June, 2003
June 30, 2003:
Transcription:
Chicago eBusiness Year in Review: A Report
(Part 3 of 3)
Event Date:
Tues., Jan. 9, 2001
Location:
IIT's Rice Campus, 201 East Loop Road, Wheaton, Illinois
Attendance: Around 50 people
Rating:
Speakers:
-
Gary Ruderman: [Former] Editor-in-Chief,
I-Street Magazine
-
Brian Timpone, [Former] Chief Content Officer,
ePrairie
-
Ron May,
The May Report
(Speakers are listed in order of appearance)
Hosted By:
Lawrence Lerner, President
The Association of Internet Professionals (AIP) - Chicago Chapter
Story:
Part One
|
Part Two
|
Part Three
Transcript:
Part One
|
Part Two
|
Part Three
Transcribed by
Doug Elwell
Ron May
Can I interject here? First of all, I was told that I would be given 15 minutes to speak, uninterrupted.... [Laughter]
But the point that Gary is making leads into something here that I wanted to say. Last night, after the
MEF
meeting, I got beaten up by
Jerry Mitchell
and one of his buddies, who didn't tell me his name...
Ron: 'Who are you, what is your name?'
Anonymous: 'Oh, I'm "anonymous", so my name won't appear in your report.'
Here's the point Mitchell made — you know, the usual gripe about
The May Report.
There's too many people, obviously disgruntled employees, sending in anonymous
notes, complaining about the way their companies are run. His point is, 'Wait a minute, Ron, you're not doing your
homework. The entrepreneurs are not the people we should be demonizing.' He used a word that one of the people who
wrote in ... used. And his point was, 'When you give a Dave Weinstein' — now, I'm not going to pick on
Bill Lederer
or
Dave Weinstein,
just as an example, but I'll just pick them out of a hat as an example — 'you give a guy like
Weinstein who is 29 years old, no previous management experience, $24 million and then expect him to run a company,
you know, as the paragon of virtue, there's no way!'
And Jerry's point was, these entrepreneurs need a lot of guidance from seasoned people. The real culprits here are
the VCs and the other higher-levels guys who are handing this money over to, frankly, a bunch of kids in many
instances, and not giving them the proper guidance. So, you might hear something like that in The May Report.
But the point that they were making is, and I thought it was a point that goes back to ... do you go by Lawrence
or Larry?
Lawrence Lerner
Lawrence.
Ron May
Oh God.
Gary Ruderman
'Mr. Lerner.'
Ron May
If somebody's name is Debbie, and she wants to go by Deborah, that's a sure sign of trouble right there. So Lawrence —
James vs. Jim, you know. Alright, Lawrence, let me make this point. In IT, one of the things that I think moves IT forward,
and you know about this PERC charts and so forth. You don't just throw a bunch of money blindly at a problem — you have
benchmarks, you have, you know, the whole concept of project management developed in the 70s — Jiordan and Cates [sp?]
methodology and everthing else — you break it down. Now you can overdo it, but, I am curious to know how many of these
companies that get twenty, thirty, forty million dollars in venture capital, do they actually hand them a check for $30
million and say 'Here, build a company'? I mean, what kind of insanity is that? Then the company goes out and spends money
like there's no tomorrow, and then five minutes later, you know, they've got to do layoffs, because they've overspent and their
burn rate's
too high. I mean, look at
Ethnic Grocer
look at some these companies —
participate.com.
They all grew way too fast. What about applying the IT concept of, you know, project management, and you work towards certain
benchmarks in the growth of these companies. Why not dole out the money on the part of the VCs in a more limited fashion.
I guess Jerry's point is, 'Ron, when all of this baloney is over with, we still want to have some entrepreneurs left in this
town, because it's not the entrepreneurs themselves who are at fault here. It's that they are being handed a lot of money, and
not being properly managed. You're nodding your head like you agree with that.
Audience Member
Well, absolutely. I mean, working with two guys on Powerpoint presentations, where they've got six different VC firms courting
them, it's like a kid in a candy store. They're going to take the best possible terms that they can get and as much money as
they can get, and to hell with the value-based proposition and the margin of utility associated with the business that they're
trying to roll out.
