I hate to agree with Ichan, but eBay is probably one of the worst run brands ever. 15 years ago, my grandparents were excited about buying and selling crap on eBay, and they know nothing about technology. Nowadays, it's a place to get ripped off. I have to say that I haven't even thought about eBay for many months.
They've averaged ~13% growth year over year since 2008, doing 16 billion last year. Not sure what your metric is but I hardly think that qualifies as, "worst run brands ever."
This astonishes me. I can't think of any good reason for this except for lack of competition. Among everyone I know almost no one ever buy stuff of ebay anymore and the only people I can think of who use it are mostly scammers.
They've averaged ~13% growth year over year since 2008, doing 16 billion last year. Not sure what your metric is but I hardly think that qualifies as, "worst run brands ever."
This astonishes me. I can't think of any good reason for this except for lack of competition. Among everyone I know almost no one ever buy stuff of ebay anymore and the only people I can think of who use it are mostly scammers.
I think it is a great place to get:
1. Cheap crap from Taiwan
2. Random appliances parts (when something breaks and all you have is a part number)
without giving your credit card to some Chinese or yet another made-in-90ties warehouse website.
This astonishes me. I can't think of any good reason for this except for lack of competition. Among everyone I know almost no one ever buy stuff of ebay anymore and the only people I can think of who use it are mostly scammers.
I think it is a great place to get: 1. Cheap crap from Taiwan 2. Random appliances parts (when something breaks and all you have is a part number) without giving your credit card to some Chinese or yet another made-in-90ties warehouse website.
So, an app that lets you buy anonymously? Brilliant! Really! Just give your payment info to one site that you trust (because its all about trust and nothing else); they buy (maybe in bulk; maybe at a price break) FOR you.
What exists like this now? What market would be best served by this? Is your app in to YC yet?
I upvoted you, but I'm not sure I agree. If you look at people who've really disrupted industries, they don't tend to be like Carl Icahn. Increasingly, as I read up about what happened during the M&A boom of the '80s, it does seem to me that finance played an essentially destructive role during that decade and the three that have followed. I don't see very many advances that would have been impossible without the fin…
Leveraged buy outs aren't about disruption, they're about efficiency. Any company worth doing a hostile takeover of has a working business model (product market fit) and the acquirer is betting they have a lot of expenditures that are basically irrelevant to what they do to make money, or they are running at far below full utilisation on some resources or capacities, which can be cut without materially effecting anyt…
In theory leveraged buyouts are all about what you describe: getting rid of incompetent management, shedding non-core businesses, and restructuring the company to be more efficient. In practice, LBOs tend to leave companies weaker than before, since people like Carl Icahn strip cash reserves and load the company up on debt instead. This means that the company is running much closer to its financial red-line than before, and so when an unforeseen contingency occurs (like a year of bad sales, or an economic recession) the company is forced into bankruptcy with ruinous costs for its remaining shareholders, managers, and line workers.
They've averaged ~13% growth year over year since 2008, doing 16 billion last year. Not sure what your metric is but I hardly think that qualifies as, "worst run brands ever."
This astonishes me. I can't think of any good reason for this except for lack of competition. Among everyone I know almost no one ever buy stuff of ebay anymore and the only people I can think of who use it are mostly scammers.
Well it's a good thing you're not an eBay stockholder. I use it probably a dozen times a year to buy hard to find stuff. Stop thinking the world is you and your friends times a billion.
It's exactly capitalism. Carl Icahn, capitalist, used capital to establish control over TWA and, having done so, exercised his property rights in a way to maximize profit and return.
I don't disagree that Carl Icahn is a capitalist, so are Warren Buffett and Marc Andreesen (now). Look at the definition of capitalism "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." Nowhere in the definition does it state that a capitalist must be a greedy a hole who destroys companies and the lives of employees in orde…
Agreed.
Capitalism gives people the ability to be driven by generally selfish factors, but there is a line between selfish motivation and greed.
Unfortunately that line is more of a moral one which can make it harder to define.
I hate to agree with Ichan, but eBay is probably one of the worst run brands ever. 15 years ago, my grandparents were excited about buying and selling crap on eBay, and they know nothing about technology. Nowadays, it's a place to get ripped off. I have to say that I haven't even thought about eBay for many months.
They've averaged ~13% growth year over year since 2008, doing 16 billion last year. Not sure what your metric is but I hardly think that qualifies as, "worst run brands ever."
I probably misstated what I was intending to say -- I'm talking about the eBay marketplace.
The company has growth being driven by things like Paypal, enterprise storefronts and subsidiary brands abroad.