Yeah, the thing about most tech companies is that the usual business model is "bet the farm on one product really taking off," and even if it does they may fumble the actual making money part of it.
Warren Buffet said,
"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."Sun was an established public company, and was considered a thought-leader in the tech space at the time. Sun made cubic tons of money, hand over fist, while the tech-bubble was inflating. The stock split 5 or 6 times in the span of just a few years. It was a wild ride that seemed like it could never end; that is, until it abruptly ended.
While Sun definitely wasn't swimming naked, what the executives overlooked was that they allowed the massive majority of their core customer base to be comprised of those who actually
were swimming naked.
Sun had government, and defense contracts, customers in the education space. But when the tide rolled out, what had rapidly become Sun's largest customer base literally collapsed in just a few short quarters, and with no other market growing large enough or fast enough to replace them. They became too dependent for revenue from the waves of tech IPOs that should never have gone public, who were using their own stock to capitalize their unprofitable businesses, who would never survive, and who would never be replaced after the tech-wreck.
Sun limped along, struggling for another ten years after that; bleeding cash all along the way. They were still doing business within their other market verticals, but they could never replace the obscenely massive flows of revenue they lost when the dot-com bubble burst.
I guess the take-away lesson is that even if you do have insider information, it still won't do you any good if the once-valid premise that information is based on evaporates into thin air for reasons outside of anyone's control.