Selling Cheap

We think of top business CEOs and the boards of big corporations as being smart, perceptive people, yet they’ve dropped some real clangers in their time. I list here a few:

In 2000, a struggling video streaming company called Netflix asked the video-shop giant Blockbuster to buy them out. Blockbuster declined. In 2013, Blockbuster went out of business; Netflix is now worth a billion dollars.

American billionaire Ross Perot refused to buy Microsoft for $60 million, though it is now worth over $500 billion.

Pioneering social media platform Myspace refused to buy a little-known site called Facebook in 2004 even though it is now worth $140 billion and Myspace is generally unheard of. 

In 1975 Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera and Kodak, nervous that this innovation would reduce film sales, kicked it into the long grass. Digital photography is now the norm and manufactured by many companies; film-based cameras are curiosities and museum exhibits. 

In 1999, the two founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, were advised to sell their small company to the search giant Excite.com. For a mere $750,000, Excite refused to buy, considering it over-priced. Google is now worth $101.8 billion. Excite is worth $1,424,800.

Those besuited men smoking fat cigars in swanky boardrooms aren’t as smart as they think. Some would make excellent understudies for Laurel and Hardie. Jesus tells two short parables along a similar vein in Matthew 13:44-45:

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

You know there’s a trove in the next field, so you liquidise all your assets and buy it, knowing you’ll dig more up than you lost, yes?

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

If the one pearl is worth more than all the others put together, losing all of them to gain the one is still a great deal. Agreed?

Ok, so why do people refuse to accept Christ when He is worth more than all riches, houses, partners and careers combined? Most of the earth’s population make the bosses of Kodak, Excite and Myspace look like shrewd investors by comparison.