Frequent thinker, occasional writer, constant smart-arse

Tag: entrepreneur (Page 1 of 2)

Why entrepreneurs need to say “fuck you”

One of the StartupBus teams this year was interviewed by Y-combinator. They were turned down. Why? According to the team, it was because they were not a billion dollar company. This is something I’ve warned StartupBus teams before when they pitch investors so it doesn’t surprise me. But there’s a lesson here that I hope all entrepreneurs understand.

Professional investors are in the game to make money. Their motivation is to generate a multiple on the fund they have raised.

Why is that a problem you may ask?

Well, who cares if a company makes a billion dollars? Apparently from sounding cool that you built something like that up, as a founder, you will be so diluted through multiple rounds of funding that you will probably have a 5- 30% equity stake in the business, depending on how capital intensive the business is and how many co-founders you have.

A VC however, not only makes money on a billion dollar exit, but they get to brag about it to limited partners and to attract new entrepreneurs, which helps them raise new funds and get new deals. The way it works in venture capital is that it is all about the brand and communicating your successes. Any investor that doesn’t admit to not knowing what they are doing are full of shit. Because billion dollar exits come in two forms: entrepreneurs who successfully played a game to  take advantage of the current market (ie, an acquisition today that had it not happened may not have become a sustainable business) or fundamentally disruptive businesses that no one saw coming. I can think of many examples of the above, but I’ll hold back as my knowledge of various companies are not mean to be public  — however, all that matters is the point that billion dollar exits are either due to a confluence of market factors or a fundamentally disruptive business model. You can’t predict for that. Which is why the safest strategy, as an investor, is to back a proven entrepreneur who knows how to make opportunities like that happen.

While investors look for the 15 deals that generates 96% of the returns in a year, let’s bring this back to the entrepreneur only making $300m. Put another way, a billion dollar business is more like a $300m business for you financially speaking (assuming you have 30% of the entity, a best case scenario). But if you are a $300m business pitching a VC, you probably won’t meet the investors cost of capital (ie, their fund is $300m+) and so therefore they don’t get the returns to justify their capital. Putting that into context, a billion dollar startup that a founder has a 30% equity stake in and a $333m startup that a founder has a 90% equity stake in — is, financially speaking, the same. And what I mean by that, is the people who will make that “billion” dollars (the founders) will need to work three times harder for the same return…meaning by raising financing, the market problem that needs to be serviced needs to be three timeS bigger so that people sitting in the backseat (the investors) make just as much money out of it.

Which means absolutely nothing about the problem you are solving in the world. The fact the entire silicon valley ecosystem is influenced by the investor industry, at a time when the costs of doing a startup have dropped dramatically — is a misalignment that will change one day.

If an investor says your business isn’t biggest enough, it means 20% of your hard work isn’t high enough to meet their capital hurdle of providing a certain return to their limited partners which will impact the investors future fundraising. And sadly, this fact is lost on a lot of entrepreneurs who feel they need a sense of validation despite having identified a real market problem. Which ironically, I think is what separates the true disruptive entrepreneurs from the rest. They are the ones that say “fuck you, I’m going to make this work”. And they end up disapproving the assumptions the investors falsely asserted when rejecting the teams’ vision because fundamentally disruptive businesses are never obvious from the outset.

What the startup visa should really look like

US immigration is a subject that all foreign entrepreneurs in the United States have lost quite a bit of sleep over. Over the years, I’ve spent days researching, talking to lawyers, listening to stories of survival — and despite solving my own situation, it’s still to this day something that sits at the back of my mind as I’m constantly counseling entrepreneurs with their own situations. The reason this is so hard is because  the only way I could be an entrepreneur in the US (in the mould I wanted, which is a bootstrapping one), I needed to work for a US corporation and at night build my businesses: which is exactly what I did and how I did it (two years in the making). Its taken three years to get to a point where I can now focus on what inspired me to move to America: to build a big, global enterprise.

The entire startup visa movement frustrates me because it’s dependent on raising funding: I believe the best businesses bootstrap and raise funding when they actually need it. Hopefully this post can lead to a more productive dialogue in government policy, coming from someone that directly is impacted by all these discussions.

The options
The US visa system has a few categories that entrepreneur’s can “hack” to make them legal.

  • H1B: this is the standard work visa that foreigner’s go on, with several variants like the E3 visa (which Australian’s uniquely get). Of the H1B’s, about 65,000 new visa’s are issued every year and most of the people that have them work for big corporations. To satisfy the requirements of the visa, you need to file a petition which means three separate advertisements go out in newspapers allowing American citizen’s to apply for the job — only if no one applies and accepted that the petition satisfied.
  • O1: awarded to individuals with extraordinary ability.
  • L1: Individuals who are executives, managers or staff of a US affiliate (ie, a multinational).
  • E1 and E2: A treaty visa only available to a few countries (ie, the next in line  E3 mentioned above was due to the US-Australia free trade agreement), and which are the trader and investor visa respectively. With the E2, the rule of thumb is if you bring in about 100k of capital into the country…however, it’s more complicated than that. It’s the closest thing to a entrepreneur’s visa, but it has some difficult hurdles.
  • EB-5: This is a greencard (or permanent resident) which is probably the best type of visa for an entrepreneur as it gives them complete freedom. The catch? You need to bring $1 million into the country first.

Pretty much all the above employment-based visa’s (H1B, E3, L1) require three things. The first is that the foreigner needs to be paid above the prevailing wage for similar employees in that occupation and city. (The thinking here is that a foreigner needs to be paid more than local’s, so that firms are not motivated to hire cheap labour to the disadvantage of US citizens.)

The second is that the person satisfies educational and work experience. You need to have a US equivalent undergraduate degree or 12 years work experience (a year in college is calculcated as three’s in the workforce for every year of study) in the field you are working in. Actually, the L1 is exempt from this, which is why it’s the main alternative for people without degrees…though it comes with the challenge  of an existing business in your home country that’s been operating for over a year.

The third is that a US firm is “sponsoring” you. Basically, what this means is you have a job offer.

This all sounds reasonable. right? The US should get to cherry pick well educated foreigner’s working at companies that have a real need and which won’t disadvantage  US citizens. Yes, it should — but when you get into the details, this is when this system falls apart.

Problems with the visas
Did you know a fashion model can easily get a O1 if she has appeared in a few print magazines, but an entrepreneur has to basically have won a noble prize? I could write a book about the issues each of the above visa’s have, but I want to keep this post light as it’s a complicated subject.

