Indaknow

An Interview With Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne

Mr. Byrne seems to have an excellent grasp on his numbers. I credit him for that.

His grasp on reality may be somewhat more tenuous. What he seems to omit above is the amount of company resources that he devotes to his 'crusades' (multiple Overstock employees working on his personal anti-naked short selling 'deep capture blog', slimy stalker Judd Bagley on the payroll for the entirety of 2007, etc), the unqualified and spineless personnel that he surrounds himself with simply because they are bullied into agreeing with his every word (anyone who does agree with him is promptly shown the door), and most importantly the contradiction between his diversification of the business (Auctions, Cars, Real Estate) and the results of that diversification.

He neglects to mention that Auctions has been around since 2004 and that model had never made any noise until ebay started to make mistakes. Auctions nearly closed auctions in 2006, but instead fired 80% of the staff to avoid showing any sort of cracks in the armor. Overstock lost tens of millions of dollars on 'O-travel' between buying it in 2005 and selling it in 2007. The cars site brings in about $.00002 per visit, and the real estate site is simply a platform for allowing other companies to use their engines on a larger site. I doubt Overstock does much to monetize foreclosed real-estate that it sells on-site after all the middle men have been paid. I certainly does help Byrne do what he does best... put on an elaborate dog and pony show that attempts to demonstrate success and hide fundamental problems with his business (i.e. never having turned a profit).