"We want Doc Burnstein’s to be No. 1 in the hearts and minds of America" there are many, many beloved regional ice cream stores — Salt & Straw, Molly Moons, Van Leeuwen for a few — all of which have no shortage of unique flavors and community goodwill. It seems far harder to scale that competitively to anything close to the national level. Even the few success stories (Ben & Jerry's, Halo Top, etc.) still exist in a crowded and saturated market space with so many alternative options.
I've read this before, but many of Joel's posts are timeless, and this was a great re-read.
I did notice something new... Wondering if anyone can shed light on this?
> If you’re going into a market with no existing competition, lock-in, and network effects, you better use the Amazon model, or you’re going the way of Wordsworth.com, which started two years before Amazon, and nobody’s ever heard of them.
Then he links a reply from the Wordsworth founder, which was kinda heartwarming:
but below that, Joel posts his own reply to that email, which reads as incredibly condescending and mean-spirited to me? does he use this tone with others, is it just bro talk?
> [several paragraphs complaining about independent bookstores]
> Anyway, that’s my bookstore rant It’s great to hear from you, and I suspect a lot more people will hear of Wordsworth if Amazon runs out of money as quickly as some analysts think they will!
The way they talk about this shit, you would think it's a religion rather than just ice cream. I think that tone is required in order to think that the owner has some sort of duty to expand in order to "make ice cream and help the community around him."
Even weirder to create a story around some sort of selfless ice-cream evangelical, and explain in the beginning how he had no particular interest in ice cream, and was just unemployed and wealthy, looking for a arbitrary business to start that might be successful in the area.
His idea of total success would have been the brand just becoming another big franchise and/or label on store freezer shelves. Instead of doing it himself, he sold a big piece to someone who they would do it, but failed because he was all mouth. I'm not buying it as a tragedy.
edit: note, I'm talking about Steinberg, because the person who started the shop disappears pretty quickly in the narrative.
Article says that the former CEO was sidelined by new ownership and claims that investors were misled. But it doesn't actually say what happened. If the existing shops were making money, why would they have been closed? The actions ascribed to the investment firm do not make any rational sense.
I understand the journalist tried to get comment from them and it's not their fault they couldn't, but ultimately the story is unsatisfying because the picture is so incomplete.
I think the reporter is mainly a features writer not a business reporter and so any gap might be understandable. The basic message in the piece is that the so called investment company didn't have the money. They would pretend to "invest" but really strip the money out of the ice cream shop to cover up their losses. At least that's my guess.
It's a very confusing mix of what sounds like neglectful incompetent management followed by overexpansion, control fraud, stock-pumping through affinity fraud, and possibly naked embezzlement/theft at the end.
This article kind of gives short shrift to Chuck Burns, who started this ice cream shop in 1976(!) and grew it into an anchor business in Arroyo Grande. It makes a protagonist out of Greg Steinberg, but in 2019, when the decision was made to scale the business up, Burns was like 89 years old.
I'm not saying that! I don't know! Maybe all the charming "ice cream nachos" stuff was part of the transformation from Burnardo'z to Doc Burnstein's. But one assumes Steinberg was the prime mover in trying to take the ice cream shop regional, and then statewide, which is when it became a target for the bogus investment firm.
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[ 0.16 ms ] story [ 42.2 ms ] threadAlso see https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-... — from 2000 but still relevant here.
I did notice something new... Wondering if anyone can shed light on this?
> If you’re going into a market with no existing competition, lock-in, and network effects, you better use the Amazon model, or you’re going the way of Wordsworth.com, which started two years before Amazon, and nobody’s ever heard of them.
Then he links a reply from the Wordsworth founder, which was kinda heartwarming:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/07/wordsworth-respond...
but below that, Joel posts his own reply to that email, which reads as incredibly condescending and mean-spirited to me? does he use this tone with others, is it just bro talk?
> [several paragraphs complaining about independent bookstores] > Anyway, that’s my bookstore rant It’s great to hear from you, and I suspect a lot more people will hear of Wordsworth if Amazon runs out of money as quickly as some analysts think they will!
Even weirder to create a story around some sort of selfless ice-cream evangelical, and explain in the beginning how he had no particular interest in ice cream, and was just unemployed and wealthy, looking for a arbitrary business to start that might be successful in the area.
His idea of total success would have been the brand just becoming another big franchise and/or label on store freezer shelves. Instead of doing it himself, he sold a big piece to someone who they would do it, but failed because he was all mouth. I'm not buying it as a tragedy.
edit: note, I'm talking about Steinberg, because the person who started the shop disappears pretty quickly in the narrative.
I understand the journalist tried to get comment from them and it's not their fault they couldn't, but ultimately the story is unsatisfying because the picture is so incomplete.
Fraud? Hubris? Too much leverage? Pandemic? Pathological mismanagement? No idea what actually caused the failure.
It's a very confusing mix of what sounds like neglectful incompetent management followed by overexpansion, control fraud, stock-pumping through affinity fraud, and possibly naked embezzlement/theft at the end.