Gary Ruderman
You know, another point about Y2K — Y2K was the big trough for IT consultants. Last year [1999] they said, 'Well, we're
making so much money on IT consulting, we're going to take care of that Y2K problem.' And when it didn't happen, and everything
was okay, the IT consultants that I interviewed this year grew their business 40-60%. And they were anticipating, 'Whoa, we're
going to have the same thing in 2000!'
Ron May
It was 'The Full Employment Act', and I saw this as a headhunter. Headhunting was never so good as when all that money was
being spent on Y2K. Because first of all, even if you weren't placing Y2K guys, that drained all the resources. So many
people were working on Y2K, there was a shortage of people in everything else. It was a huge boondoggle in a lot of ways,
because the companies that were making money off of this, the big consulting firms, were really charging a lot of money.
I mean, I don't know where we get off thinking that some of these kids right out of school that work at, you know, $200/hour
billing or whatever the rates are these days.
Anyway, can I talk about The Year in Review? [Laughter] Okay, so anyway, that was the whole point that Jerry was trying to make.
And, you know, I'm inclined to agree with it — I think that there is a lot of truth there, and we should really honor the
entrepreneur. And his point is, hey, these are the guys who are mortgaging their house, and these are the guys who are really
making the sacrifices. See, I think that what's happened is, 3-4 years ago, the money was relatively hard to come by, and the
VCs were the bad guys. So it was the entrepreneurs vs. the VCs. Then a lot of people were drawn into the business, and many,
many people — now I suspect it's not this group, I suspect most of you guys were employed in the industry four or five
years ago, except this guy here, he's kind of an old timer....
I printed out from 11/24/99 the Year in Review. I figured you would have to go back prior to the start of the year 2000. This was
a letter from
Darcy [Evon]
to the reporter at the
Wall Street Journal —
has anybody brought up that Wall Street Journal article today, or no? Okay. For those of you who don't remember it, does everybody
know what I'm talking about? November 22nd, I believe, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in '99, the front page of the Business section
in the Wall Street Journal had a big map of high tech in the United States. Lo and behold, 13 cities were highlighted, and
guess who wasn't on there? Chicago. We were among the five up-and-coming cities, so we could have been actually ranked as low as
18th on that list. Number 13 on the list was Pittsburgh. So, you know, kind of a blow to our collective egos that Chicago
didn't even make it as high on the high tech list as Pittsburgh. That list was based on venture capital money that had flowed in
as it was recorded in the famous
PricewaterhouseCoopers
survey. You're familiar with that. The quarterly.
Gary Ruderman
MoneyTree.
Ron May
MoneyTree. It's a quarterly report on venture capital. Anyway, everybody locally, Weinstein and myself and Thornton and so forth
got upset about this and decided to write the Wall Street Journal, etc. So Darcy wrote a letter, and I just am using this
because it happens to have a handy little list of companies. Okay, number of public Internet companies at that time.
Peapod,
FTD,
YesMail,
UBid,
now remember, YesMail and UBid were publicly traded. They've been sold to
CMGI
since then, but at that time they were.
WebStreet
[acquired
by
E*Trade],
QuoteSmith,
SpyGlass
[merged with
OpenTV] and
AllScripts.
Now, its interesting if you think about it, this is pretty much the same list that we have today. There are a few more, FTD
is still around, UBid and YesMail are out of commish, I mean, they are still in business, but they are owned by CMGI.
Click Commerce,
I think, going back to your point, is a successful business to business operation, and you mentioned, 'hard to get to know
what goes on in the company', trust me, I had the same problem with those guys. It's a little obscure, and the reason is,
and I'll just give you my theory on why
Michael Ferro
who is the CEO of Click, and people who run these types of companies are a little reluctant to talk. You know what it is?
