I've always wondered, what happened to that $1 BILLION of infrastructure that Webvan setup?
I always wonder about that company. I saw the ex-CEO speak at Failcon and I'm continually reminded of the idea that companies die not because of bad product or losing one particular deal, but, rather, because the owners decided to give up.
To my mind, Cuil could've stayed afloat, but no one wanted it to. It was easier to sweep that giant pile of FUBAR under the rug, but, in retrospect, they would've still likely been a large company, albeit not Google size, but large nonetheless.
There's plenty of value locked up in the company which could have done other things. If it were startup nuclear winter and they had no other options, they might have made something successful out of it. Staying may not have been the economically rational choice for them, but if there were different economics, or non-economic factors (pride, unwillingness to fail, etc.), they might have had a better outcome.
And there's always uncertainty in estimating -- usually in underestimating how big a success something could be if successful -- so "blindly" continuing could the EV maximizing choice, too.
Care to elaborate why (you believe they'd become a large company)?
In all honesty, I think that a 100M investment would've been enough of a runway to right the ship IF anyone could've stomached it after the horrific launch. Cuil could've pivot'ed their algorithm or their model and been a relatively large search engine (1% of the market is ~$1.5B).
Success, in all things, is relative. Cuil could've been the fifth biggest search engine on Earth and STILL have made a ton of money.