The first big issue, is that the entire visa system biases established large corporations. To explain this point, I can share with you how hard it is to be a foreign startup employee by the simple requirement of being “sponsored”, which means you need to have a job waiting for you. If you’ve ever applied for a job, you’ll appreciate it’s not that easy…and if you live in another country, I can assure you, finding these jobs is even harder. Multi-nationals have professional departments where they can talk to overseas colleagues and get recommendations, but if you’re applying to work at a startup in the US you’re starting from scratch with the added communication barrier. You’ve basically got to come on “holiday” to the US and prove yourself in what is a cliquey community, so that a startup will hire you.

So why does it matter that the visa system biases the large corporation? Because startups breed startups themselves and are the best training ground for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Startups are not like normal businesses and founders are more selective about the people they hire, given how much risk there is. The extra effort of hiring someone from overseas (relocation costs, lawyer costs on visa’s, etc) only to find they are a dud, means it’s a bigger commitment to take on a foreigner. Again why is this relevant? Because making the visa process easier for startup employees, will indirectly lead to a lot more startups as foreigners tend to be a lot hungrier and research has shown a lot more entrepreneurial.

The second big issue is that you need to be paid a salary if you are to employ yourself in your business. Why is that a bad thing? Because it means I need to hire one less person. To work fulltime on my projects which have become two operationally independent businesses, I need to pay myself above the prevailing wage, which means I have to hire one less person that probably would free my time to grow the business.

The third issue is that it’s not practical. The E2 visa for example was designed for an industrial age, where you would take leases out on offices and invest money in capital expenditure on a store front. (In the information economy, the biggest expense are employees.) More problematic with the E2, is that you need to have an *already existing* business in the US, and of the $100,000 you need to invest in the economy (it’s more complicated than that, but it’s a good standard number), you need to have already *committed* to spending the cash. To rephrase this, you need to have already signed a lease to an office (which you can’t do without a credit history and operating history), spent a bunch of money, and THEN you will be eligible to get the visa. It’s a domino effect here, like the fact you can’t get  a social security number without a visa, which means you can’t open a bank account, which means you can’t get US customers to pay you. And what business man would sign a 12 months lease during their three month “holiday” to show a commitment of funds, when they don’t even have the assurance they can let back into the country?

The fourth issue is that it limits the types of people that are eligible. I used to have a portfolio company (a dozen employees, over a million dollars in capital raised) that couldn’t keep their 19 year co-founder in the country and who’s making headlines in Silicon Valley with his work, simply because he doesn’t have a degree (and so it invalidates that important test for an employment visa). This makes perfect sense for employees who are resources to grow something, but for entrepreneurs that start something? They are the rebels. The college drop out mythology of Silicon Valley where companies like Dell, Facebook, and other household names led to the creation of billion dollar businesses is incompatible with the fact foreign entrepreneurs need to have a degree.

A solution
The reason visa law is such a problematic area is because US citizen’s view foreigner’s as stealing jobs, who in turn vote out politicians who are seen as not creating jobs for them. It also creates a risk where a new liability gets brought into the country, as residents can claim their share of social security which is already bankrupt. I totally understand that.

However, this is where there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the threat of foreigner’s and what they need. Using me as proof, this year, I’ve had three American citizens on my payroll and I plan to increase that as my cashflow grows. When it comes to entrepreneurs, all we really want is the freedom to operate in the United States. I quite happily will pay taxes and not get any rights to pensions, so long as I have the freedom to live in the US and start my businesses. What entrepreneur’s need is a self-employment visa, where they don’t need anything but themselves and time to create the value they are motivated by.

It really is simple to solve this: give entrepreneurs freedom to travel in the United States, to get into agreements, and to interact with the US economy. Require them to check in every so often to prove they are not secretly working at Burger King and using that money to party in Vegas. Restrict any rights to benefits (like social security) and have them pay taxes.  And allow them to graduate into new visa’s (like a greencard) once certain milestones have been hit like revenue thresholds (tax paid) and employment (aggregate demand in the economy increases).

Immigration is so complicated that its taken me 1800 words to write this and I have only skirted the issues. But the solution is honestly simple: enable foreigner’s to generate wealth and jobs by removing the roadblocks. Give them freedom to operate, that’s it.

We no longer live in an isolated world and the freedom of the labor force to move around the world is one of the great benefits of globalisation. If the US can recognise that, it will remain the land of opportunity attracting the world’s best to continue America’s status in the world economy. But until then, I’m going to continue watching the sorry state of the US economy by politicians who are left with no option on how to get out of this mess and shutting the door on the very people who can help save America.

The long term emotional mind

Last night I was at a dinner on a long table of accomplished entrepreneurs and some investors, having an open discussion about entrepreneurship with the guest of honour Kevin Rose. Among many discussion points, the question was asked to the table: what traits do you look for in a founder?

Before we get to that, let’s start with what does it actually mean to be an entrepreneur? Well, quite simply someone who organises resources to create a product that customers pay for. A lot of people have enterprising personalities and so could fall under this definition, but a successful entrepreneur in my eyes is someone who is able to make an income from a product they created (whether from cash flow or from investment). How much income, well that’s a personal question but the point is you’re making money because of you.

But what is it, from a DNA point of view, that makes someone a successful entrepreneur? Someone who takes on “risk”? Someone who is a generalist in their skills? Good at delegation? Yes and no: these are descriptive traits that don’t define the entrepreneur. I think there are actually two things that makes someone a successful entrepreneur, and both these points I learned by one of the most successful entrepreneur’s I know, Steve Outrim.

The first is thinking long term. At a table with people like Gower Smith, Sam Morgan, and several other accomplished people I’ve come to respect — Outrim asked the question on what was the single most important trait in success and he identified the ability to think long term as the key to his success, which everyone nodded in agreement.

The second nugget of wisdom, was shared earlier this year by Outrim at a house warming party to a few of us and he was insistent that was understood him. He pointed to his head: it’s the ability to not let anything affect you mentally. It was a point that took me some reflection to truly appreciate the implications of what he meant.

Think about that. Even if you don’t have your own business, let me help you relate.

On thinking long term, what do you plan to do with your life? For some of us, that freaks us out and for others we have a meticulous plan on what. Entrepreneurs think about their company and 10 years from now. A long term vision, with assumptions that need to get validated, which translate into activities today to enable those assumptions.

