Seeing that Foreclosure is on my mind this weekend, it is fitting to talk about failure. I have failed many times. Forget the stock market where I fail everyday, but in business.
During the Nasdaq bubble, when everyone thought they were smart, I wanted to be a shipping magnate. I was part of a roll-up to build a global and logistic network. It was a good idea, but what the f@#k did I know. The company was called SkyNet and the main office was Amsterdam (yes perfect, I know). Note to self…web 2.0 and Amsterdam must be tapped :) .
The sad thing is we almost pulled it off. I remember the stock going from 12 cents (OY) to $8 in 1999. I had not sold a share. The business was humming. I was golfing with my buddy Tom at St. Andrews when the news hit the tape that we had hired a senior executive (retired) from Federal Express to take us to the next level. As I was high fiving, golfing amidst the sheep, hail and cigar smoke, the stock top ticked. he took us to the next level…ZERO and FAST.
Our genius executive had us in bankruptcy within months. I will bore you with the details some other time. Just know I made no money and had to struggle to get my friends out without getting shellacked financially.
The bad news for me is my truly worst investment (dollar wise) followed suit (coming soon). I could not take what I learned from SkyNet into the new deal because it was unravelling worse at the same time.
Unfortuneately for builders, land speculators and developers today we are experiencing the same thing. For them, it’s worse because of leverage. It’s worse because of personal guarantees. Healing will take time. I feel for the honest ones.
Thanks for sharing stuff like this.
H
Just checked out the historical chart for SKYN.PK.
Looks like someone sold a bunch of stock back in the first week of June 1999 and also the first week in February 2000. But then came the rest of February and on through June 2000.
Yowzers !!!
Yes great post Howard and thanks for sharing. Too bad more people aren’t willing to share their failures on the way to success because we can all learn from them
todd….that was my partners selling out the back door while I was away :) . silly me
Ahhh… brings back memories of the 90’s for me. We have more than one set of stock certificates that we joke would have more value if we used them for wallpaper.
The most important thing I learned was to dust myself off, and get right to work on the next project.
Can’t complain really, I met my husband while he was working on one of his “projects” and that’s worth millions to me :D
By the way I hope this story goes in the next book… Adventures of a Venture Capitalist.
I’ve been a fan of your blog for quite some time and this has to be one of my all time favorite posts. As a 24 yr old entrepreneur at heart, I truly appreciate your honesty, one of the many reasons I look forward to reading every day.
i wish this was my only one…the lesson is to keep yourself able to swing again. smynet and my next one back to back almost took me out. almost :)
how can you lose with a name like skynet?
hl.com business trip to amsterdam!
“Mad Money”? “Stay Mad for Life”? Fuggetaboutit.
I smell an Amazon Top 10:
“Howard Lindzon’s Dumb Money: The 10 Dumbest Investments I Ever Made.”
Place my order for 100 now.
zen – too easy a book and no one will take it sriously until i have 10 winning investments
Now if cramer or jim rogers wrote this book…winner.
Note to self: do not invest in companies with the same name as the “evil computer network” in the terminator series :)
Howard – Thanks for sharing your stories. You are right the book won’t sell.
Real estate needs to take it’s lumps and not get bailed out by my taxes. They took a risk, polished it up, sold it to the financials and they (fin’s.) found out it was all crap (sub-prime, over-extended, new McMansions, etc.) – just bad all the way around. IMHO
Good luck with those mortgages.