It's that it's not a 'patent-pending' situation. In most cases, the thing that gives these companies their competitive advantage, is
business relationships. And
Mitsubishi
is one of his best clients. He doesn't want to advertise all the details of what it is he does for these companies because
he's in tight with those guys. I know from my experience as a headhunter, if you had a good client as a headhunter, and
you were tight with the managers and you built up the relationship — this applies to everybody, be it lawyers, accountants,
whoever — you're not going to hand that away. That's not something that you go out and advertise. Really, the key to your
business is the relationships you've built up with specific customers. And that really, I think, was the core behind Click.
Not to say that he doesn't have technology and the rest.
Okay, so, going through that list, now, these were companies that were
listed — that's the publicly traded list. Then, of course, we had a slew, if you recall ... of companies that then came on
board right around December of '99, filing their S1s. Let's leave
divine
out of it, but other companies —
Commerx,
Participate.com,
Digital Work,
now, Digital Work is still around, so is Participate.com. Commerx is obviously there, but has gone through a lot of changes,
and the
Stojkas
who founded it are no longer running it. But the founders of Digital Work and Participate are still there,
Alan Warms
and
Rob Schultz
at Digital Work, Alan Warms at Participate.
Who else? You had
Playboy.com
I think pull their IPO. One of the big shockers to me was
OpenPort
[closed 11/16/2000].
Randy Storch,
he'd been around since '95, and he had $28 million in funding from
CID Equity Partners.
Total funding, from all the rounds. And there were other people involved in that. And they basically closed down. Of course,
MVP
took place. See, I want to make one comment about MVP. Forget the fact that it's B2C and all that. The reality with MVP is,
what is really the core to MVP? It was a marketing play. I mean, you had
Big Edge
which was the distribution channel, right, and the delivery. Big Edge was started by
Ian Drury and
Brent Hill,
who were formerly
Andersen Consulting
guys, and in fact one of them I think was making $750,000, and gave up a job at Andersen in order to start the company.
They raised $3 million in angel money, and really seemed to have a tremendous future. Then, along comes this MVP thing,
and it just goes to pot. I don't know why, really, frankly. I mean, I don't understand what happened there. But they had
that $62 million deal with
CBS Sportsline....
Brian Timpone
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why it didn't succeed. I coach a Little League team, and I had to buy shoes for
all 18 of my players. I had to go to 10 different places to buy, I think it was eight different sizes. MVP doesn't sell shoes.
They don't sell anything.
Ron May
Well, what did they sell?
Brian Timpone
They sell themselves.
Gary Ruderman
The point that Brian made, [if I may]....
Brian Timpone
Yeah, shoot.
Gary Ruderman
... First, of all, they got three times more space for their office than they needed. They didn't take a sublet, they were
offered a sublet for the same amount of space. They wanted new, and they built out. So where did their venture money go?
It went to their rent. They paid 3-5 years up front for their rent. They paid a portion of every sale to their rent. They
got a lot of nice digs for their rent. They hired a lot of people for customer service, but they didn't have the sales.
So what did they do? They opened a sporting goods store, and they thought that they were going to get by with about a
6 percent gross margin. Well, retail today, you need about 30 percent gross margin in retail to get by! Except for grocery
stores, and they get by on about 3 percent, and I don't understand that. So, you're running an Internet company on a very small
gross margin, extremely high overhead, and people are not having successful buying experiences on your site. Why should you
survive?
Brian Timpone
The bigger picture is that all those ideas — those B2C ideas — aren't ready to survive. I mean, the real ideas for,
you know, for selling sporting goods online, I mean, why, I buy all kinds of sporting goods all year. I go to
Play It Again Sports
... I needed a thing today, you know.
My kid broke a bat, I had to go get another bat. They stole the balls, I've got to go get 20 balls. I don't have time to wait
2 weeks for MVP to send it. And that's a common experience for parents. You know, their kid wants this, and they're going
to go get it.
Ron May
I want to throw one point in and then follow on to Gary's point about excessive money spent on rent. I had a big argument on
this with Bill Lederer vis-a-vis
Blue Meteor,
because one of the complaints I had heard when the people inside the company started calling me to complain was, 'Gee, do you
see the kind of money they are spending on the office space?' And when I brought this up to Lederer, his point was, 'Oh, but you
need that kind of really nice space to attract the "top talent" ... have you been over to there? Oh, unbelievable. It's beautiful.
