> It shows how fundamentally difficult it is to make credible business forecasts in technology.
Becoming a major success is fundamentally hard and predicting the future is fundamentally hard, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise.
You can see the effect in major established companies as well: Microsoft has two very successful products (Windows OS and Office), Google has one (search/AdWords). In both cases the core products are pretty much the entire profit for these companies. This is hardly for lack of trying, they have both launched dozens to hundreds of other products (and have tons of money to back them up), but have so far been unable to replicate the success.
It's not just technology either: Peter Lynch (a successful fund manager) coined the term "ten bagger" for a stock investment that increases tenfold in value. According to Lynch, ten baggers were incredibly satisfying and incredibly hard to find. (As I recall it from his book, the fund invested in hundreds of companies each year and there was still years between each ten bagger. In that perspective, one major success out of 40 seems pretty good.)
I guess it mostly goes to show that mountains of money tend not to lie around for the taking :)
Becoming a major success is fundamentally hard and predicting the future is fundamentally hard, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise.
You can see the effect in major established companies as well: Microsoft has two very successful products (Windows OS and Office), Google has one (search/AdWords). In both cases the core products are pretty much the entire profit for these companies. This is hardly for lack of trying, they have both launched dozens to hundreds of other products (and have tons of money to back them up), but have so far been unable to replicate the success.
It's not just technology either: Peter Lynch (a successful fund manager) coined the term "ten bagger" for a stock investment that increases tenfold in value. According to Lynch, ten baggers were incredibly satisfying and incredibly hard to find. (As I recall it from his book, the fund invested in hundreds of companies each year and there was still years between each ten bagger. In that perspective, one major success out of 40 seems pretty good.)
I guess it mostly goes to show that mountains of money tend not to lie around for the taking :)