And now we're going through massive layoffs coin base just laid off 18% of its workforce and Robert Hood just laid off 23% of its workforce . One of the most frequently asked questions that I get from people , which I know you probably do too is should I go work at a startup or a more established company or should I leave a big company to work at a startup ? What are your thoughts on this ?
When you joined launch , it was very well funded prior to going public , its investors including Intel GE and NBC . And when it went public on April 23rd , 1999 it raised $75 million in IP O led by Hamburg and Quist the boutique investment bank that JP Morgan acquired four months later , but well funded does not mean job security . We can look at the sexy companies today that have raised billions of dollars in the past few years .
I can't remember how many lawyers I was managing or business affairs people I was managing . But I went from that to managing hundreds and hundreds of people , engineers , marketing sales , business development and , and , and , and so it was baptism by fire for me , my advice is first off , just be clear . Uh So then when opportunities present themselves , uh you are top of mind .
Let's talk about work life balance . You're running a massive company that has 4000 employees . It earned a billion dollars of revenue .
We talk about audience expansion , talk about quality storytelling and programming innovation cuts across all of them . And I don't think you can be successful in this new environment , not just sports environment but new media environment without constantly innovating , investing uh in new platforms . Uh not being , as I said earlier , not being afraid to fail .