Now, there was some question as to who is really paying for this, is it the incubator running the building, what have you, but, irrelevant. The point is, this is a really nice office — this is top of the line — do you really need that in order to
attract the talent? There are a lot of people who operate on that theory. And this is sort of the 'Do It Big' approach that a lot
of these companies are having.
That
Ethnic Grocer
deal. Now I don't have this in writing from anybody, but if I'm understanding
correctly, the help that the city was offering to provide never did materialize. You know about what we're talking about there,
that Ethnic Grocer was bailed out? But again, that's another case where big venture capital money —
Kleiner-Perkins
put money in, and they had an expensive rent scenario — I don't know if that has been part of the problem.
Let me just go through a few more companies on this list ... from the end of November '99.
PocketCard.
Now there's a company frankly that, you know, on the face of it, one is seriously going to have to answer the question,
'Why is that company getting funded?' You know, does everybody know what they do?
Brian Timpone
No.
Gary Ruderman
'Stored-value' credit card.
Lawrence Lerner
... you can control how the spending is done, and what your kids do, you can give it to your kids....
Audience Member
...you can give it to an employee and say, 'Here's $1,000' for [whatever].
Lawrence Lerner
The problem is, we've been calling them 'procurement cards' in the industry for about ten years or so.
Ron May
Okay, let me ask you ... see, this is where my business knowledge ... I'm no MBA, okay. Why, here's the logical question
that I would have. Why is it that a little, dinky company like that, funded with $15 million, could really be a player in
that industry if, let's say
VISA
or whoever else wants to get into that market could just [claps] you know, squash them. Is there an answer to that question?
Audience Member
That happens all the time. Small people come in and because they are not, you know, labored in bureaucracy or things like that and
they go and they grab market share from companies that are established....
Lawrence Lerner
When I worked for Follett, we built....
Audience Member
That's what last year's economy was about — it was about starting up a small business to get sold. That's all it was about.
Gary Ruderman
Or an idea.
Ron May
[Speaking to Lawrence Lerner]: You work for Follett?
Lawrence Lerner
[Not any more.]
Ron May
Oh, okay. Well, now, how are they doing?
Lawrence Lerner
I don't know how they're doing today. The point I am making is that we built something very similar to PocketCard for a very
niche market called the campus market.
Ron May
Right.
Lawrence Lerner
And in fact what happened was, the college campuses private-labeled it. And down at
SMSU
they called it "Bear Bonds", right. You could take a rules-based system ... you know, they were like a student I.D. card. And
you couldn't buy beer with it, but you could take care of your guaranteed student loan and all that kind of good stuff, and buy
your books and pay your rent, and the other things you were supposed to do in this niche market. And we went to
MasterCard and VISA
to kind of learn from them and say, you know, 'What do you think?' And they said at the time, and this was a number of years ago,
that it wasn't a big deal for them. That they weren't that interested. Now, PocketCard, they are really with VISA. They are
putting something on top of the VISA card.
Gary Ruderman
But, what PocketCard had was a technology, not a company. And I've heard a lot — and I may be wrong — but I've heard a
lot of startup presentations to VCs, to angel groups, and what I've heard more and more and more from the angels was this was
a technology — this was not a company. Look, I've never built a big company. I've freelanced for eight years. I've fed my
family and bought a house and all the other crap. But I've never built a big company. So for me to be a critic, is, I don't know....
Ron May
Okay, let me just run through this list fairly quickly, and if there are any companies here that you guys are curious about,
this is sort of a memory jog, because we are talking about the Year in Review, okay? So we covered the IPO companies —
by the way, I think AllScripts is doing okay, among the companies Darcy mentioned. Now, some of the others she mentioned, and these were divine companies,
Whiplash,
which to my knowledge is pretty much out of business,
Opinionware,
I think they're still around.
