I’d listen to Jon Stewart before Chris Anderson on fixing media’s business model

Image via Wikipedia

TechCrunch summarizes Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson’s rules for pricing on online media by calling them “counterintuitive.”  Author Erick Schoenfeld, writes that Mr. Anderson “articulated something that is now increasingly becoming obvious: As products go digital, their marginal cost goes to zero.”

“This is the law of gravity online,” says Anderson. “Everything that becomes digital will become free. There will be a free version, either you will be competing with free or giving it away for free and selling something else. If it is not zero today, it will be zero tomorrow.”

He then goes on to summarize Anderson’s new “rules”, which appear to be:

1. The best model is a mix of free and paid
2. You can’t charge for an exclusive that will be repeated elsewhere,
3. Don’t charge for the most popular content on your site,
4. Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches, the narrower the niche the better

I’m scratching my head a bit here, and I’d love to have read more evidence of this actually working at mass scale. There are a bunch of counter-examples that a hard-headed business guy like me might push back on here with a hearty WTF.   First off, some counterexamples.

The best model is a mix of 100% pay / 0% free, like World of Warcraft.  It’s media IMHO, you want onto their servers, you pay to be there.

Any packaged software (or pharmaceutical for that matter) has a marginal cost of zero, it is still for pay.  I reject the idea that media–becuase its marginal cost is zero–cannot be for pay.  Plenty of other high-value products have zero marginal costs and extract high prices.  Linux and Windows have been two versions of digital OSs for more than 10 years.  Windows still has the vast, vast majority of revenue and unit share.

Plenty of authors are finding opportunities to charge for their content–especially in the financial sector. Jeremy Siegel for example.

Finally, nowhere do I hear that the core model of big media brand (e.g., WSJ) and all its writers are needed to do what they do.  I love the WSJ, and this stinks to write.  But the net net is that most news will be covered by more citizen-oriented news outlets by  citizen journalists and niches that are running around snapping Twitpics and posting to blogs.  This will mean that vastly smaller newsrooms are going to be needed to do what they do today.  Some will be needed and some are crucial.  But many will be continuing to compete with free.  Very hard to deal with.  This needs to get teed up and discussed.  Openly.

With that out of the way, now I want to explain why I think this talk is off base with respect to big media.  Brands such as the WSJ, Wired, Time, Newsweek do have a well-known problem–they’ve got a bunch of folks in a priesthood of journalism competing with their congregation of citizen bloggers, twitterers and so forth who are happily, ignobly disrupting the stuffing out of them.

Anderson’s prescription may work for them, but I’m extremely dubious.  I think that the congregation of citizens is going to disrupt all the slices of profit from the priesthood of jounralists.  While I might pay a few bucks for virtual currency on Zynga or a special hat on WeeWorld, I’m not going to pay $0.99 for an article that I can just read somewhere else.

I really think that we’re watching in journalism what we saw in the auto makers a few years ago.  We are looking at an industry that doesn’t realize its dead yet.   The business model needs far more dramatic reinvention in terms of what we’ll consume.  That debate ain’t happening though.  Instead, what we’re hearing is that the pricing model needs to go this long tail route, which is a baby step.  They’re using a pea shooter against an elephant on this.

As an example of how radical things need to get, here’s Jon Stewart talking to Katie Couric about what the TV news should do.  His ideas are closer to what I think needs to happen than working on a long-tail price model.

Jon Stewart Interviews Katie Couric

Here Stewart gives Couric all kinds of crazy suggestions–”free colonoscopy for viewers,” etc.  These get laughs, but he’s basically right.  Old media is going to need things like cage-matched talking heads debating health care pay-per-view, manage Wolf Blitzer’s as a multi-medai franchise similar to Tom Petty, and a bunch of other completely crazy ideas.

The idea that a pricing model as suggested is going to do the trick is in my mind, extremely short-sighted and likely to fail.  Media franchises will need to think radically about trying vastly new and different things, else they’ll be in the same spot GM / Chrysler are in now.

