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Originally Posted by Frogsmasha
I wonder why the CEO and half the board resigned..
Hmm
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I think they had a tough year back then. They shut down development on Ink in Motion, canceled a watch contract, and focused 100% of management and technical attention on delivering E Ink to Sony (-> Sony Librie).
They did this to reduce the cash burn and stick to producing ink and managing only one supply chain (Sony). The plan called for Sony to ship the Librie in May 2004, about six weeks after E Ink would have gone broke. The problem: By the end of 2003, the function of the alpha and beta E Ink products had been generally approved by Sony, but technical and quality issues remained that needed to be solved before Sony would purchase the product. So cash would run out before the displays could be shipped, and without a shipping product, E Ink faced a difficult task to raise additional investments.
As a result Jim Iuliano and various board members resigned, and Russ Wilcox became the new CEO, who managed to get from a majority of private E Ink investors an additional $11m - enough for E Ink to remain solvent for almost another year.
After that things worked better thanks to Sony's delivery of the Librie and E Ink's fostering relationship to Japanese Toppan.