The emotional mind, is a tougher one to explain but something all true entrepreneurs will relate to more. As a point of comparison, imagine you are in a relationship and you have your heart broken: most of us have experienced that at some stage in our life. It’s horrible and like a gas that infects your thoughts that you can’t control. Likewise, the feeling of being in love (if you’ve truly experienced it) can uplift you in ways that words cannot explain. Both those highs and lows reflect your emotional self, what all normal human beings experience. Let’s call them “intense” thoughts.

For the entreprener, that experience happens on a daily basis: you start the day with your heart broken and you end the day on a high. Imagine going through intense thoughts every day for years at a time? Can you imagine what impact that has on a person?

Bravery, commitment, and intelligence (specifically, the ability to learn quickly) are three other traits that I think define a sucessful entrepreneur. But its the ability to think long term and deal with the demons in your head that I think separates the boys from the men.

Indeed, I believe the role of a CEO is very similar: my experience is that the best CEO’s think strategically into the long term, but also, have a strong emotional control of their mind. But a CEO is also a job.

Think about it as an employee, where you worry about your bonus or getting promoted. That anxiety is what entrepreneurs face, but from the other perspective: making sure there is enough cash in the bank to pay their staff bonuses and have them rewarded so they can keep them on deck. As an employee, you can face resentment if your expectations are not met; as a CEO founder, you could face jail time if you don’t manage expectations.

I will leave you with this one thought, which is how do you develop these two essential traits which are more than just skills but a state of mind. As Confusion says:

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.

How to become a “full time” foreign entrepreneur in the US

Today I hit my third anniversary in the United States. I moved over here for a startup and learnt a valuable amount of things in my two years there (which was always intended as a job to bring me to America and give me a start); and this last year I’ve had the privilege to be mentored by one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world (George Zachary) has invested $150m over 17 years and returned $1b, mostly recently Yammer selling to Microsoft and Millennial Media listing publicly) working for one of the oldest venture firms in America (CRV or Charles River Ventures).

This month however marks a new beginning: I’m now a full time entrepreneur in the US. And I take great pride in that, because I’ve spent many countless months — years even — trying to work out how to play by the immigration system to enable that.  I’ve worked with lawyers, Googled the hell out of the Internet, and collected dozens of anecdotes from other entrepreneurs who have all experienced the same misery that only another expat can appreciate.

Visa’s generally favour a limited supply of talent that tends to bias the multinational company. There is no such thing as an ‘entrepreneur visa’. Silicon Valley screams out about the need of a “startup visa“, which to be honest, I have serious reservations about as it limits the potential of an entrepreneur (ie, you are required to raise funding from a major investor like a VC firm — that’s like saying you are required to get a bank loan to be able to start your business).

But after spending years pulling out my hair out trying to work out how to get around the rules legally, I’ve developed the following solution with my intent in sharing it so as to prevent the wasted opportunity that entrepreneurs after me may experience. Even some small sentences in this post I’ve spent many hours trying to validate. I hope you waste that time on marketing for your product or enjoying life, as time wasted on visas for entrepreneurs is the least productive thing society has ever invented.

As a disclaimer, I am not a lawyer. I’ve just leveraged my background in the English language to understand the rules myself, which has successfully resulted in three separate visa’s for myself and 1.75 for employees of mine.

Step one: read Geoff’s post

My friend Geoff wrote in detail the process from his own experience. This is the best summary I’ve seen to date and highly recommend you read it. My advice below is a bit bigger picture (as opposed to procedural) and tackles some of the conceptual issues (and ones that I actually disagree with Geoff on).

Step two: Get to the US.

It’s simple, but the more time you spend in the US, the easier it becomes — even if it’s for three months at a time on a visa waiver as a “visitor”. For example, you build a network of people who can support and advise you; you can build up your credit history which takes on year minimum (tip: get a secured credit card); you can setup a bank account which is near impossible to do remotely. If you move over with a job, you get a social security number issued immediately (well, that’s a separate story — it takes over a month on arrival and your life is on hold until you get one), a huge benefit given how key it is to all things regarding your identity. Ultimately, you learn how things work.

Step three: Setup a company

The US operates in a very decentralised manner, as seen by how its company law operates. As a consequence you get a lot of  innovative forms of entities being invented by states like “B Corps” and “L3C’s”. Ignore them — most companies are either C-corps or LLC’s.

An LLC will do, as it’s the lightest-weight incorporation you can get, and in some cases, might be the only option. (Certain corporations like S-Corps require you to be a tax resident of the United States…something hard to do if you’re not present in the country for less than 183 days).  It doesn’t matter where you register it: “Deleware” simply markets the brand of their state, due to the legal system having experience and other factors. Truth be told, a company is a company. Have some fun and register your company in Nevada so you can do your annual shareholder meetings in Vegas — heck it’s not a crazy idea as Nevada not only has zero income tax (a thing levied by some states and the Federal government) but it also is one of the most difficult states in which to “pierce the corporate veil.”

Step four: elect a board

Don’t forget, that your E3 or H1B visa is an employee visa — so you need to make sure you an employee. Advice I heard from the top tier lawyers suggested you needed at least three board members (assuming you are one of them), so that you could be “over-ruled” and theoretically fired by a majority vote of the other board members. This was recently clarified by the US government:

USCIS indicates that while a corporation may be a separate legal entity from its stockholders or sole owner, it may be difficult for that corporation to establish the requisite employer-employee relationship for purposes of an H-1B petition. However, if the facts show that the petitioner has the right to control the beneficiary’s employment, then a valid employer-employee relationship may be established. For example, if the petitioner provides evidence that there is a separate Board of Directors which has the ability to hire, fire, pay, supervise or otherwise control the beneficiary’s employment, the petitioner may be able to establish an employer-employee relationship with the beneficiary.

Step five: In your job offer to yourself, pay yourself above the prevailing wage. For real.

US Immigration is partly designed so that American’s are protected from foreigners stealing their job. Hence the need to satisfy the ‘prevailing wage’ case which requires you be paid above average from what an American would be paid, as defined by official statistics done by occupation and region. You can use this online tool to determine which job you need to match yourself to: http://www.flcdatacenter.com/

You can be creative here, but don’t be too creative: hiring yourself as a “secretary” at $29k a year (2012-2013 period) when you are clearly the CEO is not something I’d risk. A General Manager though is much more like a founder CEO, which is $73k —  much better than the CEO pay rate of $212k.

