I like Beetle's perspective, and the two factors are fundamentally linked. Early-on, I wanted to work toward an ongoing entity that would transcend any and all founders' contributions. Jim disagreed. He wanted a vehicle to support his research and development ideas. "And when I'm finished, it's over". That stance caused the lack of successors to his chops, which in turn caused the lack of interest from qualified buyers, since history is but a small fraction of viability. An extensive multi-year worldwide search turned up NO qualified buyers. The denouement was thoroughly predictable because it was embedded in the company's genes.
The paragraph above is a short snippet of a 40 year scenario that was quite difficult to live through. A company, even a small entity like Thiel Audio, orchestrates significant life events and outcomes for scores of people spanning dozens of years. A primary motivation for my re-entry into this story is to soften some of the rough edges of the company's trajectory.
To Andy's point: New Thiel demonstrated quite clearly how a marketplace responds to non-focused strategies. New Thiel spent $10Million trying to do the standard job really well. Their tower speaker got 5 stars from Brent Butterworth and did the standard thing at least as well as X,Y and Z. But who would buy a Thiel Standard, when you could buy the real X,Y or Z Standard from PSB, B&W or anyone else in the field. Primary among the reasons we chose first order slopes is the uncanny rightness of sound, which I have previously addressed in this forum. For those who "get it", there is often no going back. Count me in that camp in company with many of you. Another reason was the extreme difficulty. By the time of the 03 and 04 in the late 1970s, there were companies (Japanese and European) buying them for competitive evaluation. I, as external affairs liaison, would follow up those encounters. Frankly, we were afraid that companies with comparatively unlimited resources would take our ideas and leave us in the dust. A senior executive at Dynaudio relieved our angst by saying: "What you are doing is impossible, expensive and invisible. Don't worry about others trying it." He was right, and we changed stragegy from patenting innovations to running as fast as we could on our own course. That seemed worth doing, and still feels good.
The paragraph above is a short snippet of a 40 year scenario that was quite difficult to live through. A company, even a small entity like Thiel Audio, orchestrates significant life events and outcomes for scores of people spanning dozens of years. A primary motivation for my re-entry into this story is to soften some of the rough edges of the company's trajectory.
To Andy's point: New Thiel demonstrated quite clearly how a marketplace responds to non-focused strategies. New Thiel spent $10Million trying to do the standard job really well. Their tower speaker got 5 stars from Brent Butterworth and did the standard thing at least as well as X,Y and Z. But who would buy a Thiel Standard, when you could buy the real X,Y or Z Standard from PSB, B&W or anyone else in the field. Primary among the reasons we chose first order slopes is the uncanny rightness of sound, which I have previously addressed in this forum. For those who "get it", there is often no going back. Count me in that camp in company with many of you. Another reason was the extreme difficulty. By the time of the 03 and 04 in the late 1970s, there were companies (Japanese and European) buying them for competitive evaluation. I, as external affairs liaison, would follow up those encounters. Frankly, we were afraid that companies with comparatively unlimited resources would take our ideas and leave us in the dust. A senior executive at Dynaudio relieved our angst by saying: "What you are doing is impossible, expensive and invisible. Don't worry about others trying it." He was right, and we changed stragegy from patenting innovations to running as fast as we could on our own course. That seemed worth doing, and still feels good.
