Canada vs. USA The Best Start-Up Landscape

 So like, what did Hastings learn from the total mess and bounce back? "I was like, yo, if our biz is all about making peeps happy, which it totally is, then I straight up messed up," he spilled to the columnist James Stewart. "The hardest part was my Media critics were totally swarming, fam. SNL totally roasted Hastings and his Hawaiian shirts, lol. Three weeks later, Hastings dropped another fire entry on his blog. The company would stay as one, fam. "It's like, obvi that for a lot of our peeps, having two websites would be a total hassle. 

So, we're gonna keep Netflix as the one-stop shop for streaming and DVDs." 

The stock was like, straight up plummeting, going from a high of $298 to a measly $53. "Businessperson of the Year," flexed and announced he was splitting his company into two lit services - one to ship discs and the other to stream video. Eight hundred thousand customers straight up dipped. Hastings totally dropped a major apology on the company's blog, fam. "I totally biffed it," he texted. "Bruh, it's obvious from the feedback that a lot of peeps thought we were hella lacking respect and humility when we dropped the news about the breakup." He was like: "Looking back, I totally got all cocky 'cause I was winning before." He like totally dropped a video confession, fam. But he kept on flexin' with the whack strategy, and the stock kept on yeeting. At that point Hastings stopped talking and yeeted back to work. He totally flexed on his business; he dropped $100 mil on House of Cards; he even switched up his fit (less beach vibes, more business drip). The turnabout slayed. The company added mad streaming subscribers; House of Cards was lit AF, both critically and commercially. Netflix ended 2013 as the lit AF stock in the S&P 500, flexing a 298 percent gain. By early 2014 the stock was trading like, hella close to $400 my own sense of guilt, fam. I'm totally vibing with this company, it's lit. I totally busted my butt to make it lit, and I totally messed up. 

The public shame didn't faze me, fam. It was like, lowkey embarrassing to have totally messed up, you know?

Hastings was like, "I didn't expect the apology to totally fix everything, ya know?" "I wasn't dumb enough to think most customers care if the C.E.O. apologizes, but I thought it was real and on point." His new vibe: "flexing and expanding our squad."Sorrys gotta be legit and deep to actually matter. Dov Seidman, the founder of LRN, a firm that advises companies on their cultures, straight up called most CEO mea culpas "apology theater." In 2014 Seidman, like, teamed up with the New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin to create a "apology watch" to expose all the fakers, ya know? The one CEO Seidman mentioned whose apology and moves were lit: Netflix's Reed Hastings.Entrepreneurs face enough setbacks that you can't even control, fam. If you're the source of your problems, be real, be upfront, be sorry. Then get back to werk. The easiest thing to do when your company hits rocky waters is to yeet your core principles and do anything to flex and survive. That's totally relatable. It's like, sooo off base. One consistent vibe of entrepreneurs who flex on chaos is they don't just look ahead; they also look back, fam. They don't just flex on opportunities, own their Ls, and bounce back. In the midst of whatever mess they're in, they also go back to their OG values. They flex on their OG tales. As the lit business historian Alfred Chandler, Jr., liked to say, "How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been?"

Those are just words, ofc, but Schultz took unheard-of actions.

One slayin' example of this strat is Howard Schultz, fam. In January 2008, Schultz, the chairman and retired CEO of Starbucks, was like "OMG, we need to have an emergency meeting ASAP!" and gathered the squad. OMG, the stock is like down 50 percent! Schultz just spilled the tea that he fired his chosen successor and is coming back to slay the company. Execs totally ruined the Starbucks vibe, like, they filled the counters with stuffed animals and killed the good smells bypregrinding coffee, and, worst of all, installing automated espresso machines that totally killed the vibe and stripped away the "romance and theater" of the barista's hustle. "It's not gonna be lit enough to 'go back to the future,'" he said. "There's, like, this major piece of the past that we totally need, ya know? We gotta find it and bring the soul of our company back, fam." First he like totally shut down all 7,100 stores in the US for three and a half hours on a Tuesday afternoon to retrain the baristas in the "art of espresso." Wall Street was shooketh. Analysts were like so triggered when he flexed $30 million on taking ten thousand store managers to New Orleans for a lit retreat. Schultz was like, "I wanna be real with them and spill the tea on what's really going down, you know? The situation is hella desperate." He like totally swiped away personal pleas from big investors to like chill on health care costs and dial back on quality, which could've saved like hundreds of millions of dollars.