But just because you get your visa application approved and a visa, doesn’t mean you can fake this rule. I know of an entrepreneur that “deferred” payment of his salary — which is completely legal but were he to apply for his next visa (or reenter to the US) and have no evidence of pay checks, there would be  complication. (Athough if it took you more than two years to raise funding — the length of the visa — maybe you have bigger problems.)

I’ve actually been asked at US borders to show proof that I have been paid a wage in past — as in, actual pay stubs or bank statements. Eventually, you are going to need to prove you were paid not just above the prevailing wage…but actually paid.

Other comments

  • You should appreciate how the visa system works: the visa itself is simply a travel document; whenever you re-enter the United States, you are reissued form I-94 which is the actual work permit. Technically, you could enter the US a month before your visa expires and the I-94 that you are issued allows you to legally work in the US for a full two years (only one nerdy customs official ever did this to me, most border officials don’t even realise this rule themselves). The only catch with this of course, is that it’s a one way ticket when leaving the US and you don’t have a valid visa for re-entry: out of practicality, labour movements at check points are how governments seem to be able to enforce their immigration policies.
  • Australian’s have a God-send in the form of the E3 visa which is plentiful in allocation, has less hoops to jump through, and even allows a spouse to get a visa as well. The default option for all other foreigns in the H1B which has its own complications. Other options include the B visa (business travel) but that’s a temporary solution — the O visa (for extraordinary achievers) is an option for people who have a public profile, but expect to spend a lot of time with the lawyers preparing this submission.
  • If you don’t have a degree, things are a lot harder for you. Your only option would be the O Visa (which means you need a lot of press) or the ability to prove you have ‘equivalency’ in work experience. One university year of study is equivalent to three years work experience ie, you need 12 years based on a four year standard US degree).
  • At least for the E3 visa, the first time you ever apply for it you need to do it from your home country. Subsequent visas you can do it in other jurisdictions.
  • ADDED April 11 2014: Something I forgot to mention here is the L1 visa which not only is a great visa but the best solution if you don’t have a degree and if you want ‘dual intent’ which means you want to eventually apply for a greencard. The only catch with the L1: you need to have been ’employed’ by the company for one year before initiating the ‘transfer’

All in all, all expats in the US have war stories to share about how they managed to secure their living in the country. The above solution, as simple as it sounds, is also not that simple as it requires real capital or revenues to be able to pay yourself — but with that said knowing three years later this is a legitimate solution is something I would have paid good money for. It’s still not easy, but then again maybe it shouldn’t: little did I appreciate, getting to this point has me now appreciate what a true entrepreneur is. Seeing this as an obstacle that can be overcome will be what Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote, is looking to hear from real entrepreneurs.

Good luck. Now, you can focus on what really matters: finding your market.

Understanding entrepreneurs

Lachlan Hardy the other week was saying to Mick Liubinskas, myself, and others at the Sydney weekly Official Friday Drinks, that he doesn’t like “entrepreneurs” or at least people that call themselves that because he thinks it’s a silly term. We ended up having a lively debate and explored if there truly is value in an “entrepreneurs” degree. I thought I’d dig into what exactly an entrepreneur is because it’s an interesting term as Lachlan and the boys got me thinking.

Kid entrepreneur

I’ve had the label ‘entrepreneur’ slapped on me twice before without me even realising I was. The first time, I was 15 and lining up in the bank after school. The fat uniform shop lady from my school told me that she needed to get ahead of me, as she obviously had a lot more money to deposit over what she probably thought was me emptying out my piggy bank of $50 in coins. When it finally got to my turn, the bank teller remarked where did I manage to collect all that money (I think it was $5000). I told her I was organising my schools semi-formal, and I was collecting the ticket money. Just after I said that, the fat uniform shop lady waddled past me and quipped: “no – it’s because he’s an entrepreneur” and gave me a look and smile as if to say ‘you smart little bugger‘.

The second time I was called that was at work. In 2006 I pitched a proposal to have social media technologies implemented into the core operation of my rather large firm, which two years on, has successfully occurred. Early on, maybe six months into the roll-out, my home business unit (who would eventually use the technology but had no idea what I was doing behind the scenes in other parts of the firm) gave me an award in front of a few hundred people. As my skinny business unit leader described the story he said the “networking” award which I was being awarded is not appropriate, and instead should be regarded as an “entrepreneurs” award because that’s really what I am.

Weird eh? In the spirit of community, I organised a party for my school mates. Due to frustrations with my workflow, I attempted to make my workplace more efficient. Both those instances, were recognised as entrepreneurial. Fat lady called me an entrepreneur because I had a stack of cash in my hand; my stick-man boss’s boss called me an entrepreneur because I managed to convince senior management though contacts I developed to implement my idea.

What’s the common link?

What is this “Entrepreneur” that you speak of, sire?
According to WordNet, an entrepreneur is: “someone who organizes a business venture and assumes the risk for it“. Or the Oxford dictionary which states: “a person who sets up a business or businesses”.

This is very much in line with how people view the word – but there’s a problem with this definition. Let’s have a high-level look at the types of entrepreneurs.

Immrant entrepreneur

There’s the glorified king of them all – ‘The Entrepreneur’ – who starts a business and then lists on the stock exchange or gets bought out for one-hundred million dollars and makes it as Times person of the year. WordNet and Oxford definition’s through and through.

A second type, the intrapreneur, is an entrepreneur stuck in a big company but displays the same traits as a ‘real’ entrepreneur. The defining difference being they don’t take the same risk of capital loss as their ‘real’ buddies. And correspondingly, don’t get the same rewards.

A third type, is the social entrepreneur like my friend Donnie Maclurcan who started up Project Australia. This is an emerging type, but when people hear about them there’s a bit of confusion. I mean, how does a non-profit venture yield, um, profit – isn’t that what entrepreneurialism is about?

All the above are entrepreneurial, but they don’t match the definition because of a misguided understanding: we are using money to measure it.

Entrepreneurialism is more like a combination of a risk-taker (different from gambler) and passionate expert, who generates value in our society. It’s almost like a function in our society – some people are conductors, others are saxophonists, and others play the violin. Different people pick their specialty: the violinists are playing music according to their function and develop accordingly; the conductors similarly according to their function. Extend the definition with people that love to be employees, and others that love to be managers. There is a different skill class required, and quite often, people in one class don’t want to be in the other (like how some computer developers who love their trade, get pulled away from their passion into management which they call admin). An entrepreneur, like an bridge engineer, is someones who’s flagged ‘I’m on the lookout to build structures of value’ except the former is building structures for markets as opposed to the latter who is building structures for transportation.

