How do you figure Demand Media is producing lots of cash?
Their business is struggling just to break even on an operational basis, and has been for years.
Their business is struggling just to break even on an operational basis, and has been for years.
This is not to defend the business, I have no interest in doing so, but the ONLY thing about this that is even reasonably a cautionary tale is building a business that has no intrinsic value to anyone. Those businesses have little chance, but that's the point they're making when they declare it a cautionary tale.
DM has a reputation on here as some sort of shitty content farm, but that's just a fraction of what we do. Maybe that's just the only part of the business the markets care about.
At least for my group, sales rings the dinner bell announcing a new contract frequently enough that it's driving engineering insane. They need to move that damn thing over by marketing.