You are probably acquainted with this phrase:
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
Well, you may have trouble believing this, but the same holds true for my predictions. Some of them (well, most of them) take longer to play out than I hoped, but, sooner or later, they DO transpire.
I offer this morning as Exhibit A in that respect this very fresh headline:
For those who haven’t read every single post I’ve ever written, some background is needed.
On March 20, 2015, nearly a decade ago, I wrote a lengthy piece called The Time Warp Again, which is well worth a skim on your part. (Indeed, it’s touching to scroll through the 300+ comments on that post and see so many familiar faces, some still here, some gone, and some having stormed off at some point in a fit of pique).
My central point in the post was that the notion that slapping an Internet cafe into the middle of town with the hope that hundreds of new little Facebooks and Googles would appear was, shall we say, wrong-headed.
I went on to declare that “this will all sort itself out eventually,” which was a left-handed way of anticipating precisely the headline you see at the top of this post. It took nine years, but, yeah, that day is finally here.
For some reason, the corporate backer behind HanaHaus was the German software giant SAP. Was there some fine print in the agreement when you bought a coffee that any startup you created there would be 5% owned by SAP? I can’t say. However, the organization felt the need to mark the passing of their nine year old business venture with an explanation.
Ah, yes. The evolving ecosystem strategy as well as their commitment to prioritizing key growth areas. The equivalent of the VP in your vision desiring to spend more time with his family. We get it.
If you need a moment to sit down and let the nausea pass, we understand. We’ll wait. Take a minute.
They go on to acknowledge that, in spite of Palo Alto’s most vibrant gathering place suddenly being shuttered in just a few weeks, its spirit will somehow live on in Newport Beach, which is a quick eight-hour drive from here.
So, yeah, it took nearly a decade, but my goofball post came true. It’ll all eventually come tumbling down, which should be far more worrisome than it appears to be. In the meanwhile, have a chai latte and scratch a dog’s ear. The future will get here soon enough.
