Google to Unveil Online Music Service

The Myth Of The Small-Business Job Engine

Aug 302011

It makes a great soundbite for a politician to talk about how important small businesses are. However, several studies over the past year indicates that small businesses really aren’t the end-all, be-all of economic recovery. Politicians also love to talk about startups, but then gleefully do things like intentionally hamstring the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

I think Professor Shane sums it up well:
“If we’re just talking about giving an incentive for businesses to hire, why don’t we just give them all the incentive? Why does it matter that they’re small or new or old and large?”

via The Myth Of The Small-Business Job Engine.

August 30, 2011 Business, entrepreneur

Zuckerberg: Great Innovator, Terrible CEO?

Jun 042011

Over the past few years Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had more than a few inappropriate gaffs. These seem to be getting worse, and more importantly they are quite ill timed if Facebook plans an IPO. It was reported back in 2010 that Zuckerberg thought Facebook users were dumb fucks. More recently, Zuckerberg would love to get information about, and advertise to, tweens. This is somewhat disturbing because below a certain age children do not necessarily understand the difference between reality and advertisement. Then most recently, Zuckerberg just prays on our collective short-term memory to forget things such as privacy issues. Regardless of how he personally feels, as the public face to an extraordinary influential company he should probably not be saying these things.

With skill, and I imagine a lot of luck, Zuckerberg created Facebook into the social media beast it is today. However, running a large multi-billion dollar international entity is a bit different than creating a startup. When venture capitalists or angel fund investors fork over money to startups, they typically want a seat at the table, usually in the form of a board seat (arguments about fiduciary conflicts aside). When serious money is changing hands, it would not be unheard of for the VCs to request an experienced Chief Executive to take the helm, for example Eric Schmidt at Google. They want to make certain that their investment is going to give them a nice healthy return. The behavior of the entrepreneur needs to be appropriate for the situation.

Without a doubt, I imagine Zuckerberg has oodles of talented and experienced folks managing the Facebook Empire (not to mention his technical wizardry). It is not a question of technical competency. It is a question of public relations. This is a guy whose business cards formerly read, “I’m CEO. . .bitch!”

Zuckerberg may have been the best fit to run Facebook, The Startup but is he the best fit to be CEO of Facebook, The Billion Dollar Global Giant?

The Point: Managing a startup is not the same as managing a large public company. Is it prudent for a successful entrepreneur like Zuckerberg to step aside, if only temporary (e.g. Larry Page of Google), and allow a seasoned CEO to take the company public? Is the CEO’s role more of a political position than managerial?

June 4, 2011 Business, customers, facebook, social media, Technology

Marketing the Science of Absinthe

May 102011

The Perfect Market Opportunity — If Only It Was Legal | BNET

Chemistry, law, and marketing do not often appear together in a business article. We have it here, though, in this very interesting BNET article.

Thujone is the chemical found in absinthe that, allegedly, makes absinthe a mind-altering and hallucinogenic beverage. Stories abound of artists, say for example, cutting of their ears. Or, many people claim. Over the past few years I have read many articles providing evidence that this is not quite the truth. According to Mr. Joseph Conway’s article, the culprit is actually a marketing campaign fought by the wine industry a hundred years ago.

Overturning a perception that is a hundred years old should be a difficult thing to do. Especially if federal regulators are a part of that perception. However, through solid scientific data and business savvy, Viridian Spirits have managed to do this very thing.

Kudos to them!

As an aside, a few years back I had the fortunate opportunity to try absinthe in Prague. The Czechs drink absinthe differently than the more popular (at least in the U.S.) French style. The French method involves placing a special sugar spoon over the absinthe and dripping cold water over the sugar and down into the absinthe. The Czechs, as far as I could tell, just pour a healthy serving of it over a couple of ice cubes. My initially reaction to sipping the Green Fairy was that it did, indeed, have mind-altering properties.

I later picked up the bottle and found that it was 65% alcohol.

Drinking enough 65% alcohol anything will alter the state of your mind.

May 10, 2011 absinthe, Business, Chemistry, Science

Google to Unveil Online Music Service

May 092011

Google to Unveil Online Music Service – WSJ.com.

What I think may be the most interesting part of this article is this:

Users of the service are expected to be able to listen to songs they have uploaded to the service in a so-called streaming mode but won’t be able to download the files themselves.

On one hand, this makes sense for Google. It enables them to look like a ‘good guy’ by not allowing people to download the files which can subsequently be shared with others. What is interesting is that Google has long been a strong proponent of net neutrality, meaning Google effectively does not want bandwidth providers (e.g. Comcast, AT&T, Charter, etc.) to be able to throttle user download speed, or otherwise interfere with the transfer of information from a website to the user. On the surface this seems good.

But, on the other hand, by allowing this to be a streaming service only, Google is effectively putting a constraint on the ISPs to push the content from Google to users. In essence it is the ISPs that are going to have to eat the costs that Google will incur by forcing users to stream music.

Win-win for Google?

I hate to think that I actually have a little bit of sympathy for and can understand why ISPs want to be able to control the bandwidth that content providers such as Google force down their pipeline.