The traditional definitions we use are inconsistent. How can you describe something using such a one-dimensional view as finance when really what we are describing are components to a job function or perhaps even a type of labour class. They are almost like an artist, trying to perfect the synthesis of the four factors of production: land, labour, capital, enterprise. With the rise of the corporation as the dominant institution in our society, we’ve forgotten that our society was built by individuals who would otherwise be called an entrepreneur: sole traders selling to a market. We now group ourselves in a collective (a company) for the apparent ‘economies of scale’, as we can minimise our transaction costs.

Here’s an illustration with how the definition is at conflict with how we use it from the “risk” point of view. Most family businesses, like the local fruit-shop when they started, raised capital in the form of a bank loan. They very much are taking a risk there (the risk of bankruptcy) – but we probably don’t spare a moment in thinking the risk they took makes them “entrepreneurs”.

Contrast that to people innovating in technology. Typically a college kid comes up with a great new idea, and he then goes and raises funding from angel investors and then venture capital. What’s the risk there? If the venture fails, the money does not get enforced on the entrepreneur to be paid. People simply pack up shop with low heads and that’s it. In the upside, sure the entrepreneur needs to share profits. But if the only loss they face is the feeling of disappointment and perhaps, the $2 in capital they contributed to start the company, does this mean they are not entrepreneurs?

A better definition
This definition is from my favourite Frenchman, or at least, the guy that made me stop hating the French – and that’s saying something! (Greek waiters and French chefs do not work well under the same roof!)
Twitter _ Loic Le Meur_ _entrepreneur_
Loic says it’s simply someone who moves resources from lower yield areas to higher yielding ones. The man that coined this was an admirer of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” but felt Smith underplayed the role of an entrepreneur in capitalism. So if you have a fan in your house cooling a room where no one is sitting, it’s moving that fan to the room where there are 20 people that are boiling hot due to the hot weather. It’s a person who has the initiative to reallocate a resource to where the demand and appreciation of that resource is. Bringing it back to economics, entrepreneurs are one of the major reasons our market economy works – and the market economy, despite it’s weaknesses in some areas, is a brilliant system at organising our society.

The WordNet definition is the typical interpretation of an entrepreneur in society, whilst the Loic interpretation is truer to the source of the word. Reconsidered in this light, I’ve now come to appreciate that as annoying entrepreneurs can be (it takes a certain kind- very much a me, me, me view on things; mavericks who upset the order – which sounds heroic but the reality is that they are a real pain in the arse; and the “shut-the-hell-up-Ive-already-heard-you-talk-about-that-idea-a-hundred-times” trait), we certainly shouldn’t diminish their role in society. And if someone identifies themselves as one, I would say they are simply flagging their place in the personality tree: don’t mock it, be aware of it.

The makings of a media mogul: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch

After recognising in my previous post that Michael Arrington has successfully captured the dynamic of the mass media to pioneer new media, my mind asked how did this guy do it. With some time on my hands, I looked into what I think is one of the most remarkable stories to occur in the recent tech boom that was Web 2.0 (yep, that’s past tense – it’s an innovation era that now has closed). How "a nobody ‚Äî a former attorney and entrepreneur who, at 35, looked as if he might never hit it big " became one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world. I’ve never interacted with Arrington, although I know plenty of people that know him well (through the Aussie mafia that grace the Valley). So this is coming from a completely objective but aware view. An outside view with purely the public record to track his success. Let’s see what the evidence tells us.

The accidental start-up
Reading through the archives of his main blog TechCrunch.com and his companion blog CrunchNotes.com, I came to realise his success could be identified as early as his first five months from the first post written. He launched TechCrunch.com on the 11th June 2005 with posts released daily if not multiple times per day. The blog averaged 5 posts every two days in its first year, with 879 posts (it was actually more, but a half dozen or so have since been removed).

TechCrunch posts per day (year one)

His first post, which has since been removed (God bless the Internet archive), gives an insight into motivations for starting the blog.

TechCrunch is edited by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare, with frequent input from guest editors. It is part of the Archimedes Ventures network of companies.

Archimedes Ventures was at the time a two partner firm that specialised in the "development of companies focused on Web 2.0 technologies and solutions." The fact the page listed Teare and is marked as part of Archimedes Ventures network of companies suggests this was a conscious business development effort on the part of Arrington. As he would later reveal, he was inspired by Dave Winer who said: ‚Äúif you are going to build a new company, go to the trouble of actually researching what other companies have already done." Several months later in October, he posted an announcement that his startup Edgeio would be live soon, validating that TechCrunch wasn’t so much a "hobby" but a need to understand your market. Indeed, it seems TechCrunch just became a more formalised affair as he had been posting research into potential competitors on his personal blog publicly from March 2005 – and by the time he launched TechCrunch there were already four employees at Edgeio. No doubt, exposure and networking like any smart businessman was part of his agenda as well, which perhaps is why we saw a transition from a personal site to a TechCrunch brand (more on community building later).

On October 2005, TechCrunch was ranked the 566th blog by Technorati based on the amount of links it received from other websites. In December of that year, its ranking had climbed to 96th. One year on, in June 2006, it became the 4th most linked-to blog and has subsequently maintained its status as number 2 (not being able to beat another new media mogul Arianna Huffington who dominates the table, but that’s a story for another time).

TechCrunch subscribers

The above graph shows an explosion, but it’s the first year that tells the story which forms the basis of this post:

Over that first year, 23,713 comments had been left, with around 1-2 million page views per month. However as the figures show, it was the first six months where this research turned into a prospective business ("help "), with subsequent months and years simply consolidating his growth: by year two, there were 2,000 more posts (double the output of the previous year); 115,608 comments and trackbacks in total (an average of 40 per post); and 435,000 RSS subscribers. Pages views in the month leading up to the 24th month in operation were 4.5 million, twice what it was the previous year. In September 2008, over a million people subscribed to the blog.

So how did he do it?
Compared to his peers/competitors, he joined the game quite late, and yet he is absolutely smashing them. Same software in some cases and same focus. The question is, what did Arrington do that others didn’t?

Whilst the metrics might track his growth, they don’t track how he did it, which has less to do with Search Engine Optimisation and more to do with hyping up a boom. Below I describe what I think are the Critical Success Factors that made TechCrunch what it is today.

1) Events.
TechCrunch wasn’t just a blog; it was a host. Early on, there were events hosted at Arrington’s house where people could network and mingle. It would be a mistake to think that TechCrunch later on got into the conference business as an alternative revenue stream, but the reality is, social networking was being organised in the real world in parallel to the online blog from as early as August 2005. To create a new blog and have 63 people subscribed to it within a week indicates a lot of offline activity to get those subscribers. The social meet ups reinforced his readership base.

2) Web2.0.
Arrington saw a tide building for a second tech boom and formed a loose group of allies promoting this tide. Add to the mix some existing high profile personal brands like Dave Winer and Robert Scoble – and in the process, you build your own personal brand. To use his words, he saw a parade and got in front of it.

When Tim O’Reily coined “Web 2.0”, it was a buzz-speak marketing word. What Arrington did was successfully exploit this dynamic by recognising the rising investment trend occurring. He built a community around Web 2.0 by being its tireless champion and channeling existing energies. And as the community grew, so did he. He realised that what goes down, goes back up again – and by tapping into this growth, he could grow with it. If this second boom was anything like the first, being at the front of it would be such a good career move that it probably didn’t even need to be said.

3) Excellent content.
Don’t underestimate the difference quality content has. Arrington has an analytical mind and is a clear communicator – he is a lawyer after all. Intelligence and an ability to communicate will beat even the most experienced journalist. I‚Äôve been told that Arrington doesn‚Äôt understand tech, or at least makes a convincing image of not getting it, which probably explains the why he writes in plain English – even in the conversational style of writing that blogging is associated with, good clear English is rare to find. More importantly, he understood what all publishers have long known: good content is not just about the words. As Scoble highlighted long ago, one of the reasons that made Arrington such a popular writer is the simple use of images to break up the text.

No doubt, Arrington’s previous staff writers, ones I am familiar with like Nik Cubrilovic, Duncan Riley and Marshall Kirkpatrick, made a big difference in TechCrunch’s growth: Kirkpatrick’s ground-breaking RSS and research skills to find news, Cubrilovic’s Arrington-style writing ability, and Riley’s industry relationships to often break news – is how they made compelling content. However, Arrington quite uniquely stands out and it‚Äôs why when he tried to take a break and to focus on the business side, he was pulled back in to raise the quality. TechCrunch is Mike Arrington: it’s been proven you can’t separate the two (at least, yet).

4) The media dynamic.
As I recently argued, the mass media at its core is about playing a game, but in the context of web 2.0 it is about understanding the dynamics of a market place. He had access to Venture Capitalists (VCs) as he was a corporate lawyer as well as an entrepreneur with experience to boot Рaccess that other entrepreneurs quite simply didn’t have.

He was able to successfully take advantage of the VC paranoia that they might miss the next Google or Facebook. They literally were desperate to hear about the next big thing. For them, Arrington was a deal-type lawyer who would review things in plain English and present it with pretty pictures. On the flip side, you had entrepreneurs dying to get in front of these VCs as well as general exposure for their start-up. When Arrington decided to put advertising on the blog, it was a natural progression: entrepreneurs wanted to get exposure to VCs, future employees, and buzz amongst their peers. People on the other hand, are willing to consume this content because it’s free market research for them – catering in the audience for both investor and the entrepreneur. Powerful stuff? God yeah – that’s the kind of captive audience that’s addicted to crack cocaine.

To give you an idea of impact, I was told by an entrepreneur whose company was profiled in that first six months, that they got something like 30 VC calls and e-mails over a holiday period. After less than three weeks, they had Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers email, say "Hi, just another VC here. Can we meet next Thursday?". They had a list of meetings that kept them going for weeks. My own personal experience this year through the DataPortability Project saw first hand what exposure and support from TechCrunch could do, and suffice to say, it’s impressive. We had VCs wanting to talk to us about data portability, even though we‚Äôre non-profit!

This offline social networking is key to what ultimately became an online social media business. What’s very telling is a comment left by Valley legend Dave Winer, a man Arrington repeatedly showed admiration for and I am sure his relationship is what gave him a boost at the start. It reflects several things, but foremost, Arrington had a lot of goodwill in the community as a leader of the industry by existing heavy weights. He connected the various participants in what ultimately is a marketplace. Forget about Edgeio – this was the making of a new media business that would show the dying mass media what the future looks like for their industry. TechCrunch became the channel of choice for so many people to get their voice heard for competitive, strategic and ego reasons.

Concluding thoughts
TechCrunch started as a hobby and research project to test a bunch of the stuff he’d been reading about in the Web2.0 space. After the crash, he pretty much dropped out and watched a lot of college football – he needed a way to get back into it. Arrington probably knew he could write well, but I don’t think he realised how much of an impact his ability could have. The use of images in content, and the frequency of his posts made TechCrunch in the first six months, combined with offline social networking, the positioning as a champion of the Web 2.0 community, and exploiting the dynamic of a marketplace is what made him what he is. By the end of 2006, I don’t think Edgeio got much of Arrington’s attention at all – he’d been hooked by the excitement of writing, leading opinion and eventually, the power that attracts people to positions of note and influence, whether it be media, celebrity, business or politics.

This post only touches on the surface, as the Critical Success Factors in that first year do not give a full picture. Arrington‚Äôs involvement with the presidential primaries process, his disruptive influence with DEMO through the TC40/50, the Crunchies and even the people who keep trying to take him down add a further dimension to the TechCrunch story. He’s a man with more haters than Murdoch, but that’s doesn’t make him any less brilliant.

Arrington can get right up the nose of people with massive vested interests, and he loves to stir the pot – like the traditional press practice, controversy sells. Living in a massive rented house with all but a big dog, he can pretty much operate without fear. If it all exploded tomorrow, he’d probably have a beer, and enjoy a good long holiday and another season of college football. That’s what makes a journalist fearless, and that, combined with his obvious passion for the sector and the power he wields makes for a pretty dynamic combo.

He’s made no secret of his desire to be bigger than C|Net (without having to cop the overheads of their business model). Take out download.com, and I think it safe to say he’s reached that: maybe it’s time he puts his eyes on something a bit bigger. Although I doubt he needs to be told that – he’s already making history along with another select few, who through raw talent are pioneering “new media”, ready to replace the financially bankrupt mass media as the influencers in our society.