Jon Stewart’s become one of the most trusted ‘newsmen’ in the US, crazily.  His ideas on how to fix big media may make him the smartest business person too!

Filed under: business, marketing, social media, technology , Chris Anderson, jon stewart, media, Pricing

Facebook’s Vanity URLs’ impact: web-based mail will be the big loser

Image via CrunchBase

Like hundreds of thousands of others apparently, I grabbed a vanity URL On Facebook Friday night.  (I’m www.facebook.com/jay.jamison.) As it was all the rage in the geekosphere, I was aware it was happening.  As the Penguins had just won Game 7 and their 3rd Stanley Cup, I was at home, happy, and ready to jump onto Facebook and grab my URL.

The experience was no fuss and quick.  I was surprised in that sense, as I’d expected to have long queues as Facebooks servers melted with everyone trying to get their URL.  Didn’t happen–the whole thing took about 30 seconds.

So after grabbing my URL, I then finally gave some thought as to what was so important or not about these “Vanity URLs.”  Some, like Om Malik, speculate that it may take a bite out of Twitter’s growth.  I disagree with Om on this–I think the nature of the conversations and interaction in Twitter is fundamentally different than Facebook.  Having Vanity URLs might make groups of friends on FBK have more Twitter-y like conversations, I suppose.  But as a user of both services, I still see them as fundamentally different.  Facebook’s a place where I share with friends updates, thoughts, photos, etc. on a range of topics.  Twitter is in a sense more universal–it’s like a user-generated teletype news feed with people I know and those I don’t.  Vanity URLs don’t really change that for FBK, @replies won’t do all that much either, as my circle of friends already kind of do this in a klugey way in conversations on FBK.

So I don’t see this as a shot across Twitter’s bow, really.  Instead, I think this is more about making it easy for Facebook to grab and secure the next genertion of users.  What I mean here is that I expect that web-based email is going to feel the brunt of this move.  If you’re 13 say, and starting to use computers more deeply, why are you really going to need web mail now?  You aren’t.  You just grab your little Vanity URL, and you tell the world you’re www.facebook.com/your.name.  I’d think the groups more directly impacted in the short term are not Twitter, but gmail, hotmail, aol im, etc.

Filed under: Twitter, business, social media, technology , Facebook, Social Networking, Twitter, Vanity URL

My Founder’s Institute Talk on Branding & Naming Your Startup

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking as a Mentor at Adeo Ressi’s TheFunded’s Founder’s Institute with entrepreneurial superstars James Hong and Bryan Thatcher.  

First off, before I get into the topic, let me say that I think the TheFunded Founder’s Institute is innovating the approach to startups in an important way.  The approach is a mix of company building philosophies.  It’s one part bigger hammer–that is bring in lots of smart people as founders.  It’s also another part strong social networks, connect those founders to each other and to experienced, proven entrepreneurs.  Add top-tier, discounted, startup services (legal, accounting, etc.) and that gets at crux of the approach.  The new stock class—F-Class—which Ressi’s introduced is also super interesting.

There are a lot more unique details to how Ressi’s going about this, which I’ll not go into here.  But suffice to say, it is both empowering for entrepreneurs and it has a bunch of detailed thought behind it.  Ressi’s vision is big and broad.  It is exciting to be a part of, and I’m eager to help it succeed.   More concretely, I wish I had had access to such a thing when I was trying to start out as an entrepreneur.

Ok, so that’s the Founder’s Institute, now onto what I was talking about when James, Bryan and I spoke last week.  Our topic was Naming—as in, you’ve now figured out what customer problem you think you’re solving and what you want to do, now what do you call this thing?

This is a fantastically rich and interesting topic.  It’s also, IMHO, super super important.  When you’re a startup, your name is about the only marketing you really have at first.  Also, everyone—customers, potential employees, and potential investors—will ask you about your company’s name.  So whatever you name and brand your company had better be good.

My slides from the presentation are embedded here (hat tip to the folks at Igor International, who’s free naming guide was very influential):

(Shared with permission from TheFunded Founder’s Institute.)

It was a good discussion, and my sense is that this provides a useful prescription for startups thinking about what to name their company and how to approach their brands.  Some key points for reinforcement.

Having a process for naming helps.  What I think is particularly useful about this approach is that you can put numerical scores next to how you think about names.  This enables you and your team to have a concrete discussion about why someone likes versus dislikes a certain name.  This is important, as it enables your team to come to a more objective decision, as opposed to just who yells loudest.

Think BIG picture first, then worry about finding the .com or URL that’ll work. Following my talk, one common theme in speaking with people afterwards is that I think many people get hung up on the challenge of finding a good .COM URL that’s not already been picked up.  While certainly a challenge, I think that worrying about this tends to drive entrepreneurs to small thinking.  You’ll have to work through it, but that’s an end point, not the beginning.

As I’ve said in other posts—as an entrepreneur, my advice to other entrepreneurs is to think big in everything you do.  So when it comes to naming and branding your company, think big.  Go for a big name, figure out what that makes sense and helps position you strongly relative to your potential competitors.  Figure out a name that really delivers on the strategy that you’ve put in place.  Get that strategy right and solid.  Then you can go and figure out the more tactical issues of what the URL hunting strategy needs to be.

Commit to going through the process.  The other thing that I’d encourage people to do is really commit to going through the process that I’ve described in the PPT deck.  I’ve met with several companies over the past year who’ve listened to this process, ignored it, and then have ended up hiring a naming consultant to basically help them go through the same thing.

Acknowledgments to the folks at Igor International. Igor International have open sourced their naming guide, which is a great thing.  My deck basically walks through how I used that free information to secure Moonshoot, an awesome brand name, IMHO .  The tool Igor’s provided is for frugal founders like us a tool to go figure this out on our own.  Invest the time to commit to doing it.

Filed under: business, entrepreneurship, free stuff for startups, internet, marketing, technology , Branding, entrepreneurship, Founder's Institute, marketing, Naming, Start-ups, Startups

DriverSavers & Its Awesome Customer Experience

Cover of The Incredibles [UMD for PSP]

This mail is a big shout out to the Incredible folks at DriverSavers, who saved over 20K of our photos from a HD and backup regimen that went horribly wrong.  I also think that there are some terrific lessons here that any company–large or small–can take in terms of delivering a great customer experience.

The background

My wife is a serious amateur photographer.  She takes a lot of pictures that are artistic, and as we have two young children, she also takes tons of pictures of our children.  Our approach to backing these up was to use an attached HD to her mac, with a backup HD that used Apple’s Time Machine.

The problem we faced was that the HD failed slowly.  When my wife would look at photo thumbnails, they would appear to all be there.  When the HD finally failed, and we went to Time Machine, we weren’t able to find any archived copy that had the actual JPEGs of the 25K photos that it was supposed to be backing up.  Disaster time.

After a few trips to the Apple Store and elsewhere, we got pointed to DriveSavers.  DriveSavers is a data recovery service in Novato, California, that promises to deliver data from hard drives that have suffered massive failure.  They’ve apparently been involved in recovering data from drives damaged in 9/11, drives that have been in fires, underwater, etc.

From the beginning of this experience, DriveSavers approach impresses.

First call. Upon my first call to them, I was instantly connected with a real human being–no long number prompt trees.  Despite the fact that I was *desperate* to get a solution, my advisor at DriveSavers slowly and calmly asked me to walk through the situation in detail.  This works to his favor, as it lets me and my wife get out all the concern and anxiety around having lost all the photos our children.  He listened very patiently, would have let me go all afternoon, if that was going to be needed.  As he listened, he then started asking a few questions about what happened with the specific drive, how big it was, when it had failed, had we continued trying to use it after we had had it fail, etc.

After about 20 minutes, our Advisor suggested his path forward.  First off, as we only needed photos recovered, he thought we’d qualify for a price point that was roughly 40% less than their normal drive recovery.  This was a relief as this ain’t cheap.  Second, and frankly more important, he was confident that they could have excellent chances for successful retrieval.  This is what I wanted to hear.

I wanted to hang up immediately and get myself up there to hand off the disk, but he then asked that I work with him to answer some more questions, as he walked through what they woudl do with the disk and how it would work.  This turned out to be awesome–he made me understand that they do this all the time, that the disk failure I experienced was very common, etc.  Now I was in the car and ready to run stop lights to get to him to save our photos.

DriveSavers Office.

DriveSavers office in Novato has its entry wall covered with photos of celebrities who have had their drives saved by them.  The Late President Gerald Ford, Bruce Willis, Brad Bird (writer/director of Pixar’s The Incredibles), Johnny Depp, etc.  That wall dropped my blood pressure even further.

The people in their offices had the same message as our initial advisor–they’d have the disk back to us in about 5 business days, all the content they could recover put onto a brand new drive we provided.  They also gave us a phone number to call anytime–24/7–in case we wanted to check in.

Very impressive.

5 days later.

5 days later, they called me to let me know that our engineering supervisor, Bohi Nadler, had successfully signed off on a saved data set that we could pick up at our convenience. My wife drove up to pick up the photos.  We have the business cards of the specific engineer who did the work, a set of new tips on how to manage data backup and recovery at home to a stronger degree than ever before.  (We now use 2 HD backups and have all our photos on Smugmug as well.)

I love these guys, and had to share the experience a bit.

Lessons on customer service

This experience really showed me how few companies really get on it regardign customer service.  Here are some of the key tips and techniques that I think are important:

• Have someone answer the phone, and if not, then at least be super responsive.
• Let your customers vent, listen, and guide them through your solution.  This both disarmed me and gave me a sense of hope.
• Always offer a deal.  It was very smart of them to offer me 40% off for a Photos Only recovery.  I felt it was expensive, but at least not full price.  I was “saving” money.  Help your customers feel like they’re saving money, always.
• Get every human at your company to have a consistent message to your custoemrs.  Having the receptionist have the same information as the sales advisor and the engineer made a difference, I felt as though they knew who I was and were willing to help me.
• Humanize the service–they told me the name of the perrson who actually did the work.  Having a name behind the work made me feel even happier about hte experience.

I can hardly believe that a data recovery service can create such a positive feeling in their customers–part of it surely is the magic of finding what is lost that is valueable.  But I truly believe that their ability to think through the experience they want their customers to have is waht makes their business truly stnadout.  We can all learn from this, and I wanted to both share my tgratitude and my lessons.

Filed under: entrepreneurship, marketing, technology , business, customer service, marketing, technology

What I’ll watch for with MySpace: progress on bite-size chunks

Tech Crunch’s article, MySpace Is In Real Trouble If These Page View Declines Don’t Reverse, provides a sobering view of the challenge in front of MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and his newly installed exec team.

I’m going to assume that TC’s numbers are accurate, and I’m in general agreement with the conclusion—momentum is not on MySpace’s side.   This is a big task, as TC asserts, never been done successfully. 

Still, as with any big task, its important to split it up into smaller, bite sized chunks.  There are ton of things that could be focused on to read the tea leaves as to whether MySpace is making progress or not.  To make things simple, here are the 3 key bite size chunks I’ll be watching for to assess whether MySpace is making progress:

1. Execs speaking about and delivering on useful, concrete customer scenarios.  I remarked in a prior post how vague and nebulous an ex-MySpace Chairman’s Richard Rosenblatt advice was, compared with a much more concrete, user-focused entrepreneur like Joel Spolsky.  This was a bit unfair as Rosenblatt shouldn’t give concrete advice.  At the same time, when the exec team now speaks, I’ll compare their words with his.  If its as vague and general, and it doesn’t have specific concrete customer scenarios that appear appealing, then it’ll be more of the same.  Creating value for users is vital here, as with anywhere else.  Watch for this—I’d say within 45 days, there should be relatively clear statements on what customer scenarios excite the execs and what concretely they’re doing.  If its general “own the spaces MySpace can own,” blather, then I’d say that’s a big red flag.   
2. Execution.  Mr. Van Natta has assembled a strong core group of execs around him.  This is a great start.  It’ll now be interesting to watch what they deliver in terms of features, in specific timelines, relative to update cycles from Facebook, Twitter and others.  Given the inherent pressure of lost momentum, with the pressure that must be coming from News, the MySpace execs will get pulled in many different directions.  I’ll watch for what they are able to ship in specific timeframes.  If there isn’t anything substantial product-wise done by time school starts up in the fall, I’d say that this is a sign of real trouble. 
3. (Any) cultural phenomenon created, fueled and fanned on MySpace.  The page view and traffic numbers won’t turn overnight.  What does and can shift quickly is passion around some trend or phenomenon or whatever.  A band must break there, a movie must be discovered there—the thing we all are talking about must be found once on MySpace.  This has happened on MySpace in the past I think, but now, this discovery happens other places more often—FBK(the election or the 25 things phenomenon) or Twitter (Sully’s plane).  When MySpace gets mentioned at lal these days, its generally only as one of several social media services where stuff like this happens.  MySpace needs to be central to some of these experiences.  If in 6 months there hasn’t been one of these, then I’d say its a sign of continuing difficulties for MySpace. 

Filed under: social media, technology , MySpace, technology

HPs bet on touchscreens–forgot to tell us why a customer will care

I saw this article in the WSJ, talking about HP’s bet on touchscreen technology to review PC sales.  They are apparently getting these things solds in to things like airports and luxury boxes, etc., and that’s great.   We will need this technology to be mainstream and everywhere, so I’m thrilled that HP’s doing this work.  We will all want this stuff someday– I want my bathroom mirror or my desk surface to someday be a touchscreen PC that can let me scroll through email, tracking key news or whatever.  Seems a reasonable and easy thing to foresee.

The thing that this article didn’t have and what I think is limiting this technology today is  this: a scenario that a user would care about.  This was a miss in the article, from a PR point, or whatever, it’s notable that there’s not a single mention of what a customer might actually care about using the technology for.  Lesson for any marketer here–make sure taht you are pitching very hard this statement whenever you’re gettin gan article written: “here’s why a customer will care…”

It’s an interesting contrast to look at the side project that TechCrunch has been putting together on their little touchscreen web appliance thingy.  They ooze passion about the user scenario they care about–I’m sitting on a sofa and I want to surf the web with a screen.  Easy to grok, clear why customers would want it.  I’d argue strongly that this is a more approporiate use of the opportunity for press than the HP WSJ article.

Filed under: entrepreneurship, technology , HP, marketing, PR, technology

Those iPhone App Store Revenue Numbers

TechCrunch and Lightspeed Venture Partners this week worked on estimating Apple’s revenue gained from the iPhone App Store. 

The discussion struck an odd note with me for several reasons.   A far more useful analysis would be what percent of mobile (and other) application developers are building for Iphones, to the exclusion of others.  Understanding this will say a lot about APple’s continuing momentum in this space.  I am willing to bet that Apple likely has a huge number of mobile developers building for the Iphone, and where they need to make a choice, I expect they’ll likely fall in with Apple.  This is a way more important discussion than Apples’s revenue of the App Store for a few key reasons. 

First off, I’d view the strategic importance of the iPhone App platform as far higher priority to Apple than the revenue.  Don’t get me wrong, the revenue is great, but its way way way more important that Apple gets the share of the smart phone market (or whatever we’re calling it these days).  Having app developers building for your platform, because (1) lots of users use your device and (2) the developers themselves can make money will help ensure the Iphone stays competitive.  So far, Apple is basically crushing this, leaving all other mobile “app stores” in the dust. 

