[gizmo]

Not every business loses 95% of their market cap in 3 years. Many companies bleed out slowly as they struggle to retain their market share in the face of new competition. This is normal. It's not normal for a business to just collapse out of nowhere.

Did shareholders and investors collectively make money from the whole ordeal? Looking briefly at the numbers, it looks like they didn't. During the profitable years IRobot made $639 million (sum total) but they lost -$737 in the collapse that followed. No dividends were paid either during the good years. Shareholders were left holding the bag.

Building a business from nothing to IPO is a real accomplishment and I won't diminish that. However, if a business collapses and incinerates more money than it has ever made during the sum of all profitable years calling it a "real success" is a bit of a stretch.

[infecto]

Thanks for elucidating what I failed to do. That was my only point. Someone said he created a number of wild successful companies. iRobot in my eyes was a segment creator which is awesome but it was/is never a wild success. He was also one of 3 founders and is not credited for the first iteration of the roomba.