I don't really care if a company wants to be "hip" or whatever, but title's like "Chief Morale Officer, in charge of alchohol and fun activities" just make you look like idiots.
I dunno about that. They just sold to Amazon because they were running out of money.
Exactly how much revenue does a competent CEO need to accumulate before they can turn a profit and become solvent? Tony marketed his way to $1 billion with borrowed money, but it's shameful to have the much revenue and run out of funds.
Well, to be fair, most of the borrowed money came from his own pocket, which is why he ended up owning more than 40% of zappos (probably more that 50% if you include venture frogs' 36% involvement).
Most boards hate companies who spend extravagantly on their employees. For example, even though Google is doing great, quite a few of their board members hate how Eric Schmidt feeds Google employees so well. According to a few I know at google, they had to pull back a few items on the menu to keep the board happy. Most boards are just after profits and don't really see the connection to employee happiness.
In fact, there was a YC company board who rejected the purchase of an expensive espresso machine just because the employees wanted it... that destroyed employee morale for the next 2-3 months, and also caused traffic to go down. Eventually the board gave in and bought the company the espresso machine and it really paid off -- employees were happy, traffic rebounded, and board members actually stated that they wished they knew this earlier. Won't say which YC company, but it was a talk from one of the YC dinners during my round.
tl;dr: Boards are always after the cash and rarely see the connection to keeping employees happy, yet time after time they make the same stupid mistakes.