Search, email and wikis are the catalysts for innovation

A colleague added me to their network of trust on spock, one of the new people search engines, and so I had a play around. Spock and its competitors have come about on the premise that a large amount of search engine traffic is purely due to people: about 7% of all searches are for a person’s name, estimates search engine Ask.com. One percent of the search market is estimated to be worth a billion dollars, so this is a significant market opportunity.

Now take a step back into my mind this year. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about e-mail this past year: first as I explained to people why wikis and blogs are a better way to collaborate than via e-mail; and more recently, as I prepare a whitepaper for January 2008 proposing we replace using e-mail for our corporate communications with RSS. E-mail is the default tool at my firm and its opened up doors to do things we couldn’t do before, but it’s also why we have e-mail overload, as e-mail wasn’t designed to do this.

Can you now see something I am noticing? Established general technologies like search and e-mail – now being replaced by more specific functions. Some would say you are defining a previously unrecognised niche. That is afterall, what is means to be an entrepreneur.

Traditional Search and traditional e-mail are powerful tools. People over-use them to do all sorts of things that they couldn’t do before. As these general tools were adopted, people could experiment and push boundary’s in ways the inventors of the technologies never thought before. And bam – that’s why we have a love hate relationship with e-mail; and why search has become the default industry underlying the web economy. They are doing something we now need; but because they weren’t invented to deal with that specific need, it is more like a blunt tool being used when all is needed is a glass pick.

Innovation is coming
I’ve been told repeatedly that technology should not drive strategy. I agree to some extent. However, I’ve also proved the management at my firm wrong on that point by results. When I proposed a firm wiki, and it was approved, it was taken as a risk. All I needed was that gateway to get in behind the door, and just let it do its magic. I have witnessed first hand when you give people a wiki – or probably better said a mashup enabler – you will see them take to it because they can now do things they never imagined. A general tool like the wiki in its freedom to manipulate the structure, has allowed staff members to create new ways of satisfying their painpoints. Technology should not drive strategy – I agree. But one thing I am convinced of, is that you need to just drop a technology onto a userbase, and let them experiment. Give them the potential to do something – things you never thought they needed – and watch them take to it like honey to a bee. Technology can help drive innovation through (accidental) imagination, which in turn can drive strategy

How does this link with innovation? MacManus has lamented on the lack of innovation on the web. I’m thinking something else. As these general technology tools have been adopted by people, new niches are being discovered. As I responded to MacManus’s article: the guy that invented the wheel was brilliant; but the guy that attached another three was a genius.

Think innovation on the web is dead? I think it’s just starting.

Facebook is doing what Google did: enabling

The hype surrounding the Facebook platform has created a frenzy of hype – on it being a closed wall, on privacy and the right to users having control of their data, and of course the monetisation opportunities of the applications themselves (which on the whole, appear futile but that will change).

We’ve heard of applications becoming targeted, with one (rumoured) for $3 million – and it has proved applications are an excellent way to acquire users and generate leads to your off-Facebook website & products. We’ve also seen applications desperately trying to monetise their products, by putting Google Ads on the homepage of the application, which are probably just as effective as giving a steak to a vegetarian. The other day however was the first instance where I have seen a monetisation strategy by an application that genuinely looked possible.

It’s this application called Compare Friends, where you essentially compare two friends on a question (who’s nicer, who has better hair, who would you rather sleep with…). The aggregate of responses from your friends who have compared you, can indicate how a person sits in a social network. For example, I am most dateable in my network, and one of the people with prettiest eyes (oh shucks guys!).

The other day, I was given an option to access the premium service – which essentially analyses your friends’ responses.

compare sub

It occurred to me that monetisation strategies for the Facebook platform are possible beyond whacking Google Adsense on the application homepage. Valuable data can be collected by an application, such as what your friends think of you, and that can be turned into a useful service. Like above, they offer to tell you who is most likely to give you a good reference – that could be a useful thing. In the applications current iteration, I have no plans to pay 10 bucks for that data – but it does make you wonder that with time, more sophisticated services can be offered.

Facebook as the bastion of consumer insight

On a similar theme, I did an experiment a few months ago whereby I purchased a facebook poll, asking a certain demographic a serious question. The poll itself revealed some valuable data, as it gave me some more insight into the type of users of Facebook (following up from my original posting). However what it also revealed was the power of tapping into the crowd for a response so quickly.
clustered yes
Seeing the data come in by the minute as up to 200 people took the poll, as a marketer you could quickly gauge how people think about something in a statistically valid sample, in literally hours. You should read this posting discussing what I learned from the poll if you are interested.

It’s difficult to predict the trends I am seeing, and what will become of Facebook because a lot could happen. However one thing is certain, is that right now, it is a highly effective vehicle for individuals to gain insight about themselves – and generating this information is something I think people will pay for if it proves useful. Furthermore, it is an excellent way for organisations to organise quick and effective market research to test a hypothesis.

The power of Facebook, for external entities, is that it gives access to controlled populations whereby valuable data can be gained. As the WSJ notes, the platform has now started to see some clever applications that realise this. Expect a lot more to come.

Facebook is doing what Google did for the industry

When Google listed, a commentator said this could launch a new golden age that would bring optimism not seen since the bubble days to this badly shaken industry. I reflected on that point he made to see if his prophesy would come true one day. In case you hadn’t noticed, he was spot on!

When Google came, it did two big things for the industry

1) AdSense. Companies now had a revenue model – put some Google ads on your website in minutes. It was a cheap, effective advertising network that created an ecosystem. As of 30 June 2007, Google makes about 36% of their revenue from members in the Google network – meaning, non-Google websites. That’s about $2.7 billion. Although we can’t quantify how much their partners received – which could be anything from 20% to 70% (the $2.7 billion of course is Google’s share) – it would be safe to say Google helped the web ecosystem generate an extra $1 billion. That’s a lot of money!

2) Acquisitions. Google’s cash meant that buyouts where an option, rather than IPO, as is what most start-ups aimed for in the bubble days. In fact, I would argue the whole web2.0 strategy for startups is to get acquired by Google. This has encouraged innovation, as all parties from entrepreneurs to VC’s can make money from simply building features rather than actual businesses that have a positive cashflow. This innovation has a cumulative effect, as somewhere along the line, someone discovers an easy way to make money in ways others hadn’t thought possible.

