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Northpoint DSL Warns Customers of Shutdown
noweb4u writes "According to their website it looks like the failed merger with verizon was the straw that broke the camel's back. Hope they can get funding enough to allow their DSL customers to migrate to other providers." CNNfn also more details about the details of the case - for all those who are Northpoint customers - good luck.
Good objective points from child_of_mercy. Unfortunately VC's in general are not objective.
The costs are well known, they know what they are planning to charge.
Costs are a funny thing. Look at your typical VC-funded startup. Instead of "doing the right thing", they get told (by the VC) to buy "solutions from Lucent" (or insert your favorite dead but still doesn't know it 1950s culture company repackaged-for-your-enjoyment dot-com name here).
Remember the VC line: "You don't have time to grow organically! We've projected you to triple in size every month in order to facilitate our exit strategy."
Having spent the last 2.6 years at one of these, I watched people spend $5 million a shot on things that cost...well... two linux boxes and a good weekend. Their answer to the challenge? "Hell if I know. The VCs said they'd fund it." (Seriously, ever here of Billdats? That's the Lucent word for "takes a linux boxen, perl, ftp and a good weekend... $3 million please")
They know how much Venture Capital they have.
But they're always planning on more. It's a drug. The best companies I've seen never got hooked, unfortunately.
And knowing that they go offering a service hoping someone will just give them more money to make them viable!
Does throwing money at bad management, bad vendors, bad processes, etc. make them viable over time? Usually it just grows very big ineffective companies. (Of course, it does make for very nice Ebay auctions of the spoils from such chapter 7's...)
Nothing beats the power of the market to kill off the weak VC ploys.
*scoove*