I'm pretty sure I never used the phrase "commercial success," let alone
"definitively."
On 2018-04-07 23:53, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Sat, 7 Apr 2018, Paul Mueller wrote:
When I wondered how Rand could definitively say that VG will never be a commercial success, I admit I was thinking in terms of whether revenue could cover operational costs and generate a cashflow profit, not thinking about return on investment for the development costs...
Yeah, "commercial success" is more often used to refer to the state of
the company itself -- whether it's profitable, growing, etc. -- than
to whether the investors are doing well from it. There are plenty of
commercial successes which don't make investors especially delighted,
e.g. a lot of commercial airlines.
The ultimate example, of course, is companies like Iridium, which have
been through -- to swipe a phrase from the late Jordin Kare -- the
"neutron mortgage", Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which (typically) wipes out
the investors but leaves the company standing.
Henry