1) Innovation is the buzzword in the startup world with young

business leaders ushering in era of new businesses and high

valuations. Housing.co is one such story, with its eccentric exCEO Rahul Yadav, showing the world how business are made
from scratch. But the recent ousting of Mr. Yadav brings up few
important questions. What would you have done if you were in
place of Rahul Yadav? What early career mistakes do you think
young business managers needs to avoid in order to land in
such a situation?
Rahul Yadav was ousted from Housing.com simply because of his bad
behavior and public display of that bad behavior. His final termination
was consequence of many controversial incidents, the main trigger
being his spat with Shailendra Singh, who is the MD of Sequoia Capital
India. Rahul send a threatening mail to Mr. Singh with the following
words:
If you dont stop messing around with me, directly or even indirectly, I
will vacate the best of your firm. Also, this marks the beginning of the
end of Sequoia Cap in India
This sparked a huge controversy and showed utter lack of
professionalism on the part of an upcoming entrepreneur. In his
defense, Rahul was trying to protect his employees from being
poached by other investors, but his method of doing this cannot be
wider of the mark! Yet this was just the beginning.
In the course of this year we also saw Rahul Yadav feeding wrong
information to the media about acquisition of Housing by Quikr just to
play a prank. He called Mr. Alok Kejriwal, founder of Games2Win,
dumb in FB and when one of his employees tried to malign Mr.
Kejriwals image by adding incorrect information to his Wikipedia page,
he defended it by saying hey bacha are having fun. Please dont
mind. This remark shows him in poor light. His outrageous FB posts
and images portray that Rahul is not an worthy leader for Housing. His
cheap gimmicks and public insults on other people blur the lines of
ethical and unethical in the minds of his employees. He even went to
the extent of calling his own investors intellectually incapable, which
became the last nail on his coffin.

If I were in place of Rahul Yadav, I would have sent a more professional

email to Mr. Shailendra Singh. I would have changed my attitude and
become a responsible CEO. Furthermore, no matter how much one is at
loggerheads with ones investors, a CEO should never write derogatory
comments about them. I should be careful of my personal details,
posts and comments to my employees as well as on social media, as
the latter are promoting Housing.com to millions of customers. I would
not react to other peoples criticisms or engage in verbal battle over
social media, not even when I am defending my company.
Other early career mistakes that young business managers need to
avoid are:
Do not choose an investor(s) who shares a different view point
about the growth trajectory of the start-up than the
entrepreneur(s).
Keep your internal business matters away from public eyes. This
mistake made by the Housing.com CEO blew all the events much
out of their actual proportions.
Do not take major flippant decisions like resigning, etc. without
thinking through. The CEO of a company resigning today,
rejoining tomorrow sends a negative message about the
company to the outside world.
Your team should be like your family and should share your vision
for the companys future.
Links/Sources:
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-story-of-Rahul-Yadav-founder-andCEO-of-Housing-com
https://housing.com/about
http://forbesindia.com/article/30-under-30/housing.com-born-out-of-itsfounders-house-hunt/37151/2
http://forbesindia.com/article/work-in-progress/rahul-yadavunplugged/40629/1?utm=slidebox

http://forbesindia.com/article/work-in-progress/house-interrupted-rahulyadavs-spat-is-not-new-in-the-startup-world/40377/1?utm=slidebox
http://forbesindia.com/article/special/housing.coms-rahul-yadavapologises-withdraws-resignation/40203/1?utm=slidebox
http://forbesindia.com/article/special/housing.com-shows-the-door-torahul-yadav/40597/1?utm=slidebox
http://yourstory.com/2015/08/startup-failed/
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-true-story-and-controversy-behindHousing-com
http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/people/housing-ceorahul-yadav-fired/47893732
http://trak.in/tags/business/2015/07/02/3-ceo-mistakes-rahul-yadavdownfall-from-housing-com/
http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-newstechnology/housing-coms-ceo-rahul-yadav-fired-a-day-after-email-leak/
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/endsaga-finally-rahulyadav-firedhousingcom_1743381.html
http://www.scoopwhoop.com/news/rahul-yadav-fired/

