Arron's shared items
Eran Egozy, co-founder and CTO of Harmonix Music Systems was on a panel at the Nantucket Conference entitled "Tipping Point: The keys to getting new ideas to take off". Harmonix is the maker of Guitar Hero, the wildly successful video game.
Guitar Hero was an instant...overnight success, 10 years in the making, selling over $1Billion to date. Harmonix was founded in 1995 but Guitar Hero didn't come along until 10 years later in 2005.
What did Harmonix do in the first 10 years? Harmonix founders met at the MIT Media Lab and their first idea was to create new ways for non-musicians to experience the joy of making music. Similar to another MIT Media Lab company called HarmonyLine, this idea never really took off.
Eran joked "For the first four years we couldn't sell anything but stock. We knew that wasn't a business model, but at least we had money coming in to keep us going."
Around 2000 they decided to try applying their music technology to video games. But it was 5 more years until they tasted success. They released eight video games over that period, with modest results. Eran said "The trick in the video game business is to make enough money from your game to keep you going until you can release your next game."
Most new video games don't make a profit. The game business is very much like the music business, or even the venture capital business, in that it is a "hits" driven business. One big hit pays for lots of losers.
Guitar Hero was the 9th video game produced by Harmonix, 10 years after founding the company, and it put them on the map with more than $1 Billion in sales. They recently sold the company to MTV Networks, a division of Viacom for $175M.
iRobot a 12 year overnight success. Colin Angle, founder and CEO of iRobot told a similar story. iRobot was founded in 1990 with the idea of creating robots to do interesting stuff. For 12 years they did projects and built products but never really achieved financial success. Colin said they paid employees once a month at the end of the month. They never had enough cash at the beginning of the month to meet the payroll at the end of the month. But they persisted in their dream.
September 11th 2001 changed everything. They decided to apply their robot experience to help the military in dangerous situations. DARPA, the research arm of the U.S. Defense Department paid out grants to lots of companies to develop proposals for new defense technologies. iRobot won a $200K grant to write a proposal for a battlefield robot.
Colin Angle said the company had never had $200K in the bank...ever. So, rather than use the money to write a proposal they just built the robot. What a concept!! DARPA had a big meeting to review all the proposals from various defense contractors. iRobot showed up with their robot and a tiny written proposal. They won the business and DARPA awarded them a $4M contract to build robots for use in Afghanistan. They have since sold over $150M of robots to the military.
Colin said that iRobot entered and exited 18 different businesses over their 12 year existence before finally landing on the military robot idea. They have since entered the consumer market with robot vacuum cleaners and swimming pool cleaners.
Persistence and tenacity are hallmark qualities of successful entrepreneurs. Harmonix and iRobot are excellent examples of that never die attitude. There is a fine line between success and failure. There is no secret formula or obvious path to success. Just one common trait...an indomitable desire to succeed against all adversity and doubt. Very few people have this drive and the leadership ability to attract great people to their cause. This drive is indefinable but we know it when we see it. It is sometimes misdiagnosed as being delusional and fanatical. The difference in diagnosis is success or failure. Succeed and you are a brilliant visionary. Fail and you are a delusional loser. The line between them is very fine.
Sim Simeonov of Polaris Ventures is also at the Nantucket Conference and has a great blog post about "Top 5 suggestions for startups from IDEO". Lots of great speakers and content here at the Nantucket Conference.
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That David Archuleta is one good son. That, or he's brainwashed very well!
Even though his dad, Jeff, is banned from being backstage on American Idol, David says, “I don’t really care what people say, but I know it’s affected him and stressed him out."
Reports remain that the producers were very upset and bothered by Jeff, who insisted that his son switch the lyrics of Stand By Me to include a stupid verse from Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls, even though they warned him not to do so.
American Idol was then forced to pay much higher royalties due to the lyrics.
Archuleta adds, “I’ve heard some weird things that people have been saying, and it’s kind of a bummer. I think I, of all people, would know what’s going on, and he’s been great."
And , David, responded to reports that his dad withheld water from him during a recording session by stating, "That’s kind of stupid. I’m 17! I think I’d be able to stand up for myself if he were to take my water away.”
Really?
David adds, "He’s given me a lot of good advice and helped me from making any dumb decisions. He understands more than anyone what I want in music, and I’ve felt really blessed to have someone like that.”
Stockholm syndrome!!!!!!
[Image via WENN.]
It's so clear that three monitors makes people UBER productive. I don't know about productivity dropping off with a 26-inch screen in this WSJ story today:
- Bigger Computer Monitors = More Productivity
Working late? Blame your computer screen. A new study finds that bigger monitors make people more productive.
Researchers at the University of Utah tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets while using different computer configurations: one with an 18-inch monitor, one with a 24-inch monitor and with two 20-inch monitors. Their finding: People using the 24-inch screen completed the tasks 52% faster than people who used the 18-inch monitor; people who used the two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those with the 18-inch ones. There is an upper limit, however: Productivity dropped off again when people used a 26-inch screen. (The order of the tasks and the order of computer configurations were assigned randomly.)
The study concluded that someone using a larger monitor could save 2.5 hours a day. But James Anderson, the professor in charge of the study, tells the Business Technology Blog to take that result with a grain of salt: It assumes that someone will work non-stop for eight hours, which no one will, and that the tasks they perform will all benefit from a larger screen, which isn't always the case. But things like moving data between files are ideally suited to bigger or multiple screens. Anderson, who uses a computer with two 20-inch screens and one 24-inch one, recommends that businesses take the time to match employees with the proper size screen based on job requirements.