Google’s starting to get stale now – but here comes Facebook to further add to the ecosystem. Their acquisition of a ‘web-operating system‘ built by a guy considered to be the next Bill Gates shows that Facebook’s growth is beyond a one hit wonder. The potential for the company to shake the industry is huge – for example, in advertising alone, they could roll out an advertising network that takes it a step further than contextual advertising as they actually have a full profile of 40 million people. This would make it the most efficient advertising system in the world. They could become the default login and identity system for people – no longer will you need to create an account for that pesky new site asking you to create an account. And as we are seeing currently, they enable a platform the helps other businesses generate business.

I’ve often heard people say that history will repeat itself – usually pointing to how 12 months ago Myspace was all the rage: Facebook is a fad, they will be replaced one day. I don’t think so – Facebook is evolving, and more importantly is that it is improving the entire web ecosystem. Facebook, like Google, is a company that strengthens the web economy. I am probably going to hate them one day, just like how my once loved Google is starting to annoy me now. But thank God it exists – because it’s enabling another generation of commerce that sees the sophistication of the web.

You need to be persistently adaptable

Tim Bull has recently written an interesting discussion point on when is the right time to innovate. In a post titled “Steam engine time“, he asks:

If innovation is a process of the right idea, in the right place and at the right time, how do we judge what the right time is and measure what is going on around us to hit the right spot?

Some would say luck has something to do with it, although I believe that is the perception from an outsiders point of view. In my eyes, a core set of attributes are required for innovation.

Consider this quote from Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of USA:

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

I think Tim is wrong to ask when is the right time, because innovators understand their environment, adapt to it – and then push until they get there. Persistence and adaptability, in my eyes, are two crucial aspects needed in a person or even a country or company, for it to successfully move forward. However whilst persistence is key – you need determination to push forward despite the barriers you are going to encounter – adaptability is the real secret to successfully innovating.

A case-study: multiculturalism in a flat world
Although I was born and bred in Australia, I have been brought up under a very strong Greek influence. With an Australian-born father, and a fresh-off-the-boat Greek mother – I have lived a life straddled in two cultures. Going to an Anglo-Saxon school, yet at the same time doing Greek classes at 9am Saturday (but leaving early for my schools footy games) – I grew to resent Australia’s multiculturalism policy. Without going into too much detail because this will turn it into a political discussion and detract from the point I wish to make – I disliked the fact that Greeks in Australia refused to integrate into the local culture. The Australian government’s stance of officially supporting Multiculturalism, which does things like pay for that Saturday morning tuition, was to me a stupid policy.

Fast forward to 2005, when I visited the Balkans as part of my nine months traveling around Europe. Serbia’s story is one of the saddest stories in Europe. Walking around the city of Belgrade, interacting with its inhabitants, and just generally experiencing Serbia – you realise you have come across a hidden gem in Europe. Yet once you look at the statistics and talk to some of the educated, you understand otherwise: a basket case situation that has little hope.

Serbia, like a lot of other countries I discovered in my travels, have a cultural problem: they can’t let go of the past. Millions of people have died over differing interpretations of history. The Republic of Macedonia’s identity is entirely staked on the fact they are situated on the lands of Alexander the Great. Identity to the nation states of Europe, is in history. And challenges to that history, and their identity, has led to some stupid wars affecting millions of innocent lives.

So guess what? I now think multiculturalism is the best thing my country could ever do, for the simple fact we can never have a fixed identity – what it meant to be Australian 50 years ago looks very different from what it looks like now. In Europe, identity is based on ethnicity with a fixed identity tied to history, language and a religion. In Australia, our identity isn’t allowed to be based on a certain ethnicity, and forces us to find common ground on what really matters like our way of life. If it wasn’t for the policy of Multiculturalism, we would be turning into one of these static nation states within Europe who become fixed as a certain point of time. The Greeks are still mourning over the Turks capturing the Great City of Constantinople from them in 1453 (which is why Tuesday is the unlucky day of the week for them). Yet for the countries like Australia, who don’t have much of a history – they are not locked – and consequently look forward, rather than back. Multiculturalism is a crucial ingredient to our success, because with all that diversity, it means we are constantly evolving our culture to the times without any one group fixing it. And with a globalised word, Australia’s ability to adapt to circumstances will be a key competitive advantage we have over countries.

If you don’t agree with me, have a read of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat – a book a entrepreneur/intrapreneur suggested I read. This guy who told me about the book was a German from Argentina, working for an Indian company to set up the company’s presence in Turkey! He told me that after he read that book, he quit his job and got himself into his current role. He faced the facts, and adapted his career.

Adaptability as success
You’re probably wondering what I am trying to get at, but to tie it back to my point about adaptability, successfully innovators need to constantly adapt to their environment. What happens with people once they get an idea, is that they spend all their time trying to fit it into a world that once existed, only for the world to be a entirely new place. Successful innovators need to constantly evolve their ideas, to the changing circumstances.

In October last year, I made a proposal at my firm to implement a new technology. For the months leading up to that point, people had to some extent talked down my idea and some even flat out rejected it. October however had me find the right person to hear my idea. And yet if I look at what I originally had thought, and what it is now – it is almost a completely different thing. Because when I pitched my idea, I was asked “why” it works and “how” is it different from anything else. It was that ‘why’ question that had me spend countless hours researching and understanding – adapting – my idea to the scenario being presented to me. I successfully made my business case, because I was given the opportunity to reframe my idea and adapt it to the circumstrances I was presented. Had I not adapted my original idea and vision, I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing now.

Of course, I could have summed up the above by mentioning Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Survival of the fittest, right? Adapt to the Green forest like that Green lizard that looks like a leaf, and you’ll find some food (rather than being the food yourself). Adaptability in life is a key critical success factor; and with innovation, it is the hidden factor that on the outside and in retrospect by others, gets attributed as luck.

Update 20/6/07: Catching up on some reading, I just came across a great posting by Marc Andreessen, an internet pioneer, who talks about the four types of luck and which nicely complements my thoughts above.

Half the problem has been solved with time spent

On Thursday, I attended the internal launch of the Australian Entertainment & Media Outlook for 2007-2011. It was an hour packed with interesting analysis, trends, and statistics across a dozen industry segments. You can leave a comment on my blog if you are interested in purchasing the report and I’ll see if I can arrange it for you.

One valuable thing briefly mentioned, was the irony of online advertising.
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