Do you worry about whether you are making the best decision on lunch?  Could you imagine being know for making the worst business decision of all time? Makes that lunch decision seem small right?  We have compiled a list of the worst business decisions ever made, check it out.

1. The worst real estate deal of all time. Napoleon Bonaparte is known for many things, even had a complex named after him. Did you know he made one of the worst real estate decisions of all time.  In 1803, he accepted an offer on the Louisiana territory for sale for $15million.  The Louisiana territory was roughly half of the land that eventually became the US. If he had only waited he could of gotten an offer from the US for $10 million for Louisiana alone.

2.  The power of a patent. This is the lesson to be learned here. Edwin Laurentine Drake learned that the hard way. Drake, a retired railroad conductor had a vision on drilling for oil, an upgrade to shovels and picks that was used in the mid 1800s.  His idea of drilling for oil was thought to be crazy. In 1859 Drake successfully invented a devise that would drill for oil. Unfortunately he never patented the devise and many rushed in and became overnight millionaires. Drake died in poverty.

3. Not recognizing the future in technology. The Western Union Telegraph Company made a horrible mistake by calling the telephone an “Electronic toy” and turning down the patent for the telephone. The patent was offered for only $100,000.  The telephone is recognized as one of the most valuable patents in history.

4. Who says no to the Beatles? Well Decca Records did. In 1962 Decca records invited the Beatles to audition. After two weeks they decided that the band was not what they were looking for. EMI Records later signed the Beatles. The Beatles have sold over 600 million albums worldwide and have become one of the most commercially successful recording artists of all time.

5. When negotiations goes wrong. Ross Perot, two time US presidential runner had offered to buy Microsoft in 1979 for $15 million. Bill Gates wanted $60 million. Negotiations broke down and the two could not see eye to eye. Perot walked away never buying the company. Microsoft has a market value today of over $265 billion!

6.   Who wants to be Bill Gates? Well in 1980 Gary Kildall had the opportunity to do so but passed to fly his plane. At that time IBM was looking for a company to supply an operating system for what they call the personal computer (PC). IBM had scheduled a meeting with software guru Gary Kildall, but Kildall missed the meeting to fly his plane. IBM later turned to Bill Gates of Microsoft. The rest is history. Microsoft currently has an 88 percent market share of the US PC market.

7.  Atari who? Today everyone either owns an Apple product or has at least heard of Apple, but how many have heard of Atari, unless you are ‘of a certain age”  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, co founders of Apple Computer went to Atari to sell their personal computers. Atari flat out said no. “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So, then we went to Hewlett-Packard and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you; you haven’t even got through college yet’.” How hard are they kicking themselves? Apple has a market value of $184 Billion. Their market share of PC users is nearly at 10 percent and steadily growing.

8. Another Excite who? Former CEO of Excite George Bell had the opportunity to buy Google for ONLY $1 million in 1999. He passed on the opportunity. Google is now the number one search engine with an average 70 percent of the market share of ALL search engines. It currently has a market value of $163 billion.

9. Enron was a hard lesson to be learned. One of the seventh-largest companies in the US in 2001, the company became one of the largest business scandals of all time. With revenues in excess of $100 Billion, the company became embroiled with fraud and corruption scandal from widespread accounting fraud. Over 20,000 employees lost 2 billion in pensions and shareholders lost over $74 billion.

10.  When to do what? Investment firm Lehman Brothers’ would follow the Enron scandal and eclipse it as the biggest bankruptcy in US history. The company’s main holdings were in real estate and subprime mortgages. When the subprime mortgage crisis first hit in 2006-07, the firm took out enormous loans based on their liquid assets instead of selling off their huge shares of failing mortgage propriety. In 2008 it all came to a crashing end.

Whatever the business decision is, I think someone should invest in a time machine! No one can tell the future and where inventions or start ups would end up.  You just have to be confident in your decision at the time. Never look back, and just hope you name does not end up on this list anytime soon!

Richtastic
www.Richtastic.com

(Image Via SXC)