Another Why Webvan Failed Article
from the seems-like-a-popular-topic dept
Stewart Alsop chimes in with his opinion on why Webvan failed. His theory is that the company wasn’t run by entrepreneurs, but by consultants. He claims that entrepreneurs understand the very basic concept that any money you spend should advance the business. Consultants just spend money. For example he points out that Webvan’s decision to repaint their vans as a “rebranding” campaign as they were running out of money was ludicrous. What he doesn’t mention was that venture capitalists (Alsop himself is a well known VC – though who knows if he’s guilty of this himself) for the past four or five years (up until a year ago) had been pushing every startup around to focus on “branding” themselves rather than silly little things like “advancing the business” or, say, “bringing in real revenue”.