Second, the Lightspeed Venture post and TC’s reporting on it took an admittedly shallow view of revenue.  Lookingat pay versus free apps only on the Iphone App Store is a good proxy for now of where revenue is.  I expect it misses however the virtual currency buys that are able to be sold downstream (e.g., Zynga NLHE).   Point here is that the revenue and profit pool in the ecosystem as a whole is likely quite a bit higher than jsut the free/paid app numbers that Liew estimates. 

Third, if you buy into the first two arguments I’m making, then I think the interesting discussion here is how many developers are targeting Iphones versus other platforms?  My suspicion is that as the Iphone apps are presenting a clear route to revenue and profits for small teams of great developers, that this is ramping up quickly.  If this fact brought *zero* revenue through an app store to Apple, it would be worth it to Apple—to quote SteveB “developers, developers, developers.”  That Apple is making high margin revenue off of these Apps is of course awesome for Apple, kudos too them. 

The iPhone App numbers whatever they are, are awesome.  I’m hopeful though that we’ll soon receive good data indicating the mindshare and actions that great developers are taking in terms of which device/platforms they’re spending time writing for, as that’s the discussion that to me is most interesing

 

 

Filed under: technology, venture capital , Apple, Developer Platforms, Iphone Apps, technology

Quick take on Microsoft’s Bond Offering

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Yesterday saw Microsoft making a historic first time bond offering.  While a first for the company, the $3.75B issue is relatively small.  Indeed, it’s not like they’ll buy Yahoo or SAP with that money. 

My own take is that there’s not much to see here—rational, low-risk, imminently sensible.  (Which no matter what else anyone might say about Microsoft, it has *always* managed its finances extremely well.)  From Microsoft’s point of view, it’s cheap money, about as cheap as they can get (aside of course from continuing to pull in free cashflow at $1B/month).  With the equity markets still poor, MSFT is under $20 currently, its blue chip stock doesn’t have the same power it did.  Might as well take their long-term debt: equity ratio to roughly 0.1, roughly a quarter of ORCLs. 

I’d not be at all surprised to see MSFT announce a non-trivial buyback of stock, particularly post Office 2010 beta, and as W7 launch nears.  The message will likely be to the market and to enterprise customers that a new wave of the desktop / netbook is upon us with high quality, on time releases from Microsoft.

Filed under: business, investing, technology , Microsoft, technology

Week of 5/8/09 Tech Roundup in 15 minutes

I’m going to try something new this Friday–a mini-blog post where I time bound to 15 minutes observations, etc. on the week in tech.  Feedback welcome on whether useful. 

What a week, just to cover a few of the high points that I thought were interesting in 15 minutes:

