Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 240 posts

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#51

Post by yieldcrv »

specproc wrote: post #15

Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting on a one-person unicorn. The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.

People talk about physical goods and differences in scaling needs, one thing that bothers or excites me is noticing what the market tolerates.

Many companies employed (and still employ) orders of magnitude more people than necessary just to be taken seriously. The executive team and board is stacked and diluting ownership just to get in rooms for more support and investors.

This was arguably never necessary, and in many markets people still believe they need to stack the deck and print employment numbers for any incorporated idea they have. The market reality changes far faster than the culture and I love seeing evolution of markets where individuals test a theoretical reality and do it.

I'm glad that people noticed and tried to keep ownership with parallel voting classes, and smaller personnel. I think there are some negatives and that exchanges can go back to enforcing listing guidelines which factor in ownership structure. But even amongst private companies and family offices, I think its interesting when people approach wealth acquisition in ways that match the liquidity of the markets more than the culture, for example, most billionaires stop trading or trying anything because they are afraid of losing money. While the liqiudity from the central bank and market reforms has gotten so much higher over just the last 10 years, that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to trade up to a $60bn portfolio size in the public markets (Bill Hwang). Its still only a matter of time before someone does it successfully and takes it to far larger amounts. Elon Musk sold nearly $40bn of Tesla shares in his court forced acquisition of Twitter, and that's just one stock ticker. Just a matter of time before someone leverages the liquidity in a more diverse portfolio of momentum stocks and has hundreds of billions without any personnel around them. I'm excited to see this capability.

Being able to convert assets to another asset at this speed and scale is something state actors and even Mansa Musa could never do. And the goal isn't done until everything can be valued within milliseconds and its value transferred to another owner, fractionally, with derivatives for future delivery on top.

Liquidity is the game. Just move to the next idea if liquidity isn't there as companies like Kodak from days of old are not necessary.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#52

Post by glimshe »

throw0101a wrote: post #18
specproc wrote: post #15

Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting on a one-person unicorn. The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.

> Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. The 'tech companies' (equivalent) of the past tended to deal with physical goods, and so needed physical means of scaling to become as large as they did. More recent tech companies are often software goods and services, where physical means of scaling may not be as important (though see perhaps with Moore and Dennard). Though those wh…

Many tech companies still deal with physical goods and employ enough people to fill a city - but no longer in the US and Europe, generally. Whether we want them back is up to us.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#53

Post by randombits0 »

specproc wrote: post #22
throw0101a wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. The 'tech companies' (equivalent) of the past tended to deal with physical goods, and so needed physical means of scaling to become as large as they did. More recent tech companies are often software goods and services, where physical means of scaling may not be as important (though see perhaps with Moore and Dennard). Though those wh…

Heh, I was musing on something I'd read recently that had Kodak as a case study. It was compared with Instagram which had about 10-15 staff when it was bought for USD 1bn. WhatsApp similarly small. I hear tech can be big employers, maybe I'm overselling my point a bit there. That said, the trend is very much towards smaller operations, and a large headcount is not at all required for large money. My overall point is…

You are describing CraigsList. No ads, no salesmen, just a small staff.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#54

Post by fragmede »

steveBK123 wrote: post #46
DerekL wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But switching to making digital cameras wouldn’t have helped much, because selling cameras was never really their business. Their main business was selling film, photo paper, developer, etc.

And the mass market consumer digital camera market didn't last terribly long either and is effectively dead. It is now a high end hobby with low volume high margin production. Smartphone cameras and digital distribution of images would have killed them 10-20 years later anyway.

Given that Sony and Samsung make, basically, every smartphone cellphone camera sensor, it doesn't seem inconceivable that a more agile Kodak could have fully pivoted to producing cellphone camera sensors, and fully owned that segment, as well as adding value add services that took advantage of their printing expertise. Sending digital photos to Kodak for them to print and mail them back to you wouldn't have saved all of the company, but if we handwave that it were successful at that, the brand could have kept going for a lot longer. Following that, a prescient, adaptible Kodak could also have created a photo sharing service, like Flickr or Instagram.

The question of why is CEO and executive pay so high always comes up, and between Kodak and RIM/Blackberry, it's easy to argue the good ones are worth what they're paid, as the ones who tank the company clearly are not.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#55

Post by jjk166 »

mikewarot wrote: post #29

There are lots of hidden dependencies in the world, who knows what depends on the reliable production of polymer/emulsion products. It could be that we stop being able to make chips, or printers, or something else because of this as a second or third order effect.

Presumably they wouldn't torch the equipment and shoot the engineers when shutting down. If some business unit within Kodak is producing something the world needs, then there will be money to restart that particular production back up again, either as a spun off entity or as new production by a different firm.

Losing a technological capability requires it to go decades without being practiced - long enough that those with the key knowledge die off. This can and has happened under the right circumstances, but probably wouldn't from a company going out of business.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#57

Post by philipkglass »

myrmidon wrote: post #50
kjellsbells wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodak's failure to capitalize on their invention of the digital camera is so often cited as the cause of their downfall that it has taken on the air of truth. Whether it really was the cause of their demise or not, I'm not so sure. Suppose theyd come out with a line of digital cameras. Would that have saved them? That seems unlikely. Looking around at similar companies, Nikon and Zeiss became specialist lens makers,…

One important point I think is that Kodak, at its core, was a huge company specialized in photography related chemistry . Not easy to turn a company around when the knowledge/qualifications/experience of most of your employees becomes almost worthless. Thats also what made it easier for others (like Corning) to pivot (presumably).

Kodak spun off the chemical business as Eastman Chemical Company in 1994, seven years before the main film business went into permanent decline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Chemical_Company

Eastman Chemical Company is still doing fine.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#58

Post by solardev »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #41
squigz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't deny wealth disparity is very much a thing, but this doesn't seem the point to make it. How many people does Google employ? Amazon? Apple? Probably as much or more than a small town.

How many Kodak workers had to pee in bottles, or needed suicide nets around their company dorms?

Hard to say for sure, but I think we can all agree it was a company full of negatives...

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#60

Post by [deleted] »

specproc wrote: post #15

Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting on a one-person unicorn. The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN