He's in good company. Failure is often the step leading to success. Many very successful people didn't hit a homerun on their first turn at bat. Sometimes you have to swing many many times until you can hit it out of the park. In this case, he built a company, it went bust and now he's deep in debt and has to deliver pizzas to make ends meet.

As long as he keeps his dreams alive and keeps trying, he should be okay. Tons of famous men like Washington, Lincoln, even KFC's "Colonel" Sanders failed often and failed hard before they got it right. Same with Andy Grove of Intel--he once said that in his life, he tried and failed with 99 companies... his hundredth was Intel.

If you're an entrepreneur going through tough times and knocked to your knees a few times, keep coming up and keep learning. Success is one step away if you let it.

I have to agree. I salute him for swallowing his pride and doing what he has to do to feed his family, but he brought this on himself.

He mad a ton of money, but he bought a huge house, expensive vacations, country club memberships and it looks like they spent every penny he made. Then he decides to quit his job and start a hedge fund. As it turns out most of these hedge funds were doing nothing but creating fictitious wealth based on the hopeful equity of all the sub prime mortgages. When that came crumbling down it showed the reality was there were about $30 worth of outstanding loans for every $1 of actual sub prime equity so these hedge fund guys were betting on something that was already way over extended. It sounds like he got greedy and tried to cash in on this bubble and he either did it wrong or did it at the wrong time. Either way when it failed he didn't walk away. He put his savings and 401K into it to try to keep it afloat. So it wasn't like he blew through his savings and 401K supporting his family, he did it trying to cash in on a hedge fund that didn't pay out.

Had this guy been paying off his house and stashing money in things like money market accounts and very low return very low risk to solidify his future and right now he would have a ton of cash in the bank and could ride it out until things turned up and he could get the job he wanted.

Didn't Al Goldstein wind up working in a deli at one point?

thats what i want to see

there are going to be some major rags to riches stories coming up

im hoping that when forced into a corner, humans react favourably to the pressure

yep read his autobiography, he pissed it all away over 10 millions.

Indeed :thumbsup

Stupidity gets one from millions to zero,no big news

I think you guys are being hard on the guy. My theory is he's not stupid, he's actually very smart, and he's working the system for now.

that's bad! ouch!

:eek7:eek7

He was CEO of his own company...he made most of his money previously working for a company where he bought and sold stocks for institutional clients...
so he left a great job to start up on his own and he failed... maybe he is not CEO material...

I saw the story last night on 20/20... What I don't understand is why didn't he pay off his house when he was rolling?? He topped out at 750k which will drop him down to 500k being in the 28% tax bracket. He should have paid off his mortgage or most of it... he had 500k to start his own hedge fund that didn't work and he hasn't made a mortgage payment in 2yrs, very sad story but a great 20/20 :2 cents:

It looks like he made that good money for a lot of years, but it also looks like they spent it as he made it. He talked about Aspen ski trips and exclusive vacations as well as country club memberships and things like that so I have the feeling it went out just as fast as it came in.

Actually he had a million in savings then lost it all staying in that fucking house. He was down to 500,000. in savings and fucked him self with bad investments. He is a fucking retard and he deserves the dissapointment his family will have in him forever.

What a fucking loser.

rich fucking pizza delivery fail

I can't generate any sympathy for this guy (or his wife) - although I feel sorry for his children.

"Sorry kids...your mother and I spent your future education and inheritance...living the lavish lifestyle."

This is typically what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket and don't plan for a rainy day. The moment they couldn't make their mortgage payment - the 'For Sale' sign should have gone on the front lawn. Instead - they buried themselves deeper in the financial hole to keep up the appearance of wealth and status to their friends, family and neighbours.

And now they've got a real dose of reality.

I don't think people in this thread are being "too harsh" on the guy. Why soften the blow? He fucked up and didn't plan for tomorrow. He failed to read the writing on the wall.

Sympathy is still in the dictionary between shit 'n syphilis.

That must hurt.

Valid and rational reasoning.

His plans for the future might have appeared on the surface to be solid, but were absolutely shaky. Living on credit and defaulting on loans and mortgages is the worst financial strategy ever.

He was supposed to cut all extraneous expenses from the break, keep his credit intact and attain as many revenue generating assets as possible once he saw that his fund was going belly up.

The ability to generate revenue is priceless, credit status even more so as the ability to rebuild will sometimes depend upon it.

He is completely screwed as no bank will lend him a dime, nor will anyone want to hire him as he has exercised no semblance of financial intelligence.

His story also does not seem to add up as his education and contacts should have been able to get him in a sensible position in the meantime. He is not being forthright about something.

Regardless of what happened, what kind of plan he had, how dumb he is or isn't.

God damn if I'm not impressed he's doing whatever he has to for his family... How many guys out there wouldn't find reason to get out of bed in the morning after something like that ?

same story will happen to many "big players" in the adult webmaster biz. the easy money days are long gone.

Have you see who was the president for the past eight years?

Clearly this didn't all happen in the past three months.

There are many others like him who didn't make preparations for hard times. I gather from him saying he's lived well for 45+ years that he's always had money and has never known what it's like to not have it. Tough lessen to learn.

How do you know the market value of the house is more than what they owe the bank?...