When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
blog.pmarca.com
When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
1–10 of 127 posts
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#2Financiers like Icahn are motivated by short term profits above all else. Building a company takes people with a long term vision. The two are often not compatible. Having a leech trying to bleed out every cent as soon as it's made is not generally a good thing unless your company throws off wads of unneeded cash like nobody's business.
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#3I don't understand what eBay's problem is. I mean c'mon, Gordon Gekko was only partially based on Icahn.
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#4Every single post in this blog seems to be about Carl Icahn.
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#5What is it with pmarca? As a subscriber of his blog, he's been lambasting Carl Icahn for awhile now. Don't get me wrong! I hate Carl Icahn, but pmarca's critique is hard to get and overobsessive.
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#6Andreeson's defense seems to be that Icahn has had as many conflicts of interest and selfish motives on boards as he has, if not more.
I'm not sure that's a good defense: "He's killed twice as many people as I have, and he's been at it longer, too!"
When people so alike bicker like this in movies, they're usually about a minute away from kissing.
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#7Can someone explain to me the significance of the animosity between Carl Icahn and pmarca? There are half a dozen posts on pmarca's blog discussing how Icahn is making claims against Andreessen. I understand these claims, but I don't understand their significance.
I deeply respect pmarca but I can imagine that he, like any high visibility person, has many detractors. What power does Carl Icahn have that warrants such a strong response?
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#8Not sure that's the most sophisticated PR strategy. One post looks like a rebuttal, 8 look like an obsession.
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#9Financiers like Icahn are motivated by short term profits above all else. Building a company takes people with a long term vision. The two are often not compatible. Having a leech trying to bleed out every cent as soon as it's made is not generally a good thing unless your company throws off wads of unneeded cash like nobody's business.
>Financiers like Icahn are motivated by short term profits above all else.
That's one way to look at it.
Another is to note that Icahn built a thriving financial company that has survived for over 4 decades, and employs over 60,000 people globally. I'd say that requires long term thinking and demonstrates a bit of business acumen.
Re: When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA
#10For those that don't know what is going on, here is the backstory:
Carl Icahn has recently bought a bunch of ebay stock. He has claimed the company is mismanaged. He has also personally attacked Marc Andreesen. Here is the accusation from Ichan:
1) Marc Andreesen was/is on ebay's board.
2) While on ebay's board, Marc bought most of Skype from eBay.
3) He flipped Skype to Microsoft in less than 2 years, earning himself a multi-billion dollar profit.
Carl Icahn is running Marc Andreesen name through the mud. The basic accusation is that if Marc knew Skype was so valuable as the smart phone wars were heating up, he had an obligation as a board member to give ebay better advice on the divesture.
Now Marc is fighting back.
This is a comic schoolboy fight among billionaires.
Edit: After a bit of fact checking, it looks like A16Z only invested $50M in the skype deal. Their fund at the time was around $300M. His gain was on the order of $150 million, not billions. A16Z only had around 2% of skype, and ebay retained 35%.