Beans Beans, who found this leaked corporate video, where a group of dorky Cool-Aid sloshed employees sing along, gospel style, to 'O' Happy Day', puts it well:
"Ernst & Young teambuiding video - holy shit I nearly pissed myself"
Corporate accountants singing Soul; once more with feeling.
I've just watched it 5 times in a row and cannot stop, each time there's one more priceless gem to notice.
Effing hilarious.
The real buuble.
Four words: Hedge Fund Private Equity.
I hear these too much. I don't really understand hedge funds and private equity, but more frighteningly I get the impression that some of the people involved don't either.
My one theory about the rise of Private Equity, is that its a natural reaction against the increase in communication due to things like the Internet, and the reduced arbitrage or spread that it creates as more people have access to information, more quickly.
One way of countering this and the recenty tightened financial regulation in the US is to deal in private companies and investment, where the information is more opaque.
James Simons, hedge fund manager, earned $1.7 billion last year.... (kottke.org)
The greening of The Valley, why sustainable companies matter.
Evan williams and Biz Stone have taken back Odeo from its backers to form part of a company focused on innovation through multiple products, rather than exit. It's like a tech. startup version of the recent trend for private equity takeovers of public companies. But it could point to a better model for Internet startups - the model of normal companies like corner stores. Here's why.
[update: The sustainable model is not new, it is the way that almost all companies outside of the bubble-prone technology world work, however, sometimes the bleeding obvious is worth pointing out. Venture backing should be for the exception - for the exceptionally rapidly growing.]
The Exit Model
Every venture funded tech company is predicated on the idea of 'exit', the point where the company is sold to a bigger one or has an IPO, so that the investors see a return and move on.
This time round, in the 2.0 boom, there are almost no IPOs, and the exceptions, like Vonage, have been a disaster.
That leaves the second option, selling the company to a bigger one. Unlike during the dotcom boom, the big galaxies, Google, Yahoo, Ebay etc. are properly formed, and surely ready to suck in more stars.
This expectation has been fueled by three large success-story acquisitions, Myspace, Skype and YouTube.
However, only one of these companies is in the Valley, and 1 does not make a trend.
In addition, these are all-or-nothing plays. In a parallel universe, all three companies could have folded, leaving them in the same position as their numerous competitors. Their success was not planned and was very high risk. They are species that survived in a particular evolutionary niche that opened up, they were not 'intelligently designed'.
If there is no trend for large acquisitions, this still leaves the smaller ones. Business week recently ran a headline about 'Yahoo's spending spree', a spending spree of such wild abandon that it includes a single sub $10M acquisition in a year.
Many so-called acquisitions are glorified signing bonuses. They are the result of a finite employment pool where the galaxies have to compete with each other for stars, where the stars are the people not the product.
If the stars are the product, then, just like real galaxies, the Internet galaxies, are really good star factories. In fact the dirty little secret is that they are sometimes better positioned for product development than the startups. A single bowel movement from Google and out pops Google Calendar, wiping out the hopes of a multitude of Internet Calendaring startups like Trumba, in an instant.
Back to Yahoo's one acquisition. Again, 1 does not make a trend.
If you can't IPO or sell then what alternative is there?
The Sustainable Model
The alternative is to question the whole notion of exit and to build a real company.
When I was an architect, you didn't set up a practice on your own to 'exit', you setup to build a company that made a profit and made products that made the environment a better place along the way - a sustainable enterprise. The whole idea of 'exit' in the context of building an architecture firm, or a legal or medical practice is preposterous.
The reason why tech. companies have fallen into the mindset of raise money and exit, 'live fast and sell young' is that they traditionally needed large amounts of capital, both to bootstrap and later to fuel growth. They needed to gain 'market share' dictated by quantitative things like price rather than intangibles such as good design . But that has changed.
What we are seeing now is the second phase of the Internet, what some people call web 2.0. In this phase the infrastructure and 'platforms' are in place, the freeways and toll bridges and shopping malls are there but there is an opportunity to build retail outlets that go in the malls. Some of these outlets may be JCPenney, and others may be Prada. The 'exit' model favors Penney over Prada.
The recent trend has been to keep the model of 'exit', but to raise less money. Wherever you turn now, there are flocks of 'Angels', from VCs that are downgrading to people with a few bucks extra after refinancing their real estate gain. But this is all still predicated on the idea of 'exit' - which just isn't there.
The correct model for web 2.0 should be sustainable growth, its the Obvious Corp.
When you describe the Obvious Corp - as Evan Williams has, it sounds a bit like an incubator - you work on multiple projects and some may even get spun off, who knows. But this is not an incubator - incubators do not work for the founders, they work for the owners. Founders like to feel ownership of their ideas, and as much of their equity as they can keep.
Most importantly, incubators are still based upon the premiss of exiting. Apple Computer and Gawker Media produce multiple products but they are certainly not incubators, they are both sustainable - i.e. profit making companies that are based upon innovation rather than exit.
As the technology market matures, value added qualitative aspects such as good design will become more important, allowing mini versions of Apple to thrive - companies based upon product design and innovation rather than spreadsheets and MBAs.
I have started Venture backed companies, worked at an incubator and started non-venture backed companies. I have had more fun, produced more and made more money from the latter.
What is wrong with your exit model may be the model of exit itself, and a sustainable [i.e. normal] company like the Obvious Corp. may be the answer that is - obvious.
evhead: The Birth of Obvious Corp.
Average house price in the US, Aug 2006:
$230,000
Average house price in the UK, Aug 2006: $376,600
Average gas price per gallon in the US, Aug 2006: $3.04
Average gas price per gallon in the UK, Aug 2006: $6.46
There will almost certainly be a recession in the US soon, caused primarily by inflated gas and house prices. One will continue to go up and the other will crash - a problem for people who own houses and drive cars, i.e. are long in real estate and short on gas.
But these prices are actually very, very cheap compared to places like the UK, which didn't go into recession with much larger costs and similar wages. The principal difference being the rate of consumption.
average home sales prices in all regions of the united states
Old farts like myself, who were tinkering with the Internet in the early 90s will remember that there was a sudden surge in interest in the Internet a year or so before the web.
The tendency is to think that the Web was the prime reason for the increased adoption of the Internet, but in fact it is more likely that the Web was actually the result of an evolutionary niche being opened up by the spread of the Internet.
Once the Web was born, of course, it did help fuel the growth of the Internet, but like almost any other 'ecosystem' from the autocatalytic reactions in a single cell organism, to the money flow in an industrial economy, it was based upon a circular feedback loop, making it difficult to separate the chicken from the egg.
The are two other very important examples of cause and effect which were not what they seemed: oil and coal.
It would seem plausible to assume that the industrial revolution created engines which needed coal, which was eventually replaced by the more transportable oil.
In fact the demand for coal was stimulated by a decline in the available wood during the mini ice age in the 17th and 18th centuries. Steam engines, often running on wood fires, were developed to pump water out of coal mines. Later, a positive feedback loop would mean that more coal could mean more steam engines.
Similarly, the demand for oil was created by a demand for lamp oil to light the factories of the industrial revolution, long before it was used to transport the workers and the goods they produced, creating a bigger marketplace and demand.
The lesson from this, is perhaps that:
1. looking for cause and effect in a strictly linear fashion is nonsense.
2. business plans that are looking to change the world by attracting a significant slice of an existing market or 'ecosystem' would be better off focusing on how to step up between small to large marketplaces.
If you like this is similar to the vogueish marketing books of the last dotcom boom, like Crossing the Chasm or Inside the Tornado. The difference being that there is not one tornado but a series of ever increasing ones, with fractal like self similarity. The inverse pattern of turbulent air flow.
Perhaps the skill (or luck) of the entrepreneur is to find the seemingly trivial niche (like selling crude oil instead of Sperm Whale fat for lighting) that could interconnect all the way to the top.
The people that did this in the last boom were not Napster or Webvan, but people like Blogger or Ebay. And before you say, oh but Blogger never became a huge company, consider this:
The founders made more than the founders of some billion dollar companies, and they got to change the world at the same time.
Even if Webvan had succeeded, it was kind of boring and complicated and difficult to setup in your garage.
"I've seen mountains with less steep declines."
This should be a bubble-time warning to those companies that think that they can spin an IPO when other options are closed.
The film Supersizeme made a good case for why a diet consisting entirely of McDonalds food could transform your body quicker than Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. Recently evidence suggests that the main culprit may not be fatty food, but sugared, caffeinated water. The beverage industry is scheduled to announce today that it is voluntarily removing high-calorie soft drinks from all schools.
This may not be entirely fair. An average 12 ounce can of cola typically contains 120 calories. However its not just sodas that pack in the calories, fruit juices have more and the same size serving of grape juice, an elementary-school lunchroom staple, contains a whopping 165 calories.
It doesn't really matter how healthy, natural or traditional the drink may seem when you are eating or drinking too much. Despite marginal differences in the way we digest different foods, the bottom line is that calories in = calories out, and unfortunately there is a tendency to think that drinks don't count in the same way that food does.
So what about coffee? A Starbucks Cappuccino manages to combine fat with caffeinated sugared water by adding milk, combining all of the ingredients in a fast food meal into one nasty-tasty little package.
The combination of three principal food vices with a habitual daily buying pattern that makes ordering a Grande Latte as automatic as taking a morning shit is clearly a money earner. A ritual morning coffee even facilitates the shit.
In a report whose findings are 'something of a mystery,'' according to Richard Suzman of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the latest Journal of the American Medical Association shows that despite spending twice as much per person ($5200) on healthcare, Americans have more diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease and cancer than the English, with middle class Amercans having the same health profile as blue collar English. The English probably shouldn't smile about it - on account of their teeth, of course.
Diet seems to be the problem - and drinks may be what are tipping the balance - because they don't seem to count, but they do.
White bread was our top source of calories as recently as ten years ago. People living in America now take in more calories from soft drinks than from any other category of food, about 10% of daily intake, on average, compared to white bread at 6%.
50 years ago, in the days of the classic Raymond Loewy Coke bottle, the average size of a soda was 6 to 8 ounces, today it is 12 ounces and a 64 ounce soda can be bought at most convenience stores or movie theaters.
But while everyone blames White Bread America,, fast food and soda in school, what about Frappucino America? After all, as teh finding says, the health problems are across all income levels.
The smallest Cappuccino size in Starbucks, the 'Tall' is the same size as a can of Soda, (12 oz), and has almost exactly the same number of calories: 120. A Starbucks Grande is 33% larger at 16 oz and a 'Venti' is 80% larger at 20 oz.
The Economist magazine publishes the Big Mac index (the average cost of a Big Mac in various parts of the world) as a normalized measure of the cost of living.
Lets take the same item to create an easily visualizeable measure of calories in drinks vs food to see whether you should be treating your morning drink as a coffee flavored desert rather than a desert flavored coffee.
A BigMac has 576 calories = 100% BigMac.
Lets see how coffee weighs in on the BigMac Index.
A Starbucks Capuccino: Tall 120 calories - 21% BigMac; Grande 150 - 26% BigMac; Venti 180 - 31% Big Mac.
Other Grandes: latte: 260 - 45% BigMac; caramel Frappuccino: 310 - 54% BigMac; mocha: 400 - 69% BigMac; caramel mocha with whipped cream: 470 - 82% BigMac
But If you really want to think how bad your morning coffee may be for you if you don't count it as food:
A Venti Chocolate Malt Frappuccino with whipped cream has about as many calories as a BigMac AND Fries (760 calories - 132% BigMac).
Boo.com is relaunching in June.
They have a fantastically witty strapline, presumably created by the people that Pajamas media originally hired, wait for it...
"The Boo is Back"
That's right, the Boo is back, cos Boo.com was so successful the first time it was called 'the Boo' - boooolshit. You can almost hear the distant rumble of discount Aeron chairs.
ConEd win this years prize for worst customer service.
Having waited on the phone for half an hour because they don't take credit card payments over the web (I mean my corner store does that), they don't take credit cards over the phone - despite the fact that they say they do.
Not just that - but if you change your bank and your payment doesnt go through, in their infinite wisdom, they decide that they will stop you from being able to pay by phone for six months. They basically don't want your money.
Please, please let Con Edison go bust.
My bullshitters investing guide, based upon absolutely no analysis or experience. I don't even know if 'Hearst' is public - I don't care.
Iwonder how it will do? I'll check back in a year.
Pharma and cosmetics.
L'Oreal
They make proper sunscreen that the FDA haven't yet approved, apparently. Or so some geezer down the pub said.
Buy
All the best deals are here, but nobody understands it, including professional investors.
Buy into the people that make lab coats instead.
---------------
Media
Hearst
If big media doesn't own little electronic media -
Sell
Clearly all media is undergoing a massive revolution everything big is going tits up. But the small stuff that will replace it is not public. So only big people who can invest in VC funds etc. will make money out of the little guys.
---------------
Commodities:
Oil
There is no way that the Saudis are telling the truth about reserves.
Buy
Gold
Lot of bad stuff brewing in the newspapers
Buy if you are a wuss.
---------------
Retail
The People who make True Religion Jeans
Even bigger wankers have started to wear them recently
Sell
Walmart
Think Woolworths where everything is expensive cos. Chinese imports increase in price.
Sell - eventually
Wholefoods
A Texan hippy store, how perfectly hedged
Buy
Virgin (the music bit, or whoever owns them)
Once fresh brand, starting to look dated and shabby, like the music industry.
Sell
---------------
Tech and DOTCOM
Microsoft
Cummon they are not waiting to pounce. A company that sells Personal Computer software (small business computer software) when the market wants personal computer software.
Sell
In fact, sell all software companies, apart from the ones with call themselves media companies. Some of those are OK.
---------------
Real Estate:
Real-Estate in London.
London houses are too expensive, interest rates can only go up, doing anything in London is too expensive.
Sell
Real Estate in the US
Interest rates can only go up.
Sell
Real Estate near future Wholefoods in US
You are what you eat. Wholefoods is the best real estate developer in the US.
Buy
Real Estate in Croatia
I have never been there - the postcards of Dubrovnik look nice.
Buy
I disabled comments a while back because of the spam issues from gambling and porn sites, but noticed that 10% of my traffic was to inbound links to some poker site comments that I hadn't deleted.
The inbound linking is to game Google into indirectly boosting pagerank for the eventual destination using clustered keyword terms, a more sophisticated variant of placing outbound links in comments.
The traffic came from what appear to be affiliates of a CPA affiliate program site, 888.com, which in turn linked to poker sites that were owned by the same company as 888.com, operating out of the UK's Gibraltar.
These companies are owned by Cassava Enterprises, who, one might imagine, are a small, shady company, operating offshore.
However, it turns out that Cassava Enterprises are in the process of going public in the UK for an estimated $1.5 billion, underwritten by Credit Suisse First Boston.
See the Sunday Times article below:
Poker firm float flushed out - Sunday Times - Times Online
"Similarly, Cassava Enterprises, owner of the 888.com site, has hired CSFB to advise it on a possible flotation. It is reported to be considering a listing that would value the business at more than £800m."
There are a number of reputable betting sites about to go public, but it seems odd that the illegal (since it costs me time and money) practice of spamming leads to companies planning to go public alongside a bunch of sketchy porn sites.
Since Cassava own the affiliate program that may have clients who are doing the spamming, if or when they have knowledge of it they will be obligated to act.
If, in turn, a significant number of 888.com affiliates are using pagerank gaming techniques via site spamming, then wiping out those affiliates could dramatically affect their revenues and hence the IPO price.
Imagine if Amazon, planning to IPO, had been involved directly or even indirectly with using mass spamming for its marketing, or if a significant portion of their revenues was based upon affiliates that were operating fraudulently, without them knowing. Is that what is happening here?
Below is the top story on Reuters: it shows a recent trend where Greenspan has had to repeatedly warn against government spending and yet the markets and the party favored by the markets doesn't react...
There was a point when the government and markets would quiver if Greenspan looked like he had got out of bed on the wrong side. Nowadays, idealogy and faith seems to be driving capitalism too - a dangerous thing.
Greenspan Warns Deficits Endanger Economy
"Much of the Fed chairman's testimony echoed prior cautions he has made to Capitol Hill lawmakers. He stressed that steps to fix the problem were essential.
"As the latest projections from the (Bush) administration and the Congressional Budget Office suggest, our budget position is unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken," the Fed chief said."
Latest Business News and Financial Information | Reuters.com
Foremski ups the ante on the Flickr/Yahoo partnership rumor, suggesting that an acquisition is about to be announced.
My good friend Nick Aster has been doing an MBA with a difference, one that combines business with sustainability, at the Presidio World College.
They are shortly having open days for their MBA in Sustainable Management.
Wired News: Monster Fueled by Caffeine on a startup that works out of a coffee shop.
After a false start with 'hot desking' in the 90's freely available wifi, laptops and cellphones really do mean that in some case you can work anywhere. In this case, history has come full circle with some of the biggest institutions in the world, such as Lloyd's insurance, having been started in 18th century coffee houses.
Increasingly I am meeting people, that like myself would rather work out of a coffee shop than some anonymous cube hell that is the staple of most US work environments. I have a friend who is looking to buy a coffee house in San Francisco as space for his startup, whilst keeping it selling coffee to the public.
From an architectural standpoint I see this as the perfect rebellion. Unlike coffee houses, office space does not have to be designed to be attractive to hang out in and as such the vast majority of office space in America is a thoughtless committee designed waste of money devoid of any soul.
My recent experiences with realtors show me that: most of them don't know very much about buildings; waste your time by lying in descriptions; seem to be the last people on earth to use email and digital cameras instead of time wasting phone calls and expensive on-site visits.
Realtors charge up to a quarter of what architects do, without most of the skill, service or liability. The reason that this happens is that they own the customer. By extension, if their services don't benefit customers then this will change.
Why hasn't the Internet destroyed the current hopeless realtor merry-go-round. Perhaps a listings service could be built where data can only be submitted if:
1. the realtor or seller lists a contact email(rather than them contact you, or by phone).
2. all listing have digital pictures of outside and all rooms.
3. all room sizes are listed in square foot.
4. visits can be arranged through a third party key holder rather than with the agent. (Most of the time having a realtor show you round is a waste of money. Why not distribute keys to security companies and have someone less annoying show you round.)
5. all listings allow feedback from registered users who are prospective buyers/renters.
this would allow people to rate realtors, rate properties and upload their own pictures of properties.
[The problem with 5. is that reviewing building listings has less vanity benefit than an product review, as your review won't be seen for ever. Perhaps revenge is enough of a driver to make people give bad feedback.]
NB. Here is a realtor tip that a friend told me about:
In the US it appears that some contracts require a licensed broker at both ends of a deal. Given that that can be one person - threatening to bring in a second broker results in the first reducing fees automatically because they will have their fees halved by the mere presence of another broker.
Sample chapter headings:
The Morons Who Are Sitting Next To You
Business Culture, My Arse
Why You Can't Lose By Resigning
Corporate Culture - Stupid People
BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Lazy joke lands author in trouble
Coke has had to recall Dasani feared to be contaminated with a carcinogen.
Coke started by selling drink with narcotics, last century.
It then took the narcotics out, building a brand by selling sugared water at a massive premium.
It then launched Dasani, removing the sugar and selling water at a massive premium.
It turned out that Dasani isn't a mineral water, but is purified tap water, selling at a massive premium.
With this recall, they were selling lipsmackin, thirstquenchin contaminated, non-mineral, unsugared, 'coke' free water.
Ed Sim points out something that instinctively should be a truism: companies are bought and not sold. In other words, if you look to shop a company you reduce its attractiveness.
So what makes the playing-hard-to-get game, different for companies than products they sell. Are products sold and not bought? Does Coca Cola's sugared water sell itself or do they have to market it?
What is happening in both cases is price - Coke play hard to get by saying that you can only have their sugared water by paying a huge premium over cost.
All companies are for sale, but the price, like a discreet ad for an expensive piece of real estate, is not published - if you need to know then you can't afford it.
Everything has a price and surely, even companies need to proactively seduce their potential suitors.
China's average GDP to exceed 1000 US dollars
At current growth rates this would mean that a supposedly communist country could have a larger economy than the US within 30 years.
Business Plan Archive is a repository of business plans and information about failed .com companies - a sort of intellectual anti-matter I guess, but fascinating reading nonetheless.
My personal favorite that I'd forgotten about:
Zap.com
Portal that makes fish oil
Ping Identity - who are sponsors of the SourceID open source identity project has secured $5M in Financing from General Catalyst Partners - who Jeremy Allaire is involved with.
Netflix market cap as of today: $1.04B
Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins are rumored to be about to put $10M into Friendster.
How to win Friendsters and influence VCs | CNET News.com
The difference between the Bush's first budget plan, for the next 10 years and today's: $8,000,000,000,000.
NYTimes: "The long-term budget forecast has declined as much in the last two years as the total revenue collected by the United States government from 1789 to 1983."
The reason for some of this shortfall is 'investment' to stimulate the economy, but tax cuts and sometimes questionably misdirected hostility are not the same as investing in, say, secondary education. I'm a pragmatist and however unfair, this does work, but to a degree. This would be a choice of someone who prefers short term stimulants to longer term health - cocaine versus cardiovascular fitness (and 'would be' might actually read 'was', if you believed the rumors).
In the business world, this is the equivalent of corporate investment in longer term revenue by raising executive salaries and actually encouraging competition from other companies, instead of new product developement and cost-cutting existing operating expenses.
People pay a great deal of money for software when there is often an open source alternative for free. There is, quite literally, an 'open source' of tap water in most kitchens but people spend more than $7 billion annually on something that would cost less than $1M if they used the open source.
This month's skeptic has some great trivia on the ultimate scam: selling bottled water in countires where the 'open source' is just fine...
"25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle--sometimes further treated, sometimes not. If the label says 'from a municipal source' or 'from a community water system,' it's tap water. "
"[the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's] bottled water quality standards are the same as [the Environmental Protection Agency's] tap water standards."
but...
"bottled water is subject to less rigorous purity standards and less frequent tests for bacteria and chemical contaminants than those required of tap water"
"Both companies [Coke and Pepsi] charge more for their plain water than for their sugar water."
"the Showtime television series Penn & Teller: Bullshit! The hosts began with a blind comparison in which 75 percent of New Yorkers preferred city tap to bottled waters."
Scientific American: Bottled Twaddle -- Is bottled water tapped out?
A bit sick, but still...
"...The rules of this contest are simple: Start with this image of her cell, and decorate it in a way that would be suitable for the queen of gracious living. Keep in mind, this is not a regular b2b contest - you must redecorate this provided image of a jail cell for Martha... "
For no other reason than I am personally bored with being pessimistic, I have a feeling that others may be too and that this rally may last.
Dow Closes Above 9,000 for First Time in 8 Months
Although deflation strikes fear in the minds of governments (the principal economic stabilizing mechanism, interest rate adjustment, is no longer viable) and bankers ("because a zero rate would roil money market funds, which rely on a positive interest rate to cover their own operating costs") it is ordinary people who would lose out most.
Low interest rates on mortgages may have created a false euphoria where people believe they can afford house prices that would normally be out of their reach. Deflation could spell bad news for anyone with debt, such as a mortgage, as the value of the debt would increase over time. For the poor, who often rely on extortionate loans just to survive, let alone buy property, the effects could be crippling. In the early 19th century in Britain, social unrest brought on from the effects of deflation almost caused a revolution.
Deflation Hints Feed Talk of Radical Fed Tools
The French culture minister, Jean-Jacques Aillagon is alarmed at the possible sale of Universal, after rumors that Apple might buy it, because it owns rights to French artists such as Johnny Hallyday. Er... somehow I don't think Hallyday is one of Universal's more lucrative assets.
'"The minister wrote this letter to say he was being vigilant and that he wanted to be kept informed of the progress of the Universal Music dossier given the importance of this cultural company for French creativity and the value of our national heritage,' the paper [les Echos] quoted a source close to the minister as saying."
"Aillagon wants more than just financial concerns to guide the sale of Universal Music, which has popular French artists such as Johnny Hallyday under contract, the source said."
...or at least his trademark is:
"Word MarkSADDAMS
Goods and Services(ABANDONED) IC 016. US 038. G & S: comic strips, comic books,and related cartoon characters
Live/Dead Indicator DEAD"
It is a game and it's not over.
The Guardian points out that Sony has trademarked 'Shock and Awe' for a video game.
A search shows that the phrase is also registered for a firework company and even an underpants manufacturer!
Yet more ambulance chasing with the trademark on 'Operation Iraqi Freedom', also for a video game.
"Word Mark OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer game software
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 78230280
Filing Date March 26, 2003
Filed ITU FILED AS ITU
Owner (APPLICANT) Battlefront.com, Inc. CORPORATION MARYLAND 167Steadmans Landing Rd. Dover-Foxcroft MAINE 044263418 "
MediaGuardian.co.uk | Marketing & PR | Sony leads charge to cash in on Iraq
If you subtract the amount of money that people pay Blockbuster in late fees from their revenues then Blockbuster is unprofitable.
Then take Netflix, which is premised on not having the revenues that make Blockbuster profitable but leveraging instead the greater effiencies of web based distribution, and subtract the amount of revenue from people who watch less than a few movies a month then you have a non-viable business model.
Despite the logistical and technical efficiencies of online businesses, I wonder if many are paradoxically based upon the inherent inefficiency and laziness of people.
(People like me, who have had the same 3 movies out on Netflix for 2 months now.)
"Genealogy sites generated $26 million in paid content revenue during third quarter 2002, according to comScore networks. That's an 86 percent increase versus the year before."
Cisco was the darling of the Internet boom, it provided the term that VC's loved: infrastructure.
No matter how bleak the technology business landscape, wireless is huge, and Linksys are providing the wireless infrastructure.
A private company to watch.
"Linksys has been ranked as an Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Private Company in the United States for 5 consecutive years. Only 61 companies have ever made the list 5 years in a row"
Anil rails against De Beer's monopoly product, concludes that diamonds are for never and warns about unknowingly purchasing conflict diamonds.
What about conflict oil?
They couldn't spell hemorrhage but they sure knew how to do it.
"In an e-mail dated March 16, 2000, Idealab President Marcia Goodstein told Gross 'we are running out of cash. At your current deal rate, we're not running, we're hemmorrhage [sic], I can't even think of words strong enough to express how fast we are going broke.'
That e-mail came at a time when Idealab still looked like a success, at least to outsiders. It had just raised $1 billion from private investors. The following month, the firm filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission to sell stock to the public. Idealab ultimately shelved that plan after the stock market collapsed. "
Buy low sell high - isn't that the common sense mantra for investing?
So on the question of where to invest, given that the safe bets, real estate, cash in the bank etc. don't look too rewarding. The answer is - invest in the future.
A smart Venture Capitalist that I know, someone who I respect cos he kept a cool head through the bubble, said that he wanted to do counter-cyclical investing - exactly. Lets hear it for the Counter Cycle VC. Buy low, sell high, there's lots of creativity and new ideas out there.
The Economist suggests there may be nowhere to invest in 2003
nickdenton.org: 2003 investment ideas
Jeff Jarvis admirably stands up for the role of media companies.
What he is points out is that the support for Eldred was more the noble cause of 'lets root for the underdog' (the subject of many hollywood films).
With more efficient distribution and marketing perhaps leaner media companies will concentrate on getting the best talent in front of any customer instead of any talent in front of the most gullible customer.
Although the Supreme Court ruling is undoubtedly a blow. There is a bright side.
Media companies may have won a battle but they are losing the war - digital media fundamentally changes the role of the agent between artists and their fans.
If copyright were indefinite, Shakespeare would make more money over time than all pulp fiction.
Longer copyrights mean that media companies can take a longer term view and since quality lasts, this means slightly less over-hyped, short-term junk.
When you couple this with the fact that the role of media companies as marketers and distributers is reduced by the efficiencies of digital media distribution and peer to peer recommendation, then the need for the middle people is reduced and there is even less money to spend on promoting crap.
News From The Associated Press
Jeff Jarvis waves Steve Case off with good riddance.
Back in 1993 when the Internet itself was the top item on their hype list, Wired decided that ISPs would wipe out AOL/Compuserve etc. It seemed plausible - why would you pay for access to a walled garden, largely private, non-Intenet service with a crappy interface.
What is amazing is that AOL ever became big in the first place when ten years ago they were already an anachronism. AOL actually pulled off something incredible, clearly their marketing, however tacky, worked and they were doing something right. But with a bad product, service and customer support one does wonder what exactly. The depressing thought is that several million of us behaved like Gollum, seduced by a free disk - look, me have shiny, shiny, pretty CD thing.
BuzzMachine: Steve case to step down
The Economist resurrect their fictitious perfect investor, Felicity Foresight.
$1 invested in shares in 1900 would be worth $9,000 now. However, Felicity's $1 is not limited to shares and is now worth $2,700,000,000,000,000. So where is the best place to invest in 2003? The Economist concludes that Felicity "would be wise to recall 1931, when the best performing asset was cash, offering 1% interest."
Dave Winer discusses AOL but makes a profound general point about how the music industry should deal with digital music: make a distinction between new stuff and archives.
Its a very elegant solution. At the moment you have copyrighted media and non-copyrighted media. Classic books that are out of copyright are much cheaper than new ones. The cost being not much more than the printing and distribution.
The archive solution creates three categories of digital media: copyright held new media that is being marketed and is paid for on an individual basis; copyright held media that is no longer being marketed and is sold as part of a bulk subscription to an archive; non copyright held media which is free since with digital media there are zero distribution or reproduction costs.
... One Mid Adult Woman Only, Caucasian, One Person, 20s, One Young Woman Only, Content, Coffee, Portrait, Human Hair, 30s, Sitting ...
A nice illustration of the power of the masses: Slashdot debunks Microsoft's 'switch' (i.e. Mac -> PC as opposed to vice versa) PR bullshit, which rather sadly has to rely on fake people, by finding the Stock image of the model used. Microsoft then takes down the page, but it is captured by a blogger
via scripting
The page with the model
Microsoft's ficticious Mac user
