8
LONG-TERM PROFITABILITY
Managing Far-Horizon Opportunities
Segway introduced its personal transporter (figure 8-1) with great fanfare in 2000. The entrepreneur leading Segway, Dean Kamen, planned for his company to make 40,000 units per month by the end of the company’s first full year of production.1 At prices exceeding $5,000 per unit, this would amount to annual sales of more than $2.5 billion. Dreams of this kind of fortune enticed a prominent venture capitalist, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, to lead an investment syndicate that bet $80 million on Kamen’s company.2 Segway was a far-horizon opportunity for Kamen and his investors, ...
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