Sho Research,
Live On The Net,
those two are out, I believe. [Editor's Note:
http://www.liveonthenet.com is still up and running as of 6/30/03.]
Gary Ruderman
Live on the Net is now....
Ron May
They changed their name?
Gary Ruderman
Yeah, they changed their name.
Ron May
Okay.
BeautyJungle's out of business. That's a whole separate discussion. But let's talk about these companies that got some big money, and this was all
before the end of the year in '99.
Our House.
Now, you know the story of Our House, right?
Phil Harry,
who had been with, I think
Boston Consulting Group,
was working for
Ace Hardware,
said to them repeatedly 'Look, you ought to get involved in the Internet.' They said, 'No.' What he did was he went off and
started his own company and then came back to them and said, 'Okay, how about backing it?' Our House is still there.
Now, I know they have problems. And by the way, one of the few articles that I actually thought you guys ... well ... one
of the few articles I've read that you've written, so that's fair, first of all, full disclosure. And secondly, after people
started complaining about Our House in The May Report, you actually went out and interviewed people, and I know you
found out some things about the way they dealt with their suppliers, and so forth, right? Okay, and, so, they're having
some problems there, but they're still around.
CoolSavings, as you guys know, did go public.
Stock
hasn't done particularly well, but they've been around a while.
Starbelly,
we know what happened there,
the HALO [deal].
DigitalWork, okay, still around, Participate, Click[Commerce] we talked ... ah, here's one:
TheSauce.com.
Now,
Peer Munck,
the founder, just stepped down recently, and they've had some cutbacks, but they're still in business. They're in the
restaurant supply business.
Gary Ruderman
Not here, not here. They're not in business here. They're in L.A.
Ron May
The Sauce? I thought they have an office here.
Gary Ruderman
They have the office here, but they don't have any business here.
Ron May
Oh, they have no business here. I see. Okay, okay.
Archipelago,
let's not get into that, that's complicated, that's an
ECN. You know
what they are?
You can do trading like
Instinet.
Ethnic Grocer, we all know about them. Now, these companies are smaller companies who are just getting funded, some are still
around, some are not. Trafficcop.com, they changed their name to
IlinkGlobal,
they're still in the portfolio of
Blair New World,
which also funded
eppraisals.
Perceptual Robotics. You know about those guys, they've been around a fairly long time.
Gary Ruderman
Five years.
Gary Ruderman
Five years, they're still there. But you know what, now see, hang on a sec. Here's an interesting question. Perceptual
Robotics is an example of a company that in a way is waiting for the market to catch up with the technology. They've
got an interesting — you know what they do, right?
Audience Member
Not everybody does.
Gary Ruderman
They do refreshed
jpegs.
DE [In the Audience]
Webcams.
Brian Timpone
They took cameras, and
you can watch [things] on the Internet.
Ron May
Now in theory, when broadband takes off, won't Perceptual Robotics be right in the sweet spot of the market? No?
Gary Ruderman
No, because they are not doing
'streaming'.
Ron May
Okay. They're already behind?
Brian Timpone
I've watched the
White Sox
, they have [had] a camera on
Comiskey Park,
and I watch it sometimes, and they are putting the tarps on on their off days.... [Laughter]
Gary Ruderman
Or you can go to the
car dealership....
Brian Timpone
They have one at
Lincoln Park Zoo
on, like on the polar bear....
Ron May
So wait, I want to be clear about this. You're saying Perceptual Robotics' technology is already behind the times, and there
won't just be this big, exponential growth curve when the market catches up, when everybody goes to broadband.
Lawrence Lerner
[That] technology is being replaced already with the streaming stuff.
Ron May
So why don't they make the transition into that?
Audience Member
They probably can't easily with all the cameras there [already in place]....
Lawrence Lerner
... I think they're a little craftier than you may think.
Ron May
Oh, I'm not suggesting that they aren't.
Audience Member
Well, Ron, I'd like to go back to the point that Brian had made earlier is that, even if they have the technology, what's
their value proposition to drive profits — their bottom line — in association to what they're delivering? I mean if a
picture is — even if it is streaming video over broadband — if it's a picture of Comiskey Park being covered up, what value
is that to anybody?
