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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

This might be a stupid question, but are there any amazing turnaround stories in the world of large tech companies? If not, is that due to the relative youth of the sector, or something fundamental? I can think of a ton of companies that have faltered, but really none that have made a dramatic turnaround.

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Apple kind of leaps to mind.

This is where they were the year Jobs returned, remember: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/wired+cover.jpg

Apple is a good example. Keep in mind that Apple was "turned around" by one of the founders. That's an example of re-aligning the company with it's original vision rather than altering the vision. I think the latter is much harder but I've never tried.

Wow, I feel stupid now. Maybe I didn't think of Apple because it was an original founder returning and fixing things?

Don't feel stupid! It doesn't happen very often, really. Certainly the examples are few and far between. Turnarounds can happen, they just usually don't.

Interesting observation. Most startups fail, and most turnaround efforts fail. Makes success something you really want to hang on to when you find it.

Bit borderline on being a 'tech' company by modern standards (though historically it's about as tech as it gets), General Electric under Jack Welch. He pulled off a Jobsian effort in the 80s. GE went from $27bn revenues to $130bn under his watch and a market cap of $14bn up to $410bn.

As I recall most of that was due to the US economy turning around and picking up defense contracts. I think it would be impossible to not make money in that situation.

I think there is a big difference between "impossible to not make money in that situation" and growing revenues by 100B under your leadership. A lot of companies in that era did not grow revenues by 100 billion dollars.

Intuit hit a period of relative stagnation that Brad Smith has been working to plow through for a while, a period of change marked by the acquisition of Mint and an expansion in the online product suite

SanDisk went in the relative dumper following the memory glut in ~2009 but seems to have been recovering under Mehrotra for about a year now

And a great turn around (and around) story is Seagate, who tanked, went private around 2000, came out and soared mid-2000 and is sort of tanking again even under chairman Stephen Luczo's leadership

give "who says elephants can't dance" a read. it deals with the turnaround of ibm, a company with tremendous institutional inertia.

http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Dance-Inside-Historic-Turnar...

Apple from the mid-1990's to present. CEO John Sculley had been instructed in 1993 to sell the company (unsuccessfully, to AT&T, IBM, etc.), before getting fired. He refers to the time as Apple's "near-death experience." In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to the company via NeXT and Microsoft invested a severely needed $150 million. Without those two events happening, it is highly possible that Apple would not still exist today (let alone being the most valued technology company in the world). That's about as radical of turnaround as possible.

Lou Gerstner's turnaround of IBM, in addition to the obvious Apple comparison.

Nintendo.

Apple passed through a pretty dramatic shift on the Sculley/Spindler years... AOL is another example, if I'm not mistaken.

Apple?

Apple

IBM under Lou Gerstner is one of the greatest turn around stories in business history.

"How Lou Gerstner Got IBM To Dance" http://www.forbes.com/2002/11/11/cx_ld_1112gerstner.html

Also, Michael Dell returning to his company has been a solid turn around in regards to profitability and improvement in product quality, both of which had languished under the former chief. It doesn't show in the stock valuation because of substantial PE compression, but Michael Dell has taken the company from losing money briefly and having some accounting scandals, to a solid level of profitability in the last few years.

The microsoft controlled board already made sure the founders have no voice in the company anymore.

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