So here’s my hypothesis…

Koos Bekker’s a smart dude, he realises - like pretty much all other smart dudes - that the future is in content, or more specifically, video-on-demand.

Now Koos has a great vehicle for VoD in DSTV, but he recognises a huge constraint - bandwidth, not the speed of it, but the cost (or perceived cost). A month ago, the biggest consideration when downloading a movie was not the speed of the download, but the amount of data it would take from your valuable bandwidth cap. 

So how does he play it?

Well he sees that he has a ace in his sleeve in Mweb. So a few weeks ago Mweb were the first to market with an uncapped product. Nice. Of course it doesn’t solve Koos’s problem just yet, as of course not all DSTV subscribers are on Mweb. However he just had to sit back and wait (and not for long at all).

Enter his Mweb competitors, they immediately jumped on the bandwagon, not only going uncapped - but driving prices even further down.

Does Koos care? Hell no, he’s ecstatic - even if Mweb doesn’t make a cent profit from the move they have absolutely served their purpose. Basically, SA’s ISPs just became Koos’s new bitches.

It makes me laugh really, hahahaha <– see.

Six months from now (or a year, who knows?) when Koos is ready, he can launch his constraint free VoD product because all connected South Africans, regardless of their ISP, have ceased to have a bandwidth cap problem.

It makes me respect the players like the Skyroves and ISs of the world that have had the patience and smarts not to jump on the bandwagon. If history is anything to go by, I imagine when guys like that do make their move, we’ll see something different and ass-kicking.

Anyway, like I said, Koos Bekker; smart dude…!

It seems like every other day I get invited to a TEDx _ _ _ _ _ _ event, and I have to say I think it’s a really crap idea, not at all worth spreading. Perhaps not the concept but definitely the execution.

I’ve been lucky enough to attend TED Global in Oxford twice and I have to say, while great, the real appeal is that I’ve been - and many others haven’t. When it comes to events like TED, scarcity is the hallmark of quality.

If this wasn’t the case, people would be spending a lot more time talking about events like Creativity World Forum and Pop!Tech (both better conferences) and less time talking about TED. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t for one second think that this is a bad thing, I think it’s a masterstroke of marketing genius.

TEDx, not so much.

Putting a TEDx logo on an event doesn’t make it a TED conference anymore than putting a FERRARIx badge on a Fiat makes it an Italian super-car.

However, one thing that the TEDx events seem to have adopted from their parent is the arrogance.

I recently received this mail from one of the TEDx organisers inviting me to pitch-to-speak (I was also asked to speak at TEDx PTA two weeks ago):

You have been nominated by justin spratt (thanks Spratty) to speak at the [site-name] Event, happening on the 15th of November, 2009…

…If you are interested in telling the world about how implementing your idea is currently uplifting or can uplift communities, please Register here: http://www.tedxjohannesburg.co.za/user/register. Once your registration is complete, you will receive an e-mail confirmation with a one time link. This will confirm your e-mail address. Click this link: http://www.tedxjohannesburg.co.za/node/add/profile-speaker to fill out your speaker application.

We will then review your application and get back to you. In the mean time, please take a look at our website and browse through the FAQs ([site-url]/faq).

Now, if this was the actual TED I’d say hell yeah and beg for a place to talk. However it’s not, it’s just another in the endless string of TED knock-offs that we hear about weekly. 

Like most speakers I charge in the region of R20k to deliver a talk, and do this a fair amount. As far as I’m concerned, at this stage anyway, if I was to speak at TEDx it would be a favour, and not a privilege.

These guys are acting like their credibility has already been established, it hasn’t.

Less arrogance lads - you’re not TED, yet.

And TED, you shouldn’t be giving out these licenses like food stamps, you’re killing  your brand…!

I founded a business about a year ago with three partners that was doing fine when we were all slogging away, but was awful and time consuming when we weren’t. See, the issue is we had other commitments outside of our business - never a good thing, by the way - and I often felt like I was alone in losing sleep in keeping things ticking over. Fast forward, we dissolved the partnership, I own the ‘business’ alone and we’re still great friends. Happy ending. Things don’t always work out this happily, so I created a list of the pros and cons I’ve picked up over the years.

