>He really should not have been looking for solutions himself.
Actually, I think at this point he had waited too late to ask for competent help. Here we have a custom Bitcoin client, written in what is probably a tangled hairball of PHP. The Bitcoin protocol is already fairly complex, and even Bitcoin software written by competent developers using modern software development methods can be tricky to understand (see btcd for an example of a well-engineered client).
How many engineers could fix that in a reasonable period of time?
Add to that the fact that there are only a handful of competent programmers in the world who also are experts at the Bitcoin protocol, and I'm not convinced that he could have convinced any of them to take on the task. Most of them are already wealthy, and they have a lot of reputation to lose by trying (quite possibly in vain) to fix a dying company.
Mark's biggest mistake was in trying to do this all himself once Bitcoin really took off. So yes, a valuable lesson for entrepreneurs.
Actually, I think at this point he had waited too late to ask for competent help. Here we have a custom Bitcoin client, written in what is probably a tangled hairball of PHP. The Bitcoin protocol is already fairly complex, and even Bitcoin software written by competent developers using modern software development methods can be tricky to understand (see btcd for an example of a well-engineered client).
How many engineers could fix that in a reasonable period of time?
Add to that the fact that there are only a handful of competent programmers in the world who also are experts at the Bitcoin protocol, and I'm not convinced that he could have convinced any of them to take on the task. Most of them are already wealthy, and they have a lot of reputation to lose by trying (quite possibly in vain) to fix a dying company.
Mark's biggest mistake was in trying to do this all himself once Bitcoin really took off. So yes, a valuable lesson for entrepreneurs.