Learning from the mistakes done by famous investors

It’s easy to make huge mistakes in business. Even if you’re good at your job, and you have all the variables in mind, it’s impossible to know for sure how the future will turn out. And sometimes that makes for gigantic blunders, as these next eight entries will show you.

 

Most organizations believe they have a great idea or a strategy or a plan or product that will take them into the stratosphere… they're all wrong! Companies that make their people feel valuable have the most value in the marketplace

 

From a start-up formed in the garage of Steve Jobs' parents to a tech giant with market valuation at $1 trillion, Apple Inc has seen plenty of highs and lows. In recounts the journey Apple took that led to a destination never reached before. Amazon has become the second company to reach a stock market value of $1 trillion just weeks after Apple hit the same milestone. It surged past the trillion dollar mark this afternoon, prompting experts so say it could become even bigger than Apple. In two decades the company expanded far beyond its bookseller beginnings, combining its world-spanning retail operation with less flashy but very profitable advertising and cloud computing businesses. In the case of NOKIA, there are Several reasons are behind the failure of Nokia, certainly one of the most important being failure to respond to the iPhone and consumer demand that came with it. As the years passed, the symbian platform aged, and that age really showed when compared to iOS and, later, Android. They had the phone market share in their hands…now they are history, because they just couldn’t keep up with the competition and with this a missed opportunity of $478.7bn industry.

The bottom line is all investments have some risk. If Apple failed, Wayne may have had to work hard for a couple of years to help pay off their debts as he did before, but by bailing he missed out on untold riches as a part of one of the most successful companies ever. If you cannot handle risk, do not invest, because every investment has some risk.

With today's rapid technological change, companies rise and fall faster than ever before. The list below represents 10 companies that were once the most innovative in their industry, then lost their edge. History has seen such examples of missed opportunities.

1. Sony rejected Marvel movie rights

2. Netflix is rejected by Blockbuster, goes bust

3. Ronald Wayne sells back an Apple fortune for $800 

4. Xerox invented the PC (Computer) and gave it away

5. Yahoo passed on buying Google for $1 million

6. Viacom thought a $2 billion Facebook buyout was too expensive

7. Warren Buffett's portfolio doesn't include Google stock, and that's something he regrets.

8.  International Car Makers Refused to Buy Volkswagen (1945)

9. Ross Perot Refuses to Buy Into Microsoft for $60 million (1979)

10. George Bell Undervalues Google and Refuses to Buy It (199

The NASDAQ fell from a high of 5,132 in March 2000 to just 1,470 a few months later, as giddy investors suddenly sobered up after figuring out that web businesses with little or no revenue were fundamentally worthless. Companies worth billions when they IPO'd went to zero. Good companies were dragged down with them: Cisco lost 86% of its market cap. Amazon stock fell from $107 to just $7.

A global recession kicked in within a year. Few who lived through it will forget it. The 2000 crash remains one of the defining features of modern economic life.

It is not necessary to know who are the software companies is stealing your data. It is not fair to blame only facebook, Twitter and WhatApp for stealing your data for business continuity or to give better service by understanding the user’s behaviour . The fact is they would require to understand your behaviour then only they can suggest the best. Like through machine learning, machine is learning us on our behaviour and attitude. Finally, It’s been 10 years, in October 2007 since Microsoft invested $240M in Facebook, then Facebook buys Instagram for $1 Billion in April 2012,then may 2012,Facebook went to IPO, further in February 2014,Facebook buys WhatsApp for whopping $ 19 Billion and crossed 2 Billion monthly active users, Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Facebook  said, we're making progress connecting the world, and now let's bring the world closer together.  - now Facebook is worth almost as much as Microsoft.

Today, every company is said to be a software company and Marc Andreessen once famously said that “software is eating the world.” What he didn’t say was that increasingly sophisticated APIs were driving the rapid creation of software. 

Lastly, I would say, companies have to continue to innovate or they will be left behind, particularly in tech.