Letting the Air Out
Esquire, April, 2000
WE'D BEEN SUMMONED to the office on Sunday for an emergency meeting: Our third-quarter numbers were going to fall short of analysts' expectations. Way short. We were a classic story stock, and up until then our story had been gold, from our boy-wonder founder and CEO to our proprietary technology to the multibillion-dollar markets we were targeting. We had Fortune 100 partners and Nobel laureates on our board. Investors had responded by making the company one of the most highly capitalized start-ups the Nasdaq had ever seen. Yet a story stock is like a hit TV series, and we had to keep delivering exciting new episodes. We were developing a reputation for putting out news releases whenever Boy Wonder farted. The Street's expectations had begun to feel unsustainably high.
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