Worst Run Companies of the Tech Era
We can learn a lot from the best companies out there but we can probably learn just as much from the worst companies out there.
The mistakes these companies made didn’t always lead to bankruptcy but have certainly led to the stagnation of the companies.
Simply take these lessons and apply them to your business and you should be golden!
Groupon
Okay we’ll do the easiest lesson first, and that lesson is pretty much don’t create the worst business model in history.
What They Did
For those who don’t know, Groupon essentially is the bargain hunting website of choice for many. They serve as an advertiser for companies to gain outreach and then split the deals revenue on the site with those companies.
What They Did Wrong
The answer here is pretty much everything.
Execution-wise they didn’t have quite as many issues but their entire business model was flawed since the start.
To gain clients they had to create a massive sales army that would go and pound the pavement to get businesses to sign up. Then once the businesses would sign up they would leave immediately because they were splitting 50/50 with Groupon what was already half off on sale.
Groupon essentially subsidized each purchase that was made on the platform and their churn rates were through the roof.
Yelp
Those who have been following the tech scene for a while should be expecting to see Yelp on this list. The problems that plague Yelp are much different than Groupon and are very interesting.
What They Did
Yelp is a reviews platform where people can list companies they want to review and then the companies can claim their profile to advertise and interact with customers.
What They Did Wrong
It’s pretty safe to say that Yelp simply had a good idea and did not execute well in any way.
Yelp was and is untrustworthy for reviews amid allegations that they take bribes to change reviews. Their review algorithms are simply terrible at recognizing good and bad reviews and thus add to this issue.
The platform also had so much room to grow and to add features to increase usability of the platform. It however, did not add any new features that were worth it and the advertising platform was ineffective at best for companies.
Intel
Though not as severely underperforming as the other companies on this list, it is safe to say that Intel is not what it should have been.
What They Do
Intel provides chips and integrated circuits to many large distributers, Apple included until more recently.
They mostly work in the CPU section of the market and they design chip set architecture for other chip producers.
What They Did Wrong
Intel’s biggest problem to this day is a lack of innovation in the company and most of it coming from the senior management.
Their chips are still decent to this day however, they are not on the cutting edge and as large companies like Apple start to move toward their own chip design, Intel loses share.
Coupled with the fact that getting behind in the latest computing paradigms means years and years of pain, Intel is in for quite a terrible ride these next few years.
