What's astonishing is MD took 1-2 years off from CEO role to study the market and understand future trends. During all this time he never came to the conclusion that LEO was what the market was asking for. You could just go on Reddit and see scores of customers and people who work in the industry begging for it. Instead, he thought best to fight the current and try to convince people it isn't what they want. I understand Viasat 3 was already well too far along to stop having begun in 2016-2017. However, he could have scrapped Viasat 4 and dedicated those resources (human and financial) to LEO. He was too worried about getting the FCC to subsidize the whole thing. And when they didn't, it became a space junk sustainability issue all of a sudden.
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Sometimes the obvious thing like you can lose a couple of LEOs and it's not a big deal just has to soak in the hard way.
Re: "You could just go on Reddit and see scores of customers and people who work in the industry begging for it."
Reddit also insisted Kamala Harris was going to blow Trump out of the water, and therein lies the problem. All of the data everyone is using to make these decisions are the propaganda of manipulators shaping opinions at scale and running global pump-and-dump schemes.
Two cases in point are the toymakers Hasbro and Mattel. Market analysts told them "diversity dolls" were going to be huge. Embracing this projected future resulted in 400% losses at Mattel and a 15% RIF at Hasbro because marketers were not able to generate the demand they insisted existed ("fake it til you make it" is still the name of the game. The fun part about betting on minorities is that you can always blame white people and racism when it doesn't work out.)
See also the colossal $200M failure of the diversity-themed (lol) game Concord. "They say" diversity would sell (the pump), and all it accomplished was depressing the entire market when "they" turned out to be lying (the dump). As a result much of the market has been sabotaged and is up for purchase for pennies on the dollar because everybody at the wheel acted on bad intelligence.
I can only assume MD was misled all the same, because he is hardly the only CEO who has made such irrationally-misguided decisions for no discernable reason (beyond chasing ESG money) in the last decade. Boeing also made boneheaded decisions, Musk/Starlink is currently doing the same.
Trust your own judgment, because it turns out sometimes those who can influence your behavior will lie to you for their own benefit...
He’s had it wrong since Viasat-1. No business launching satellites. Just bad business from the get go and getting what they deserve.
@lct.
Youre joking, right? Viasat is now synonomous with Last-gen Cr@p Internet and Why You Still With Viasat.
He will be another case study of how a founder failed to spot and act on a market inflection. Rather than take Andy Grove of Intel’s “the paranoid survive” approach, he is so sure that it is always a case of “the answer is GEO, what’s the question”. Ridiculous technical arrogance and risk that has incurred eye watering debt resulting in an operational white elephant that is VS3 F1 and two further birds that we probably can’t afford to either insure or launch. If that wasn’t bad enough, he then throws either personal or regulatory rocks at the likes of Starlink and Kuiper. Utter stupidity given he needs to be partnering with the LEO mega constellation players. Or rather he needs to be paid off and the board instructed to entertain offers on potential acquisition.
Don't know about her, but when people hear Viasat it should be synonymous with good Internet. No worries.
Maybe he should have kept Tara Sharp.
His plan was to have the ki-ler satellite. Big dish, large capacity, stearable beams. If it had worked Vsat would be much better positioned. He's so weak on marketing though. An advertisement or two at Petco Park and a new logo doesn't cut it. He doesn't have a clue.
When will MD and some of the other top execs get voted off the island by the Board for gross mismanagement?
MD, the Grampa Simpson of the satellite world.
“I used to be with It, but then they changed what It was. Now, what I'm with isn't It and what's It seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you.”
You're right, he got it wrong. VERY WRONG.