Gary Ruderman
The value there is for a government or a corporation — an oil company — to have one of their cameras at an installation to
monitor a valve or something like that on a monthly basis. You have another company called
Forest One,
Forest One is a company that basically uses satellite technology, and on-the-ground technology, to find out the value of a
stand of timber.
Audience Member
But how is their value proposition different than people that are doing it via conventional closed-circuit TV means today?
Brian Timpone
It's a great question. And we don't know, and I hope that they know.
Ron May
Okay, but, right, that is one ... Gary's absolutely correct. It's not all the glitz and glitter of the
NBA,
a lot of their applications as initially proposed had to do with monitoring quality control on the assembly line,
manufacturing, that sort of thing. Then, initially,
Paul Cooper
also mentioned you know, the whole, 'watch the babysitter' idea, you know, or, 'watch your kids at home' thing. You know,
I don't know whether they are really getting into that market, I don't think they are....
Lawrence Lerner
Fundamentally, what you are taking about is a technology. And this is one of the instances where Internet technology lets you
do it better, faster, cheaper. That is a business model that works, because, you don't need to put an expensive satellite up
there. If you can link it to something that already exists, and you have a camera somewhere ... oil rigs is a very good
example. Turn an existing satellite uplink there, and you can do that. If you need an expensive satellite that sits up there
watching it, well, not any more. That's one example.... I'd like to get some wrapup comments from our three speakers about the year....
Ron May
Just for the sake of saying that I finished this, could I just read the rest of this list? Perceptual Robotics,
iGive,
a charity company still around, but struggling,
digitalschoolhouse.com
I don't know what's happened to them, I don't even think I know what happened to them to begin with.
Zack's
PCQuote,
another company that was supposed to public [but] didn't,
britannica.com,
here's one that's doing well —
businesslogic.com,
but I really don't think that their business is an Internet business. Here's one that I think everybody is watching,
Telenisus,
which got about $50 million, and
supposedly is doing pretty well.
VCapital.com,
we all know sort of what the deal is there. That company defies logic.
Lawrence Lerner
Wrap up the year for us in one sentence.
Ron May
In one sentence: You had an extreme form, at least for modern times, of the business cycle, perhaps parallel to the auto
industry in the twenties, where you had a huge
tsunami,
what I always spell
't-s-u-n-a-m-i'
[laughs] of venture capital activity from the third quarter of '99 through, let's say, the end of the first quarter of 2000, and we are now sort of in the other side of that with this retrenchment, but there will be, I
think, a lot of survivors in this, even though a fair number of companies won't survive, and I think the thing we shouldn't
lose sight of here in Chicago, since we're late in getting into the game, and we're behind the curve, is the historical
perspective. Let's not forget that we're all going to be here a year from now, two years from now, and we need to think just
simply in terms of a longer-term strategy of where we want to be, not get caught up in the excitement of the moment so much. And that could apply to The May Report too.... [laughter]
Brian Timpone
You guys are technologists, or you cast yourself as technologists, and consultants, and you should learn how to communicate
better with the people who understand the business or who are doing sales. That's how this is all going to work. Technology
is alright, but good technology is just ... there's just no communication. And once people communicate, I think we'll see something, but it could be a few years away before it will happen. We've seen this over and over again in business technology
and business history.
Gary Ruderman
If you're not currently in a company where people scream and yell and hoot a lot during the day, then you're probably not in a
fun company. Get into a fun company, have a lot of fun, because it's going be a little ugly this year. Last year was manic
depression. Everything was great. When I walked into it, and it was 'Wow, this is the hottest thing in the world — you're
going to be rich!' And then, come the end of December, it was, you know, kind of a quiet, 'Who's going to get laid off tomorrow'
deal. So, it was manic depression. What is the drug for manic depression? I don't know. It's not venture capital.... [laughter]
So, as far as 2001 is concerned, I think it's going to be a good year. I think there is a recession in the dot-com space, and
the way to come out of that is to retrench. I think that VCs are going to come back in as the year goes on, I don't see them
in the first quarter. As I said before, I don't see any sector in the first quarter that is in VC favor maybe other than
telecom. And Telecom needs so much damn money, that no one else will be funded. My problem with last year was that because of
all the greed, and I'll use the 'g' word, that there are a lot of small companies, and a lot of entrepreneurs in Chicago that
will be overlooked, because everybody pulled back all their money, and so these little companies that had good ideas will be
overlooked. And I think that's a shame. And that's one of the consequences of greed, and there was some last year.
