Quibi Leaders’ $1.7 Billion Failure Is a Story of Self-Sabotage

The view from Meg Whitman’s wraparound private terrace was dazzling. In 2018, three months after she stepped down as chief executive officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Whitman moved to Los Angeles, into a sprawling, $6.5 million condo on the 24th floor of West Hollywood’s Sierra Towers. The apartment had only two bedrooms but offered lots of other indulgences—floor-to-ceiling skyline views, a home theater, a quarry’s worth of kitchen marble—as well as a patina of Hollywood glamor. Whitman could say she lived in a building whose residents have included Sandra Bullock, Elton John, David Geffen, Evander Holyfield, and Cher. And there was still a chance of running into Adam Sandler in the lobby.

Whitman, one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful women, had moved to L.A. to work with people like that. She’d been recruited a year earlier by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood megaproducer who co-founded DreamWorks Animation, who was betting that the future of entertainment was short-form videos with old-school studio production values. Whitman was to be the CEO of a streaming service with episodic programming that aimed to wow a generation raised on YouTube.