VCCircle

Yahoo recently bought sports content website Rivals.com for $100 million. What is interesting is, in 2001, Yahoo had offered to buy the then-loss making Rivals for $25 million (via Bill Burnham). The company was on its last legs. The deal fell through as Yahoo insisted on "a incredibly complex structure" in order to keep the losses low on books. VCs liquidated their holdings. The founder bought out all the assets and rejuvenated the company with a "non-bubble cost and mentality". Six years hence, the site was sold for $100 million to Yahoo only. (Yahoo ended up paying $75 million more, even though they knew Rivals was a good product a few years ago).

Burnham draws a few investing lessons from this:

1) Even if good products are damaged by bad business decisions, they are still good products.

2) The time to buy is when everyone else is selling.

3) You can always reduce expense more.

For entrepreneur:

1) Don't give up on a good product too soon.

2) If your product is good, and if you are passionate about it, that will pay off finally

I am sure these lessons work in Indian context too.