Please don't think that we're behind the curve — I have to differ with you just slightly — Chicago is Chicago. If Chicago
compares itself to the East Coast, or to the West Coast, it will lose. I think we have a really good place to be, I enjoy
it here, and I do love shoveling snow.
Ron May
Okay, but Gary, hang on. Just as your point that we're behind the curve, I meant in relation to other areas in the country,
then your term recession is also really an inappropriate term, because you have to have some benchmark of what you are
comparing it to. If you want to ask the question, are there more people employed in the Internet world today in Chicago
versus 24 months ago, the answer is clearly ... far more today than 24 months ago. I would not trade the position today,
with the position of the beginning of, let's say, 1999 or late '98. Late '98, the only deal that really was done in the
Chicago market, at that point, I remembered because I wrote about it:
art.com
got $10 million. We have 70 companies or more that have gotten more than $10 million, and in some cases, up to $100 million to $200 million.
Transora,
and Archipelago, and so forth and so on,
LookingGlass,
that was something. There's no way to compare the situation 2-2.5 years
ago to today. So, if we want to say 'recession', we really have to say how are we defining that, relative to what?
Gary Ruderman
Well the Internet is a lot faster than the rest of the world, you know, Internet time is compressed time, so ... things aren't
good right now, you know, we're in a recession. It's here today, gone later today. I don't know — that's Internet time....
[Meeting ends]
Story:
Part One
|
Part Two
|
Part Three
Transcript:
Part One
|
Part Two
|
Part Three
Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand
David F. D'Alessandro
Rating:
Powerful lessons on how to build and sustain your own "killer brand".
Creating and sustaining a good brand is the most complex and perilous task any business will ever face, yet nothing is as misunderstood. Under the direction of marketing wizard David D'Alessandro, John Hancock transformed itself from a sleepy old life insurer into a leading financial services giant, with a sustained 20% annual rate of growth. In Brand Warfare, D'Alessandro draws on his personal experience as a brand-builder and examples from America's smartest and most foolish corporations, developing principles that you can use in any market. At the same time, he creates an entertaining picture of the marketing business with anecdotes that convey a keen sense of the absurdities of corporate life, balanced by a tremendous respect for the consumer.
This tough-minded, funny, and refreshingly candid book gives you a proven roadmap for marketing success as you learn:
Why every business needs a good brand to compete
Why consumers need good brands as much as good brands need them
Why sycophancy from the agency and meddling from inside the company will sink your campaign every time
About sponsorship: how to avoid being taken, and how to make the investment pay for your brand
Why it's as important to market your brand to your employees as it is to your customers
Why every business decision should be filtered through the prism of the brand
Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices
Christopher Locke
Rating:
The coauthor of the no-more-business-as-usual blockbuster
The Cluetrain Manifesto — which basically told Net-age marketers to stop talking at their markets and start conversing with them — follows up with a book that's more a highly entertaining, nimbly erudite screed against our current mass-market, mass-media culture than it is a recipe book for e-commerce marketing success in the post-cyberboom era. Writing in a paler imitation of the profanely irreverent, freely associative "gonzo" journalism style pioneered by his obvious idol
Hunter S. Thompson,
Locke starts with the by-now-familiar idea that old-style mass-marketing "broadcast" advertising just won't work on the Web. Indeed, he says, conventional print-ad tactics as embodied online by banners and pop-ups might actually generate more ill will than sales, and that's why companies must use the Web to somehow enjoin their products and services to the quirky niche interests of the gazillion individual cybercommunities (or "micromarkets") whose greatest advantage for marketers is how freely and speedily their members talk among themselves, touting a brand when and if it's truly deserved.
