, he was an employee with early stock. Microsoft flourished when Gates was the CEO.

> Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, and became Microsoft's 30th employee, the first business manager hired by Gates

> [Ballmer] left the MBA program at Stanford University

Ballmer is what Marisa Mayer was (or vice versa). An employee that latched onto a rocket. What made the company successful wasn’t them but the founder. By the time you can hire the 10th employee, risk is already greatly reduced.

The way I remember it is that profit's growth for MS greatly increased under Ballmer but company growth tanked and that's what tanked the stock since MS lost its reputation as a growth stock. But generally speaking Ballmer was not the best choice to take on the company.

Yes, Ballmer spent his decade squeezing oil from rocks while completely shitting the bed on anything forward looking; as a result they lost ground on almost every consumer facing product. On the outside Microsoft was starting look like IBM.

However his focus on enterprise laid the seeds for 365 and Azure and flourished once Satya made it clear that not everything had to revolve around Windows and Office. I think Gates is also a bit to blame here as I think the story goes that almost every decision that came to the board was shot down unless it meant more windows/office sales

Interesting, didn’t cross my mind even though I had an Apple Performa from their dark years. I think I was young enough not to realize some of the flaws.

are you thinking of Dell?

Steve Jobs?

Was thinking of a couple observations that aren’t particularly famous but Jobs is in the category too.

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