CEOs can make or break companies, but sometimes their ego-fueled decisions lead to epic disasters. Here’s a collection of CEO fails that cost companies billions and sparked internet firestorms. Add your favorites!

1. Bayer's Monsanto Merger Werner Baumann thought buying Monsanto for $63B in 2018 was a genius move. Surprise! All they got were endless lawsuits over cancer-causing weed killer and a stock value drop of over 40%. Nice job, Werner.

2. Unity's Install Fee Fiasco John Riccitiello, ex-EA mastermind, decided to hit developers with a new install fee in 2023. The result? A full-blown dev revolt, 70% stock drop, and his very own farewell party. Mission accomplished.

3. WeWork's IPO Crash Adam Neumann convinced everyone WeWork was worth $47B while blowing cash on private jets and tequila parties. Reality check: after a failed IPO, WeWork's value plummeted to $8B, and Adam was shown the door. Cheers!

4. Nokia's Android Blindspot Stephen Elop stuck to Windows Phone like it was the next iPhone, ignoring Android’s dominance. The result? Nokia went from a $150B titan to being sold off to Microsoft for $7B. Solid move, Stephen.

5. Uber’s Wild West Era Travis Kalanick turned Uber into a $70B beast, but the frat-house culture, scandals, and lawsuits caught up. Valuation dropped to $48B, and Travis got the boot—probably while yelling "disrupt!"

6. Wirecard’s Magic Trick Markus Braun turned Wirecard into a $24B fintech darling… except, oops, $2B went missing. Cue the fraud scandal, Braun's arrest, and Wirecard disappearing faster than the money.

7. Twitter's Musk Show Elon Musk took over Twitter for $44B and immediately set it on fire with mass layoffs, random bans, and wild policy swings. Fast forward, Twitter (X?) is worth $15B. Who could’ve seen that coming?

8. GE’s Fall from Grace Jeff Immelt took the wheel at GE when it was worth over $400B. Fast forward 16 years of bad bets, botched decisions, and surprise accounting issues, and GE was valued at under $90B. From global giant to corporate cautionary tale.

9. Boeing's Long List of Disasters The 737 MAX crashes were just the tip of the iceberg for Boeing’s problems under GE-trained CEOs like Stonecipher, McNerney, and Calhoun. They brought GE’s cost-cutting culture to Boeing, compromising safety to please shareholders. Beyond the 346 deaths from the MAX crashes, Boeing's also seen planes losing door plugs at 10,000 meters, whistleblowers mysteriously dead, and numerous near-disasters. Over decades, Boeing’s market value plunged from $250B to $120B, and its reputation was dragged through the mud. Thanks, GE.

Updates: - Yahoo: Jerry Yang turning down $46b acquisition offer from Microsoft in 2008. Once Micosoft makes an offer you know you're over the hill. Sold to Verizon for 10% of that 9 years later and even that was pure charity. - AOL Time Warner. $54 Billion loss in in 1 quarter in 2003.

Malls across the United States are anyone under 18 from entering without parents at certain times is there a reason for this? Yes kids act dumb but they have always acted dumb, what so special about now? I don’t think there has been an increase in crime this year last time I checked, if there was I haven’t heard about it. I’m assuming I’m missing something so I wanted to get an answer from a business prospective. Also aren’t the main mall goers teens? Isn’t this bad for business?

Edit: also my mall started this policy recently I’m 21 but I look like a kid still, will they stop me and or ask for an id. I really only go to the mall by myself not in groups

I know lots of people use various strategies from the “Art of War” in business. Do you know of any times where someone used this strategy in business?

I will be seeking legal and a CPA, just trying to do research a bit first. You can check my post history for my last post for details. But long story short I am a WOSB and a person I initially brought on to be an employee, instead now wants to provide my business a $100,000 loan with 8% APR for me to use as working capital and for him to be paid back usually within 30-60 days which is the standard repayment time frame that I’m okay with. If he does this, he wants 49% of my company and access/control of the business bank acct.

On top of this, he doesn’t want me to have any control of that loan for the reason that it’s his money and he doesn’t know if I’ll pay it back or not, which is why he wants 49% ownership. We are friends outside of work. I know, never do business with friends. But I don’t have excellent credit to get any business loans at this time, so he would be my only option. He knows that in the world of worst case scenario where I ran off with the funds, at this point in time he wouldn’t get it back because I have nothing if he sues me. This is a fair and scary thought, I would feel the same. So I want to do everything legally possible to ensure and give him piece of mind that he won’t get screwed over, but also have it be reasonable, legal, and fair to me as well.

The business is for government contracting where you get profit on each bid you win. Does this mean if he owns 49% of my business, that he is entitled to 49% of profit?

Everyone will always tell you it’s not a good time to start a business. This goes for every field.