• Amazon launched a new Kindle.  Here’s what I find so amazing, having been in software platforms for 10 years—basically everyone had declared hardware to be dead.  Now if you look at two of the 800# gorillas of technology, Apple and Amazon, the wind is at their back precisely because they built dedicated, innovative hardware.  Lesson for entrepreneurs—ignore people who pronounce stuff dead, unless their an MD.  Awesome.
• Twitter rumors hit pretty strong peak, now looks like no sale.  I admire Twitter’s approach and have come to really enjoy their product.  I love that they’re in no hurry to sell, and I’d say rightly so.  The wind is at their back and will continue to be so.
• Speaking of which, I heard someone today talk about Twitter’s 40% account drop off cliff after a month.  My answer: who cares! ?!  The glass is more than half-full—60% of their accounts stay on for more than a month.  That’s goodness!  In all seriousness, the increasingly powerful thing that Twitter does is it creates a real-time web.  Just like YouTube with user videos or with blog platforms, whatever, you have some number of creators and some number of consumers.  In Twitters case, they’ll quickly have the biggest number of creators worldwide, for a scenarios that’s useful—real-time information.  I predict that in short order we will use Twitter as a search front-end for real-time events—this applies whether I”m a Twitter account holder or not.  In this future, you don’t need everyone sticking around with their accounts.  And of course,once ore and more people use the network the draw will get increasingly strong to draw people back.
• Microsoft Windows 7 RC release, and it looks like its going to be a hit.  I predict MSFT gets a strong step forward in its momentum with the release of Windows 7.  There is enough hardware innovation in the ecosystem and the power of the software is looking great.  The public download experience was clean and simple—note there was no real outcry about this.  The buzz from even MS haters is that W7 is looking pretty good—here me now and believe me later, W7 is going to be a hit.  This will provide good wind at the back of MSFT as they take next steps on Silverlight, Azure, etc. 
• Wolfram Alpha ran the gauntlet in the press.  Geesh, you’d think that Google wasn’t just destroying the news, but that they actually at this point owned it all too.  WA did a public talk-through of their product, which got lambasted for not first showing screenshots.  Then folks reviewed it in comparison with Google a product that’s been in market for 10 years.  I’m glad RWW at least was willing to admit that WA looked like it had some benefit to real academics and so on.  This is a completely legitimate starting place, which I recall was how Google got started.  Of course, that was before they owned the news….
• The Founder’s Institute closes applications for summer session and gets a bumper crop of Mentors (present company excluded) .   Caveat: I’m involved with this, and I’m super excited about the opportunity to work with the great bunch of new founders and existing mentors to create great companies and great entrepreneurs. 
• Seesmic releases new update.  I’m running out of time.  I’d still review Tweetdeck ahead, given that I like its white text on black background more.  but I do think Seesmic does a nice job with search.  I have no idea how either plans to make any money but hey, I”m glad I got them. 
• Final thought/ Post of the week: be sure to read Seth Godin’s thoughtful post Too Much Free.  It takes 30 seconds, and its useful to any entrepreneur.  My quick input—don’t be too lazy on thinking about business model and say ‘free and we’ll figure it out later.’ I can count on 2 hands the number of companies that have succeeded in building a great company built around charging no money to anyone.  If you’re clear on two things when building a business, be clear on what problem you’re solving and be clear on how you’ll pay the bills. 

I’m out.  15 minutes. 

Filed under: entrepreneurship, technology , Founder's Institute, internet, Kindle, technology, Twitter, Windows 7

Terminator 2 and thoughts on “Are you really an Entrepreneur?”

In the second of Bernard Lunn’s very useful posts Are You Really an Entrepreneur? – ReadWriteStart, Lunn goes through 10 things to think through to assess whether you’re *really* an entrepreneur. Its useful and good, recommended reading.

In considering these questions, I’d suggest an image—that of Arnold as the the Terminator in Terminator 2.  In a way, he’s the ultimate in what you’d want to have as an entrepreneur.  Here’s what I mean:

1. The Terminator has been sent from the future to present day for the purpose of changing the course of history.  That sense of purpose is exactly as focused and driven as you want to be as an entrepreneur. 
2. The Terminator stops at nothing to pursue his goals.  Ditto that for any budding entrepreneur.
3. The Terminator takes in as much data as he can, adapts, and learns.  Throughout the movie, the Terminator in T2 shapeshifts and does generally whatever he needs to in order to stay in pursuit of his goal.
4. And finally, and most importantly, the Terminator really can’t be killed.  Of course, he’s in a movie, but this is emblematic.  This refusal to quit, the mental toughness, this is probably at core one of the biggest and most important single elements to long-term opportunities at success.   Setbacks will appear and they will hit you in the gut when you least expect it.  How you regroup and continue forward is key.  Arnold’s Terminator is an image worth remembering. 

Making a decision to head into the world of startups is a big one—Mr. Lunn’s ideas and writing is useful and efficient.  I’m hopeful that this adds a useful, vivid metaphor for some of the elements and important questions anyone needs ot ask. 

Filed under: entrepreneurship, technology , entrepreneurship