5) Guess went public in 1996. As far as control goes, though, it

remains as much a family-run companyfamily-dominated,
reallyas when it was founded in 1981. The Marciano brothers
made Guess the sexiest name in jeans and themselves a $2.7
billion fortune at its peak. Today the family and business are in
tatters. With the publicly available data, analyze what went
wrong with the brand.
Guess was founded in 1981 by Georges Marciano and his brother
Maurice Marciano as a garment stores in Beverly Hills. In 1982, Paul
Marciano joined the business, and later brother Armand came on
board. Paul introduced an innovative ad campaign for Guess where the

jeans were worn by supermodels in various outdoor scenes. These

models in black and white grainy images showing provocative poses
created controversy for Guess but also brought it to the forefront of
everyones attention. Forbes described it as "catering to teenage
cravings for sex, power, attention and self-love ... electric not only with
sexuality but with an implicit brutality and exhibitionism as
well." Georges designer jeans set the market on fire and by the end of
1982 the brand has sold more than $12 million worth of jeans.
By 1984, their sales soared to $27 million. At this point, Guess has
already entered the menswear market along with womenswear. To
meet this ever growing demand, Guess sold 50% ownership of the
brand to Nakash brothers of the Jordache Company. This move was
made in order to acquire the needed capital and cheap labour to
increase the production capacity of Guess. But the deal later proved
fatal for the Marciano brothers.
From late 1980s to early 1990s, Guess was embroiled in expensive
litigation cases with the Nakash brothers over the ownership of Guess.
But even amidst this turmoil, Guess continued its expansion into
childrens section and also formed the Georges Marciano label. After
this the company went for a gradual downward spiral.
At present, Guess holds less than 0.5% of the apparel market in US.
Despite continued expansion, the company has lost market share in
the last five years. The main reasons for this dismal performance are
Guess inability to beat competition, its accessories branch is not
making much profit, it is following an erroneous retailing strategy and
its online presence is insignificant.
Guess has six different store concepts where full-price retail stores and
Guess Accessories stores account for 30% of retail sales. This full-price
concept of Guess failed miserably as competitors kept on enticing
customers by attractive offers, discounts and deals. Its online retail
store was launched in 1999. But when majority of people shifted to
web shopping from stores, Guess could not increase its online sales in
similar proportions, nor could it draw enough consumers to its website.

Zara, Forever 21 and H&M are new progressive high-end fashion

stores. They occupied a wide market space between the extremely
expensive Guess apparels and low priced affordable clothing of
Aeropostale and American Eagle Outfitters. This made Guess lose its
sales considerably. Their merchandising issues and lack of assorted
product ranges is also responsible for their downfall.
The company is now planning to shut down its 50 underperforming
stores after losing further market share to land up at 0.45%. This step
further shows that there is not much chance for Guess to improve
revenues in the recent future.
Links/Sources:
http://investors.guess.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=92506&p=irolreportsAnnual
http://www.guess.com/en/
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ges/financials?query=ratios
http://spot.colorado.edu/~shortk/guess.html
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/guess-inc-history/
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/guess.html
http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/Fr-Gu/Guess-Inc.html
http://www.torquenews.com/1084/millionaire-guess-jeans-ceo-loses-11ferraris-and-things-more-valuable
http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2015-06-02/a.kHO4TwOXjQ.html
http://investors.guess.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=92506&p=irolnews&nyo=0
http://www.wset.com/story/29886243/guess-inc-reports-secondquarter-results
http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?
ticker=GES

https://books.google.co.in/books?
id=j7JgkqAZi_4C&pg=PA383&lpg=PA383&dq=guess+inc+sweatshop+
litigation&source=bl&ots=Cge75IZ51F&sig=6iQXhdNAWNPhRV3g5CzF
6Uw_owk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAmoVChMIr7muoTKxwIVC1eOCh2dCweu
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/02/03/is-thereany-hope-for-guesss-dwindling-market-share/
http://www.sweatfree.org/docs/Hall_of_Shame_Final_11'18'07.pdf