Dot-Com Boom to Bust: CNET Founder Goes Bankrupt
Easy come, easy go.
Halsey Minor, the founder of tech news website CNET and an early investor in Salesforce.com, which provides sales and marketing software to companies such as Coca-Cola and Ford Motor, has filed for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy protection.
Minor founded CNET in 1994 and sold it to CBS in 2008 for $1.8 billion. He has also invested in many other tech start-ups, including GrandCentral Communications, which he sold to Google. That firm's technology became Google Voice.
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But last week, he filed for bankruptcy protection in Los Angeles, a move he said might be attributed to straying from what he knew best—technology investing. He had begun investing in a variety of areas, including art and real estate.
He issued this statement via email:
I love being an entrepreneur even though it involves financial risk. I have been fortunate enough to play a meaningful role in building great companies like CNET Networks, salesforce.com, Rhapsody, NBCi, the service known as Google Voice and others.
But if you win some you are going to lose some too.
A case might be made I should never have strayed from technology. However, I like doing things outside my comfort zone, and i believe that willingness in part accounts for my tech successes.
I have thought a lot about this and the reality is the seeds of my every failure can be found in my every success, and the seeds of my every success can be found in my every failure.