The Virtue of Prosperity:
Finding Values In An Age Of Techno-Affluence
Dinesh D'Souza
Rating:
In The Virtue of Prosperity, former White House policy analyst Dinesh D'Souza offers the first
in-depth analysis of the spiritual and social crisis that has been spawned by the New Economy and
new technologies.
The chief problem societies have faced "since the time of the Babylonians," writes Dinesh D'Souza,
has been the problem of scarcity. "But now that age has passed, and America has a new problem: coping
with prosperity." It's a good problem to have, but also a serious, even debilitating, one. "The moral
conundrum of success," the author continues, means that all too often, "the body is flourishing, but
somehow the soul still feels malnourished." D'Souza is well known for his bestselling conservative
books
Illiberal Education,
The End of Racism,
and
Ronald Reagan.
On these pages, however, he seems to
set politics aside to ask deep questions about the meaning of life in a world of material abundance.
(Review by Amazon.com)
The Monk and the Riddle:
The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur
Randy Komisar, Kent L. Lineback (Contributor)
Rating:
Prospective entrepreneurs may think they know everything there is to know about starting a business in Silicon Valley. They can draw up business plans, have meetings with venture capitalists, maybe even get funded and actually launch a start-up. However, in The Monk and the Riddle, Silicon Valley sage Randy Komisar reasons that's only half the equation for success. And it may not be the important half. Komisar has worked with a number of companies — Apple, LucasArts Entertainment (the gaming division of George Lucas's empire), and WebTV among them — and has come to a rather startling conclusion: if you can't see yourself doing this business for the rest of your life, don't start it. In other words, he wants to see passion and purpose in business, not just spreadsheets and a by-the-numbers business model.
To illustrate, Komisar takes the reader through a hypothetical Silicon Valley start-up, with an eager entrepreneur named Lenny trying to get funding for an online casket-selling business. As Komisar helps Lenny find the real purpose of the business, the passion behind the revenue projections, he reflects back on his life as an entrepreneur. Komisar emerges as a master storyteller, the kind of guy you'd feel honored to share a bottle of wine with. And you believe his conclusion: "When all is said and done, the journey is the reward." It's great if you've made billions on the journey, but the important thing is that you do something you can truly throw yourself into.
(Review by Amazon.com)
Burn Rate
Michael Wolff
Journalist Michael Wolff is a recognized pioneer in the business of cyberspace, meaning he has been developing products and services for the online world since the dark ages of 1994. During the intervening years, however, not all the activities he engaged in, nor all the people he dealt with, left a pleasant taste in his mouth - although, to be sure, his cumulative adventures certainly have been very lucrative.
In Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, Wolff pulls few punches as he candidly and methodically recounts the single steps forward and multiple steps back that marked his experiences while trying to transform a fledgling print media enterprise into a towering New Media colossus. After developing a series of
"NetGuide"
books that proved hugely successful, he attempted to transfer the concept to a variety of online offshoots and in so doing connected with
Wired
magazine, Time-Warner's Pathfinder, the late Robert Maxwell's media empire,
AOL
, assorted venture capitalists, sundry competitors, and numerous would-be partners. Burn Rate is a fascinating tale
that might best be characterized by the old adage that warns us to "be careful what we wish for, for we just might get it."
(Review by Amazon.com)
Disclaimer: Doug Elwell, Inc. will not post any items that have a rating of less than "Good", unless
otherwise noted. Items without ratings have not been directly reviewed by DEI staff.
DEI's online Shop is provided for the convenience of our customers; all complaints dealing with product
quality, price, delivery, and all other Amazon.com-specific questions should be directed to
Amazon.com. Doug Elwell, Inc. assumes no responsibility for any problems with any order.
Caution: Please take care whenever you install software on your computer. When in doubt, consult a professional before installing.
Doug Elwell, Inc. is not liable for any problems that may result from the installation of any software linked to from our Shop
section, or from any of our properties.
|
|
|