People are tricking themselves, I think if everyone starts looking inside of themselves they will find that they can find happiness and more importantly TRUE Happiness and success. People stop lying to yourself.
In business it is commonly understood that advertising is the first thing to be cut in a business downturn or recession. Henry Blodget, former Wall Street Internet stock analyst, believes we are headed for a deeper recession and that advertising, even web advertising, will be hurt. My take? Advertising in general will fall, but CPC Internet advertising will increase.
Display advertising will be hurt
Newspapers will be the first to feel the pain. Newspapers are already getting hammered and it is only going to get worse. TV and Radio will also feel the pain, but to a lesser degree. Advertising mediums like these don't have good feedback mechanisms. It is really hard to accurately calculate how effective an advertising campaign has been. You pay your money up front and hope for the best.
Web based CPM advertising will be hurt too
Web based display ads and banner ads are the online equivalent of print display ads. The costs are substantially lower, but the results are still hard to measure. Cost Per Mil (CPM) ads are not well targeted like search advertising. There is also no user interaction like there is on Cost Per Click (CPC) ads. Big web sites like Yahoo, AOL, Cnet, Marketwatch, and others get most of their revenue from display/banner ads. Advertisers are likely to cut back first on print ads, and later on web based display ads.
CPC advertising could actually increase
With CPC ads you pay nothing unless someone clicks on your advertisement. This is a huge advantage for advertisers who really want to increase sales but can't afford to gamble on a display ad. CPC ads are easily justifiable and trackable. In a recession, with declining sales, there is enormous pressure to do anything possible to get sales moving. CPC advertising, principally on search engines, will be very appealing to advertisers.
A recession could accelerate the trend to web based CPC advertising.
The trend towards Internet advertising has been growing for years. Still, less than 10% of all advertising dollars are spent on the Internet, up from about 6% a few years ago. The trend will continue and probably accelerate with a recession. This is great news for search engines like Google, Microsoft Live Search, and Yahoo Search.
The Yahoo problem
Yahoo is a huge web destination with great traffic numbers. The problem is that most of their traffic (over 80% last time I checked) is generic, untargeted page views. Meaning, their traffic is to a Yahoo home page, Yahoo email, or some other generic content page. This traffic is hard to monetize effectively because it is not targeted. Search traffic is easy to target and commands very high advertising rates because it is so tightly targeted and effective.
Where is the opportunity?
Ad targeting technology that targets ads to the user, not the content they are looking at, will be a huge winner. Imagine if Yahoo, or any other big content site, could better target their advertising to users. They could go charge much higher prices for their CPM ads, and convert lots of generic page views into advertising dollars.
There are lots of companies working on this from lots of different angles. Quantcast is doing deep click stream analysis and layering on demographic data for better targeting. MatchMine is taking a different approach. By analyzing the content you like, and recommending more content like it, they build a profile to help you get better content, and help advertisers target their ads.
Behavioral targeting for advertising is already a hot area, and likely to get even hotter. Especially if an economic recession hits the advertising world.
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Just when I was all excited about my cheap exercise bike, my wife comes in to show me a postcard that’s announcing the opening of a YMCA in our county this fall. The membership is $69/month for a family membership. Over eight hundred a year.
She wanted to get a membership for a number of reasons, all of which are good, but that’s not really the point. I initially grimaced at the thought of taking on another monthly payment like that. But there were a $49/month charge and a couple of $10/month charges that we could cancel by the fall. That adds up to about, well, $69/month! Seeing that our overall expenses would stay the same, I agreed to sign up for the YMCA.
Just like it’s a good habit to get rid of something old before bringing in something else, it’s also a good idea to shed some expenses that have outlasted their usefulness when there’s another expense that is wanted. Let some subscriptions go before taking on another. That way, if things were under control before, they’ll be under control after.
Recurring charges are great for business because once the business has a customer’s permission to charge their card, it continues until it stops. The only reminder of that charge might be on the credit card statement mixed in with all of the other charges. It blends in and can go unnoticed or barely noticed. It’s likely that one charge isn’t a budget buster, which makes a membership an easier sell because it’s “only” so much per month.
Once a bunch of recurring charges are running, though, it can add up to serious money, which is why it’s a good idea to review those charges and see whether some of them are no longer worth it. A really good time to do this is when you’re about to take on another one.
Check this out: Chase Perfectcard(TM) Mastercard(R) – My rewards card for over four years
- Google released a Flash/ ActionScript API for Google Maps. Google says this allows current Flash developers to easily integrate Google Maps into existing Flash apps, but that it also provides new possibilities for displaying map content for developers currently not using Flash. Flash has just been released in a version 10 preview, by the way, bringing a couple of changes.
- Google announced the winners for the first round of the Android mobile apps challenge with prize money of $25,000 each. Ten $275,000 prizes and ten $100,000 prizes are still outstanding for the next round.
- Google released a code reference and library for HTML, CSS and JavaScript, named Google Doctype. “We like to refer to it internally as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Web,” creator and Google employee Mark Pilgrim says.
- You can now more directly embed Google spreadsheet forms. Jim McNelis comments, “I have been hacking a Google Spreadsheet form on my website through an iframe. I am glad they added the option to embed as well.”
- If you log-in to Google Analytics at the moment, you’ll see a system message alerting you that some data between April 30th and May 5th has been lost... though much of it was recovered, too, according to Google. Also see an earlier error Google disclosed in September 2007.
[Thanks Miss Universe, Beussery, James Xuan and all who provided tips!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Developer News Roundup: Maps Flash API ... | Comments]
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[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Dear Friend (A Poem) | Comments]
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