One of the costliest mistakes in modern business history was made by former Blockbuster Video CEO John
Antioco.
In 2000 Blockbuster was riding high, and a struggling little DVD-by-mail rental service called Netflix desperately wanted a meeting to try to sell to the video giant.
Blockbuster finally agreed to the meeting, but showed little respect to the fledgling Netflix by giving owner Reed Hastings less than 12 hours notice to get from California to its Dallas headquarters the following morning.
And after Hastings said that he would sell Netflix for $50 million, the Blockbuster CEO struggled to keep from breaking out in laughter.
No deal was ever made, obviously.
Flash forward to today: Blockbuster is dead and Netflix is the king of streaming services (worth something like $125 billion, although there could be dark clouds on the horizon with all of the streaming competitors popping up).
Mistakes as big as Blockbuster's aren't common, but it's near impossible for entrepreneurs to never make any mistakes at all.
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Marc Mawhinney