Firstly, partnerships

Pros:

• Shared responsibility and natural bull detector.
• Companions to share the good times and the bad. Misery loves company, happiness loves it more
• Ideal for bootstrapping. If you can’t pay for employees, at least you have other people who have skin in the game and will do it regardless of immediate benefit

Cons:

• Shared responsibility. Doing all the work and sharing the spoils evenly bites
• Smaller piece of the pie. ‘Nough said
• Compromised vision. Too many leaders may steer the company in a direction you don’t believe in

Secondly, sole ownership

Pros:

• Full responsibility, full prosperity (or full despair)
• One captain, one vision
• For egomaniacs (secretly all of us?), spotlight by your lonesome

Cons:

• Lonely and emotionally taxing
• Difficult to bootstrap (I’m talking legit ZERO CASH bootstrap)
• Myopic outlook

Oversimplification, no?

I’ve deliberately presented the two options as being dichotomous, even though some overlap certainly exists. I’m not suggesting that sole owners do not look for outside input, nor do I suggest partners cannot agree on the right direction to take a company. The thing that’s important to ask before going into a partnership is whether you play nice with other kids, and whether the other kids contribute more than they will be taking, via their equity steak.

I’m not too gung-ho for partnerships right now but I imagine that might change at a later stage. However the bad times are particularly bad when you’re gunning it alone.

Where do you fall?

I wonder how much emotional angst is associated with money. People breakdown because of the lack thereof; they self destruct due to an inability to deal with its unexpected glut; families fall apart, kids lose parents, husbands and wives lose spouses and all people seem to be concerned with is who gets to keep what.

Let’s not be foolish here, we don’t found businesses in the pursuit of fringe living. Sure, many of us want to legitimately change the world, but we don’t sneeze at the financial rewards associated with our successes. I’ve done the “2 minute noodles for a month” diet more times than I can remember, unsure where the next sale is going to come from or how to pay suppliers/employers/freelancers/and-other-’ers’ let alone remain fed. Thankfully, the entrepreneur in me (or is it the South African?) figured something out each time. The hypertension and sleeplessness is silly - it hasn’t and possibly cannot make me more productive or industrious, let alone lead to financial upturns.

Our relationship with money needs to be rethought. I suppose this is tantamount to asking Western society to reconstruct its core foundation, but so be it. What’s the rush? You’ll get there eventually. And even if you don’t, there are plenty of other things in one’s life to be excited about. Jumping out of buildings is irrational and defrauding people of billions is just plain stupid. Enjoy the slow climb.

Cynicism aside, I believe that there must be a cure/vaccine/syrum/make-better-mabob for HIV/AIDS out there. My appreciation for the medical complexity of it all is not naive, but the faith remains.

The reason I’m writing about it here is because the question I want to put forth is entirely business related. Indulge my fanciful mind, would you: if, through research funded entirely by me and through a private facility/organisation I create for these very purposes, I - or the researchers under my employ - find the cure for HIV/AIDS, would it be ethical to sell the cure? (selling the cure could take the form of actually packaging and retailing it or reselling the rights to a big pharmaceutical).

Before answering the question, let’s not kid ourselves, treating HIV/AIDS is a multi-billion dollar business, the cure for it would be worth a lot of money. And I make reference not just to the more taxing process of manufacturing and selling, I’m talking just the resale of the formula to another pharmaceutical would be worth (tens of?) billions of dollars.

I ask the question - and relate it to ethics - because we know, priced to retail, the cure may be extremely expensive, if for no reason other than the insane demand for it. It’d be good business in that it’s not a commodity, whoever owned the rights for it would ostensibly own a monopoly for a considerable people and many people will pay well, well, well above the odds allowing for absolute maximisation of profits.

The issue with this pricing, however, is that many of the needy are likely to be too poor to afford it - without it being heavily subsidised, at the very least. About two thirds of HIV/AIDS sufferers live in Sub-Saharan Africa meaning, economically at least, this cure won’t necessarily be accessible to many sufferers.

If the scenario I offer were to occur with the necessary dynamics - maximum profits only possible at prohibitive pricing - would the appeasing of shareholders (in my example, solely me! In the case of a big pharmaceutical, plenty of people) not be tantamount to the “killing” of those excluded?

I’m trying to avoid becoming overly philosophical here, nor do I want to pass judgement. I want to start a conversation around the issue.

Of course, there’s two alternatives: firstly, pricing the cure so as to be affordable by most, if not everybody or, secondly, giving the cure away (making it public domain, I suppose) such that governments and private institutions can continue development, mass production and distribution of the cure.

Where do we draw the line regarding financial gain? Am I overcomplicating something that isn’t all that complex?

Sorry about the brief hiatus.

Anyhow, a bunch of us from CP are working on web-based businesses/initiatives and, therefore, several posts in the months ahead will focus on what we’ve learnt. We have not announced any of these projects yet but we will when the time is right.
A few observations:
1) Whilst the barriers to entry are virtually non-existent, the primary side effect is that getting through the white noise is significantly more difficult.

