Cisco Paid $590 Million for the Flip. Two Years Later It Killed It

There is one of these in a drawer in your house. Small, plastic, one big red button, and a USB arm that flips out of the side. You filmed a birthday with it and then you stopped, and it has been in that drawer ever since. Here is the part nobody remembers. When the Flip was discontinued it was not failing and it was not obsolete. It had just become the best selling camcorder in the United States. Cisco had paid five hundred and ninety million dollars for it twenty-three months earlier. The next model, a live-streaming camera years ahead of anything else on the market, was due on shelves the following day. This is the story of a product that was put down at number one, the shelf it took with it, and the thirty days three million people were given to rescue their own home video. Sources and further reading are in the pinned comment. Two new documentaries every week. Subscribe:    / @deadstockarchive   #flipvideos #businessdocumentary #techhistory #flipvideo