What fields IS it a good time to start a business in?

Would love to brainstorm, debate, discuss!

Hi, I recently read the following statistics from the book “The E-Myth: Why most small businesses Don’t Work and What to do about it” by Michael E. Gerber:

• 40% of businesses fail within the first year
• 80% fail within 5 years
• Of 20% that make it to year 5, 80% will fail by Year 10. That means only 4% of businesses make it.
• Overall, only 2% of businesses make more than 1M dollars a year.

So, let me clear: I knew the odds of sucess were low, but not like this. This makes me think: what is the purpose of starting a business? The Odds of success at 10 Years are completely negligible!

It makes no sense for a rational being (and besides beijg an entrepreneur, one must be also a manager and have a cold head analysing odds), knowing about these statistics, to start. Specially, knowing only 2 in 100 will surprass the 1M dollars mark per year.

Am I reading this correctly? Thanks!

If you have managers beneath you who say, "People don't want to work anymore," It's time to find a new manager. I think people who say that tend to be completely removed from reality, fail to understand human motivation, fail to understand the concept of a job and admit they are failing but pass the blame on "lazy people."

Knowledge of human motivation is an essential skill of leadership. I do not know why anyone would respect someone who uses those words. There are certain kinds of people who worm their way into management positions because they are lazy themselves and I think this tends to be a big red flag of this kind of person.

Am I making sense here?

Inspired by the recent post on arrogant CEO decisions that ruined companies, any examples of the opposite? Where CEOs had their work cut out for them but turned the company around or made some weird plays but it payed off massively?

Classic example is FedEx still being around because the CEO and CFO successfully gambled the company payroll at Vegas.

My business got hit pretty bad after 2020 and so did my health. I did the right thing and sold it. It was my all consuming passion for 20 years. It's online and I can see other people selling the products I used to sell. While I don't want to go back to what I was doing, and have a great life now doing something different, it still makes me sad when I see "my" products. I've not fully moved on emotionally, how do I do that?

My husband and I recently inherited 100k from family. It’s currently sitting in a money market account.

We make 140k combined total income, and have our first baby on the way in a few months.

We already own a house with a 2.62% interest rate, and initially thought we’d use the 100k as a down payment for a house in the suburbs. The idea being we would rent our current house out and net anywhere from $1000-$1500 a month.

After house searching for a few weeks, everything I would want for a family home is out of our budget, so we started to think about other ways to invest that money. Should we just keep it in a money market? Buy a franchise? Invest in a business? Buy another rental property?

We both have a dream of retiring early and somehow having a passive income. What’s the best use of this 100k to give us the lifestyle we want?

TLDR: Inherited 100k that’s currently sitting in a money market account. We have another 80k in a Roth IRA, and about 100k in equity in our current home. We have very middle class jobs and make 140k combined but we have no debt and we’re good savers.

Do we: -Buy our forever home for our growing family -Buy a rental property, - Buy a franchise of some kind - Invest in some kind of turn key business? Maybe e-commerce?

What will give us the best return on our investment, give us some kind of passive income or let us retire early.

Any suggestions for bookkeeping software? Been with QB many years. Tired of the pretty horrible customer service.

Must integrate with ADP, allow mobile access with multiple users. We’re a small company.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Title says it, but the gym is doing great, but there is a lo of time when the gym is going unused right now. The gym goes unused between 8am and 430pm right now and we are fully closed on Sunday. I wondering what the best strategy for offering my gym space to other trainers in our down time. Simply renting mat time seems like it might be a fairly easy approach, almost like a shared office model. I was also considering a percent of gross from whateve program they run, but that sounds messy and like more work on our end. I'm really not sure, but we are open to any ideas Considering how new the gym is, we are off to a great start and our 1st 18 months have been amazing. The gym has no debt, taxes are paid, I'm paying myself (not very much), and we have money in the bank, but I want to keep the momentum going.

So, I own 10% another 10% owner and my majority partner has been planning a sale of the business for a few years. The market never developed like he thought. One potential buyer (they don't know that) and none of us like the deal. So I put together an offer that is reasonable but he doesn't love it. So to apply pressure if no agreement is made, the 2 minority owners are considering retirement. We think the majority owner will either have to buy us out or continue to pay us profit sharing. Do you agree?

As the title says I am afraid of starting my business. I came up with the idea of walking dogs and teaching Spanish to get some income - I am currently unemployed. I have my flyers ready to publish them on Facebook, and I haven’t done it. I don’t know what to do to get rid of this fear.

I keep telling myself that I will do it tomorrow, the day comes and I tell myself the same thing as yesterday.

I am afraid of failing, and I have intrusive thoughts telling me this is a not a bright idea. I know that’s not true, but I keep thinking it.

If you ever went through a similar situation, how did you overcome it?