2) Whilst A web-based business (a web-based anything, actually) can exist and develop a reputation exclusively online, I’ve found it makes a ton more sense to promote the initiative offline as intently as you do online. SEO and Adwords is great, but is no replacement for “check out this thing we’re doing online”.

3) Whilst juggernauts form very quickly in break-through web-based businesses, ‘reverse niching’ is a very good tactic for success. Facebook starting out as a social network for colleges before expanding… what’s to stop someone from reversing the project and building a social network for college students only?

4) Building an identity independent of your core project before deciding on the core project helps a lot.

Using Twitter, Capitalist Punks and Project Badass (the code name) as case studies, I’ve learnt the above.

The observations are not unique to online businesses, which is kind of the point. People often fall into the trap of believing because it’s online, business is conducted differently, yet I’ve found the reverse to be true: if it’s online and you conduct your business with a level of service and accessibility brick-and-mortars (should all) strive for, you’re more likely to get my money.

And here in sunny South Africa, where internet penetration and online literacy pales in comparison to the European and North American countries who make up the bulk of the web-published content, we have to be significantly smarter about how we blur the lines between the online and offline world when targeting South African consumers.

Tattoos and stand-up comedy. These are primarily the two biggest conversations I have with people nowadays on a personal level.

What comes up more often than not are people’s longing to either do comedy or get a tattoo, but they just never had the guts to go through with it, almost always blaming the ‘too scared to get on stage’, or the ‘permanence’ or ’soon-to-be-boredom’ with tattoos. It’s like a broken record.

I’ve been creating and writing comedy for as long as I can remember. I was fortunate enough to have a group of friends, including my family, who could see humour in everything, which led me to begin writing things down so that I could one day use it, either on stage, TV or in film.

A few years ago when I was doing video production I did some work with Riaad Moosa. On the last day of shooting, we were leaving the set and he shouted across the parking lot “Get on stage Don!”, after our earlier conversation about open comedy spots at Cool Runnings in Melville. It was an awesome thing to hear from someone like him. So I continued to write comedy, but never really considered getting on stage to actually use it.

Then last year we were invited to Missing Link for a talk by John Vlismas about creativity, and obviously used comedy as an example. One of the guys asked him how people can get into it and he mentioned the open spots on Sunday nights at Cool Runnings. At that stage of my life I needed something to occupy my mind and free time, so after the talk I asked John how to book a spot, and got the number. Three days later, while driving to a meeting, I phoned Whacked Management and booked myself a spot. I put the phone down and felt like vomiting. It was honestly one of the scariest things I had to do. Taking that first step was huge, but now it was done, and all I had to do was show up and perform.

Long story short, I performed my first gig (which very few people have seen) and even though I look back on it now and think it wasn’t even close to what I’d expect to be a good set, I walked off stage feeling like I’d wrestled a lion, and tamed the bastard. No-one can ever explain that feeling of total bliss. Too rad.

The thing is, the big step wasn’t actually getting on stage, it was taking that first step and getting booked in. Once I knew I had to do it, I knuckled down and made it happen. I wrote a set, I consulted friends, I perfected it so that I could deliver as effective a show as possible. Now I just can’t get enough.

This doesn’t only apply to comedy or getting a tattoo. What, in business, are you thinking about doing but are too scared to implement? Do you have an idea that could possibly help your business? The worst that can happen is you fail, but at least you can say you tried.

This post (although old, but definitely still relevant) explains how, while few CEOs are as candid about the potential for failure as Isdell, many are wrestling with the same problem, trying to get their organisations to cosy up to the risk-taking that innovation requires. “Everyone fears failure. But breakthroughs depend on it. The best companies embrace their mistakes and learn from them.”

It goes back to that saying “You always regret the things you didn’t do.” You’ll never know unless you’ve tried.

Just do it.

Originally a hustler’s ode, the first verse of this song nicely sums up the early days of most - if not all - startups.

Jay-Z: History

In search of victory she keeps alluding me
If only we could be together momentarily
We could make love and make history
why won’t you visit me
until she visits me
I’ll be stuck with a sister, her name is defeat
She gives me agony so much agony she brings me so much pain
So much misery like missing your last shot and falling to your knees
As the crowd screams for the other team
I practiced so hard for this moment victory don’t leave
I know what this means im stuck in this routine
Whole new different day same old thing
All I got is dreams, nobody else can see
Nobody else believes, nobody else but me
Where are you victory
I need you desperately
Not just for the moment to make history

As an aside, that’s my theme song whenever a set back happens. It gets me right back up again.

Link to full version below:

Jigga - History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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