Crazy Times

For five years, execs have been trying to obfuscate that we missed the LEO disruption. Lots of distraction with "LEO mania", "very few applications require latency", "equitable access to LEO", "LEO is bad for the environment", yada yada yada. The collapse in stock price support is a long time coming, it's a culmination of these denials collapsing under the weight of obvious market trends.

But notable tipping points for the collapse are:

Guru's completely tone-deaf sale, even though it's a tax cover people know you can control the timing of such things. The tone this sends to the market is horrible.

Mark and Guru's fumbling and inartful eplanation on the earnings call of how and why Viasat is turning to LEO >now<. It wasn't a confidence inspiring exchange and smelled like a move of desperation to attend to the bleeding. It exposed how management ignored the disruptions and weren't attentive to the market for 5 years.

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That somebody was MD and that people decision embarasses me more than him getting everything wrong about LEO disruptions. Of all the talent in the market, that was the one compelling him to say "yes, the company trajectory without this person is less than the trajectory with this person" ?

Somebody must see value in Gowrappan's experience at Verizon. Viasat is transitioning to a business model like Verizon's. Selling access to the network with sophisticated technology. Look at Verizon though. That company is also struggling with debt and had took a big hit on stock valuation. It's recovering, but the recovery started after Gowrappan left.

Does anyone see any real output from Gowrappan? I mean beyond the tedious selfies and implementing RIFs…which any fool could do? I’d quite like to be reassured that he is worth the ridiculously-high remuneration he is being paid as, to me, he just seems to be an untalented, overpaid email generator who puts out updates on projects that he had literally nothing to do with. He clearly has zero ideas in terms of creative technical or business strategy beyond the usual must-cut-headcount play. Seems to me that he needs to be kicked out first in terms of reducing our cash burn.

Thread regarding ViaSat Inc. layoffs

Crazy Times

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