Huh... I used to work at Rivals.com. And yeah, they had very nice Herman Miller chairs, solid wood cubicle walls, and posh two-floor offices in the heart of downtown Seattle. They did not at the time have a business plan, however, except for wasting money on the above luxuries, or things like paying Picabo Street $100k to be a rep for the company, whatever the hell that means. As I recall, two splinter groups formed: Rivals.com and Rivals.net, some going to Tennessee and some trying to make a go of it still in Seattle (there was a turf war on the code to run the site and the brand name itself), and it seems the former built up a subscriber base over these past few years- $2m a month is a steady source of income! I recall that as the end was near, and we all saw the writing on the wall, that the techie folk were pleading to turn on a subscription model and see if we could salvage things, but the clueless execs thought a pure-advertising model was the way to go. Well, guess they were wrong! I was there through the liquidation, as one of the two people (IT) who had the know-how to break down our server assets. Oddly, during the liquidation I was making 2x my salary for those weeks, which was even nicer than the severance checks we got. Ah, the joys of the dot-com era.
there was a turf war on the code to run the site and the brand name itself And now you could write the whole thing as a modern West Side Story.
"We're the...Code Cobras! Ssssss! Ssssss!"
When you're a tech, you're a tech all the way from you're server assets to you're last severence pay!
Picabo... I just paid a rep named Picabo... I have got WAY too much time on my hands. But I do want to thank yerfatma and TBH for the cues.
