“Be so good that they can’t ignore you.” - Steve Martin

“How many years of chronic pain do you wanna take to avoid taking a year of acute pain” - Marc Andreessen

Andreessen made this statement in reference to the newspaper business during an interview with Charlie Rose. He blunty said that “you have to kill the print edition” now, take your losses, and rebuild entirely online.

How many businesses or entrepreneurs have it in them to hit reset on their cash cows or - in the worst cases - their entire business models in light of evidence that in the long run, revenue can only go south? The confidence and unwavering belief required to make a transition as great as that which Andreessen recommends for any ailing business is unimaginable, particularly if you have shareholders and external investors to answer to.

But some of today’s greatest companies faced similar realities and formed phoenix from the ash…

1) Nokia used to make rubber boots.
2) Intel used to be in the memory (ram) business until Japanese competition forced them to go the microprocessor route.
3) Nintendo used to print playing cards before they started printing money they went the videogames route.

You can’t save your way to prosperity and there’s only so much downsizing organisations can do. Will your company evolve or die?

First time I’ve ever seen this:

Anybody know what they’re working on?

“We DJs. We make happy time for 21st birthday. Phone us.”

The text above is on a poster I’ve seen at UCT. Whilst I can’t stand the “Borat-like” copy, I do admire how direct and to the point the sale is. It’s also one of the few - if not the only - sales poster I can recall at will.

Can your business achieve similar results with such little text?

What do you do: DJs
Value proposition: Happy times
Target market: People having their 21st birthdays
Call to action: Phone us

That’s it. That’s all sales has to do is communicate the value proposition of using your service/product, who your service is intended for and what those who are interested need to do next.
As sales people - as all entrepreneurs almost invariably are - we spend too much time trying to convince prospects to use our products/services such that the core purpose of a sales pitch is drowned out. Richard calls this attention spam. You should avoid it.

With media increasingly being digitally distributed, proponents have always argued that the “unlimited” shelf space is digital distribution’s greatest asset. No longer do retailers, whether it be CD, DVD, videogames and, now, even books have to be discerning about what’s on the shelf because it’s all available in the cloud.

Brick and mortars can’t completely die out… and even if they do, it appears digital distributors haven’t been able to sidestep the problem Brick and mortars had… which is to get the untested yet deservedly good stuff front and centre.

I must start this post by saying that Green Day are one of my favourite bands of all-time, possibly even the favourite. But when I saw this on their myspace page, I got kinda bummed.

Just because I’m from South Africa, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be included in the video festivities, does it? Like, why would Argentina and Chile of all places be part of the elite? Seriously, I’m asking.

Things like this should never, ever happen. Everything on the internet today is so fully accessible. Someone in either the US, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Argentina, Chile or Japan is gonna rip the video, upload it to their own site or YouTube and get hits for themselves from guys like me who have been treated like second-grade music fans. I know it’s not the band themselves, for sure, but whoever runs their online presence has pissed a few people off no doubt.

Really. Uncool.

I’m as much a part of the twitterati as any heavy net user  (follow me… follow me!) however, as an entrepreneur, their relaxed attitude towards profitability is both concerning and charming, notwithstanding somewhat awe-inspiring. I mean, what happens when VCs or big companies can/will no longer subsidize finance-hogging businesses like twitter?

That’s one question. Yet, as has been the case with Twitter since day 1, there’s still enough hype elsewhere that nobody is focusing on their finances. Case in point: Former Deputy National Security Advisor, Mark Pfeifle, says, if anybody, Twitter’s founders deserve the next Nobel Peace Prize for delaying their scheduled downtime - at the US government’s request - for more Iran specific discussions to continue.

So… wait… does this really deserve a Nobel Peace Prize? Gandhi didn’t even win the Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, Gandhi. I’m just saying. What exactly did Williams, Stone and Doherty do? Create a great communications tool? Sure. Create a popular,  service? Sure. Promote peace by delaying scheduled maintenance due to government’s request? Not so sure.

I think it would be monumental if a culturally relevant tech company’s founders won the prize. Don’t get me wrong. However, what I am questioning is whether being a “conduit” - an incidental one, at that - for peace is sufficient for receiving this prize. Notwithstanding the fact that the downtime delay was per request, not necessarily of Twitter’s own volition (and that’s not to say they wouldn’t have kept the service active for Iranian purposes, anyway. We don’t know). Is intent not a proxy for Nobel consideration?

Either the world is becoming so progressive, it’s catching even my progressive self unawares, or everybody is a bit too high on that Twitter kool-aid. Even people in government.

What do you think? The kool-aid effect or changing times?

The music business is a funny one. Basically, labels make a loss with the bulk of their artists - I’m talking majors, here. The small handful of stars each major has offsets the loss the hangers-abouts bring. Insofar as the offset is greater than the losses, the major makes a profit and all are happy. When this is not the case, no profit, no happiness.

Why this is so has been thoroughly examined elsewhere but it comes down to this: the probability of finding a huge act amongst the many somewhat talented acts is very low. So, by the law of large numbers, if enough acts are under the umbrella, someone has to cut it big.

As a result, however, given the increasing contraction of the music industry - attributable to their inability to adapt and therefore, focusing energy on the trivial? - we have a situation wherein there are way more acts than this archaic, shrinking model can sustain.

Basically, we now have a situation where there are more musicians music being produced than people can consume. Arguably, this has always been the case but the industry had been able to make money regardless, this turn of events puts forth an interesting dilemma.

Anyhow, this was a very long winded way to get to the point. Sure, the videogames business is presently doing gang-buster numbers but if the current volume of games is not curtailed notwithstanding the possibility of a future industry-wide downturn… gaming may find itself in a similar spot. It’s not as if the industries do not cross-pollinate.

Further listening: 1UP’s Listen Up  (ed: scrub to 01hr25)

Well, a cartoon, at least.