The real losers in the housing.com implosion

I originally wrote this on my personal blog, but I got great feedback on how us entrepreneurs will have to deal with this mess – so thought I will post it here instead!

Our lives as entrepreneurs is difficult enough as it is, and now we have Rahul to add to our stress!

There is now an update to this story. Added it at the bottom.

I could write on how X or Y or Z are to be blamed for the flare-up and goof-up and public display of dirty laundry. But who am I kidding here. The newspapers are already having a field day with this story.

Instead let me focus on people who I believe are the real losers in this entire mess … namely, the employees and the customers.

Why employees?

The employees have obviously been caught in the middle of something that they did not sign up for and have no control over. Yet this controls their careers and lives.
Who is to blame the office-boy or programmer or telecaller working at housing.com when they have been doing their job diligently and put in a honest days’s effort.

Yet, the fate of their company, their reputation as someone working at housing.com and their careers are now going to always be judged based on this story. Suddenly, all their future interviews will be hijacked to speak about *this* story.

These employees hitched themselves to a rising star of a company and now they are going to have to pick-up the pieces, be blamed for having taken sides or not having taken sides, and generally be judged on actions that they did not have control over.

If the company’s product failed then sure you could blame it on the employees. After all, they were responsible in making that product. But the funny thing is … housing.com has a decent great product.

Why customers?

Housing.com customers are the early adopter crowd. One that prides itself as being the people “in the know” and people why pick winners early on and then build their reputation amongst their peers as people who have been there, done that way before it became cool for the rest of the crowd.

Their choices are probably going to go back to the mediocre products that existed before housing.com came on the scene. See screenshots below:

Before                                                       After

The customers will now have to go back to the “old” way of doing things.

I hope the professional team that takes over management will continue innovating but I don’t have enough information to make that prediction.

A third set of losers?

Take this with a giant pinch of salt, esp because I belong to this set …

The Indian Entrepreneurs

We are a bunch of people working overtime to build something of value. We have put our asses, careers, families, our everything on the line to make sure we succeed.
Now, thanks to the screw-ups of this one IIT-ian who thinks the world owes him something … we entrepreneurs will have to field questions on our ethics, our work culture, our commitment to growing a successful business, our commitment to not being a**ho**s, basically our commitment to everything.

Because of this one over-pampered IIT-brat, us serious entrepreneurs now have to answer and basically be “guilty unless proven innocent” of hyper-inflated egos and teenage-angst.

(Why diss brand IIT? Well, if you use the IIT brand on your way up, be ready to ride it on the way down too!)

UPDATE:

So the resignation has been undone. 
This does not change the damage done to the reputation of the company. If you are an employee, you will still be asked questions about this “episode” and it may colour their view of your work for the company.

Also, how does this reflect on the employees themselves? Can they also now send in their resignation letters and then “undo” this each time? It’s like some video-game where you can “undo” the last move!!!