That video came out a few years before flex appeared I think at a time they were having a sort of “resource crunch” on the heels of growth spur following the GFC.
Enjoyable, but I wonder what changed about the business: how was it nonviable without a huge funding round in 2000, but then only viable with significant cutbacks from 2001 on?
As someone who was looking into the stock somewhat seriously way back then, I'll offer an alternative story. That was their first "profitable" quarter, for which they cashed in a bunch of single-use accounting gimmicks. The part that taught me the most at the time was that they then rapidly leveraged that huge rise to issue debt/equity at the new valuation. That cash infusion all but cemented what otherwise would've been quite temporary. Fascinating stuff.
A lot of companies also saw spikes in revenue, raised money from investors at sweet terms based on that revenue growth (despite it being unsustainable), and then needed to spend that money to show they were going to use it to keep the good times rolling.
I had basically forgotten about this company. They received a lot of press on how overvalued they were and there were plenty of doubts that they could sustain their success even at their peak.
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