"Missing Them Oppotunities"

We've have all seen these around the internet or on Facebook. but what if it is true? History is replete with many other such examples of missed opportunities. The following are among the most famous.

Constantinople Refuses to Buy Orban’s Cannon (1452)

By the 3rd century AD the Roman Empire had grown so big that it could no longer sustain a single capital. So in 285 the Emperor Diocletian divided it into the Western Empire ruled from Rome and the Eastern Empire ruled from Byzantium (later renamed Constantinople and today’s Istanbul). Rome fell in 476 when the Visigoths (a Germanic tribe led by Alaric) breached its walls, sacked the city, and took over. Western Europe collapsed, ushering in the Dark Ages.

Byzantium lived on to the east, but it was under constant attack. By the 15th century, it was a shadow of its former self when the Ottoman Empire invaded. In 1452, Orban, a weapons maker, tried to sell Emperor Constantine XI a cannon for the city’s defenses. The emperor liked it, but the treasury simply couldn’t afford it.

So Orban sold his cannon to the Ottomans, instead. It was 27 feet long, with 8 inch thick walls, and a mouth 30 inches in diameter. On 6 April 1453, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II aimed his new weapon at Constantinople’s impressively thick defensive walls. For almost 50 days and nights, he pounded the same spot, eventually creating a breach. On May 29, his army poured through, ending the Byzantine Empire and Christian domination of the East.

Enzo Ferrari Refused to Listen to Ferruccio Lamborghini (1958)

Feruccio Elio Arturo Lamborghini was a mechanic who had a passion for cars. His original fortune was based on the production of farm tractors, but that in no way mitigated his love for sports cars. His first company, the Lamborghini Trattori, became an important company which helped to rebuild the Italian economy after World War II.

In 1958, he bought his first Ferrari and fell in love with it, but found that it had major flaws. He thought it was too noisy, had a poorly designed clutch system, had a badly built interior, and was a little too crude for the road.

He pointed these out to Enzo Ferrari, the company’s founder, who brushed off the criticisms. As far as Ferrari was concerned, Lamborghini was nothing more than a tractor maker who couldn’t possibly understand how to handle an upscale sports car.

Offended, Lamborghini decided to make his own range of sports cars. In so doing, he forced Ferrari to make the suggested improvements or get out of business. Had Ferrari listened to Lamborghini, the two could have been partners. At the very least, Ferrari could have had one less competitor in the world.

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

In 1992, Ross Perot ran for the US presidential elections as an independent candidate against George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He later withdrew, only to rejoin it later. That initial exit hurt him, however, something he later admitted to regretting. Another thing he regretted was a business decision he made in 1979.

At that time, he was head of Electronic Data Systems and doing very well. He took a $1,000 investment in 1962, and by 1979 was a well-known leader in the computer industry whose businesses were worth almost $1 billion.

Wanting to expand his empire further, Perot began looking around to buys small IT firms when he discovered Microsoft. At the time, it was run by a 23-year-old Bill Gates. Though Gates was uninterested in selling his company, he was willing to offer majority shares for between $40 million to $60 million. Perot thought the price too high. According to Mary Gates (Bill’s mother), she urged her son to accept a lower offer from Perot, but Bill refused.

In a 1992 interview with The Seattle Times, Perot said, “I consider it one of the biggest business mistakes I’ve ever made.”

Marvel Decided Not to Buy Out DC comics (1984)

In the early 1980s, DC Comics (the producers of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and many others), was in financial trouble. Though its share of the comic book market stood at around 18%, it was not enough to keep it viable. Marvel Comics, by contrast, owned about 70% of the comic book market.

In 1984, Bill Sarnoff of Warner Communications (which owned DC), tried to save the comic brand by reaching out to Marvel. His idea was to license DC’s characters to his competitor. At the time, Warner was losing money on the comic side of its business, but did well licensing out DC characters like Superman. Marvel, on the other hand, did well at selling comic books, but was not into licensing.

Jim Shooter, Marvel’s editor at the time, liked the idea. Negotiations went smoothly and Marvel even considered buying Warner’s DC brand. Sarnoff was amenable to the proposal, but First Comics found out and sued for anti-trust violations. It also accused Marvel of trying to develop a monopoly.

The courts found that First Comic’s claims had no merit, but Marvel’s lawyers were scared off from the deal. Though Marvel remains profitable, it could have been even more so had it gone through with the purchase.

George Bell Undervalues Google and Refuses to Buy It (1999)

In 1999, Google was a tiny company run from the garage of Susan Wojcicki’s Menlo Park home in California. It had only two other employees: co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. By contrast, Excite was a major internet portal — one of the pioneers in the business and therefore an industry leader run by its CEO, George Bell

Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures and a partner at Kleiner Perkins (another venture capitalist firm), became interested in Google. At the time, search engines were neither very efficient nor accurate, resulting in as many misses at hits. Khosla was therefore impressed with the algorithm that Google was working on as it seemed very promising.

The venture capitalist had backed Excite, so he got Bell to agree to a meeting. The Google founders offered a selling price of $1 million for their fledgling company, but Bell found it too high. Khosla advised the two hopefuls to go down to $750,000 instead. They did, but Bell still found it too high and called off the negotiations.

Kleiner Perkins ended up backing Google, but Khosla Ventures did not, and the rest is history.

Blockbuster Refuses to Buy Netflix for $50 million (2000)

In 2000, Blockbuster Video Entertainment, Inc. was an industry giant with nearly 8,000 stores throughout the US renting out movies and video games. At its peak in 2004, the company had over 9,000 stores and a little more than 60,000 employees.

By contrast, Netflix was a fledgling company that was struggling to stay afloat. It sold DVDs by mail to several thousand subscribers. Realizing the need to change their business model in order to remain viable, they decided to stream their movies to their subscribers, instead. Unfortunately, they lacked the funds to develop their idea further.

So in 2000, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings paid a visit to Blockbuster’s headquarters in Dallas, Texas. He offered John Antioco, then Blockbuster’s head, a chance to buy Netflix for a mere $50 million.

Considering Blockbuster’s domination of the movie and game rental business, Antioco found the proposal ludicrous. He and the other Blockbuster executives still did not understand how the market was changing and just how fast the internet and computers were developing. According to Hastings, he was literally laughed out of that meeting.

When Netflix began to boom in 2007, Blockbuster tried to adapt. By then, however, Netflix already dominated the market and Blockbuster just couldn’t compete on even terms. By 2010, Blockbuster lost $1.1 billion and was worth $24 million, while Netflix was worth $13 billion. In 2013, Blockbuster closed down the last of its stores. As of the first quarter of 2015, Netflix has an estimated market cap value of $19.7 billion dollars.

Don't miss on opportunities just because says you can't, you can! These top business man that we see here, were just normal people in there era. go with your gut.

Check this out. I didn't miss mine :)

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