Chương 12Trường hợpC1. IdealabBill Gross bắt đầu công ty đầu tiên của mình (một nhà sản xuất thiết bị năng lượng mặt trời) khi ông là 15 tuổi. Sau khi tốt nghiệp từ Caltech, ông bắt đầu một công ty phần mềm, GNP, ông sau đó đã bán cho Lotus (bảng tính phần mềm đầu tiên mà bây giờ là một phần của IBM). Gross đã thực hiện một số lượng đáng kể tiền và đã quan tâm đến khám phá những cách tốt hơn nhận được những ý tưởng được chuyển đổi thành doanh nghiệp có lợi nhuận. Ông trở nên quyến rũ bởi những ý tưởng của vườn ươm doanh nghiệp kinh doanh cùng thời gian, ông trở thành thích thú với khả năng kinh doanh của Internet. Năm 1996, ông gộp một số của sự giàu có của mình với sự đóng góp của nhiều đối tác để tạo ra Idealab.Idealab was one of the first companies to provide an incubator that was open to individual entrepreneurs. Idealab provided venture capital and gave entrepreneurs a place to work and develop their business ideas alongside other entrepreneurs. In the first wave of electronic com¬merce, Idealab was very successful. Although many of its incubated companies eventually failed, enough of them succeeded that Idealab was able to fund several generations of new businesses through its operations. In its first year, it supported 10 new businesses, including the very suc¬cessful CitySearch Web site. In its second year, Idealab helped create another 10 businesses, including the successful sites Shopping.com, Tickets.com, and WeddingChannel.com. In subse¬quent years. Idealab incubated companies such as NetZero, Cooking.com, CarsDirect.com, Picasa, and GoTo.com (which later became Overture and was eventually acquired by Yahoo!). Not all of Idealab's companies were successful, however. One of the most dramatic failures of the first wave of electronic commerce, eToys, had been an Idealab company. Idealab had more winners than losers, though; by earty 2000, the company had more than S4 billion in assets.In 2000, Gross devised a new strategy that would go beyond Idealab s original purpose as an incubator. He developed a plan to compete with Amazon.com using existing Idealab compa¬nies. His plan was to combine about 10 of the companies in the incubator (including specialty retailer Eve.com and online jewelry store lce.com) and promote them (using large amounts of money that would be raised from outside investors) as a single marketplace under the name Big.com. However, just as Gross began raising money to support the launch of this new mar¬ketplace. the pool of dot-com investment funds dried up. The new combined company quickly failed. Eve.com and Big.com no longer exist. The founders of lce.com bought their company back from Idealab and moved it to their home in Montreal (where the company is now operating profitably). Within a few months, the failure of Big.com and the lower stock market valuations of Idealab's holdings reduced the value of the company’s assets from $4 billion to S200 million.Idealab s investors were upset by Gross's change in strategy and by the drop in their company's value. In January 2002, 44 of them sued Gross and other Idealab managers for S750 million. The suit alleged mismanagement of the funds invested and further alleged that Gross had used Idealab funds to pay personal expenses. Eighteen months later, a court held that the allegations were without merit and the suit was dismissed. Gross was once again able to devote his time to operating Idealab as an incubator.Gross sa thải hơn hai phần ba của các nhân viên của Idealab và ngừng nhận bên ngoài mạo hiểm. Idealab dừng cung cấp các vườn ươm space cho các doanh nhân những người đã có
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