hi mib,
i think for many folks it has been hard to acknowledge the reality of the way wave was run. i think a lot of people now feel they were misled.
for myself, there were times when i thought a defence of the old regime was possible. there were some achievements along the way. wave seemed to have anticipated an opportunity and to have positioned itself for the opportunity it had anticipated. it seemed to be riding the emergence of tc hardware for a few years. there seemed to be a decent possibility that it was going to catch on.
but in the end, any kind of defence became impossible. there were many issues. the ceo's relationship with reality seemed at best approximate. i lost trust in the unsafe harbour long ago, but assumed this was a shareholder-specific issue. optimism helps sell stock. i get it. but you don't run the operations of a company assuming rainbows and unicorns.
for me, the sea-change event was the corporate expansion with neither the demand nor the cash to support it. at the time, i imagined that either the ceo knew he had a genuine pipeline or that he was crazy. i assumed he wasn't crazy. but he turned out not to have the pipeline. the absence of cash led to dig's doughnut hole.
that was when i realised that the man in the unsafe harbour with the rosy tinted spectacles must be the actual guy. and that was a stunning realisation.
