NYT: When the Boss Is Last in Line for a Paycheck

Today's NYT had an interesting snapshot about factors affecting entrepreneurs compensate themselves (balancing between a desire to keep cash in the business and, you know, live).  Some businesses must use balance sheets to secure financing from vendors, others may need it to keep or attract investors/VCs.

However, an  interesting rule of thumb appeared, courtesy of Andrew Corbett, a professor at RPI:

If the business has started to generate some income, the best way to calculate what to pay the owner, Mr. Corbett advised, is to figure out what the job is worth on the open market.
“You want to be true to yourself and to the firm so you don’t want to overpay yourself and you don’t want to shortchange yourself,” he added.
That means looking at what you do day to day and putting your job in one or several categories, for example, sales executive, product developer or general manager. “Calculate how much time you’re working and how much time is spent on each role. Your salary should reflect the work you do.” Ask what it would cost to hire someone else outside of the business to fill that role, he suggested.
The formula he offered includes paying the owner a 30 percent premium over what the open market would pay to cover health benefits and another 20 percent to 30 percent more for the risk. So if a manager or product developer with comparable skills is making $100,000 a year in salary, and that’s mainly what the entrepreneur will be doing, she can expect to pay herself $150,000 to $160,000 a year, Mr. Corbett suggested.

This probably works if the business has revenue, or the market rate in the region isn't buoyed by local living costs, like New York's.  Other entrepreneurs quoted in the article essentially said they had to wait to attract investors before they could pay themselves.   

Mobile Advertising: Come Get Some

Cory Trefiti of MediaPost writes about the future possibilities of online social networking and advertising, especially wiuth GPS-enabled handsets in: Mobile Social Networking Opens The Door For Advertisers.  I think he misses a big chunk of the solution. 

This post is clearly missing major insight.  What about Bluetooth enabled physical ads- billboards, subway posters, etc?  This is sweeping Europe and its scores of GSM/bluetooth enabled headsets.

What about M-commerce linked to a mobile phone billing system?  This is huge in Japan and something that could see real growth there.  One thing that holds back the explosion of mobile payment that has been seen elsewhere in the world is probably the fact that most mobile subs here do have a bank account, whereas in latim america for example, prepaid mobile is almost a substitute for a bank account.

As to the BMW or Chuck E Cheese alerts, maybe some people would want such an alert, but I think the idea behind advancers in advertising targeting is to use data to influence messaging on the environment a user requests, rather than just bombard him with a zillion offers and things he could visit.

I Heart Tide To Go

Tidetogo Yesterday in a lunch meeting I had the misfortune of watching a few ounces of balsamic vinegar roll off my plate and onto my leg.  A dark stain was born on my pants.  I tried to remain calm, asd I was going out in the evening, and thought about the idea of getting one of those stain stick things. 
After the meeting, I ran to a local CVS and picked up Tide To Go.  What a wonderfully excellent product.  You have to see it to believe it.  Go out and get one.  Get five.  Now.  This stuff works.

Enron Movie in Pre-production grosses $3 billion

from the item on Digital Media Wire: "CNBC reported that Warner Bros paid a little over $1 million for the movie rights, a fair price according to industry analysts.  No release date for the film has been set."

Apparently, the movie has already grossed $3 billion, but no one is sure how they did it.  Time Warner stock has soared on the news, which represent record revenue for a theatrical project in pre-production.  Sources inside Warner Bros. declined to discuss the particulars of the project, stating simply, "We're just really, really good at this business."

Film, Disrupted

Shelly Palmer has posted a variety of interesting tidbits in his blog since publication of his book, Television Disrupted and I couldn't help but think of his "Bootlegging the Bootleggers" post as I read David Carr's article "Deciding Eligibility for Oscar" in the New York Times.   The idea that there would be dispute about which of a film's producers would be eligible to receive a statue in the event a nominated work actually wins the best picture Oscar points to the producer glut of recent years. 

To fight “producer bloat,” where credits were being handed out as favors to actors, agents and financiers, the academy ruled that generally only three producers would be eligible for a film.

...

Peter Dekom, an entertainment lawyer, said that some retuning needed to be done. “In the independent world, it takes a variety of people to get a film done,” he said.

...

One of the dirty secrets of this time of year is that the money that is spent on the Oscars — hundreds of millions of dollars on television and trade ads, parties, and shipping DVDs to academy members — can never be recouped even by the most spectacular post-awards bounce.

For those involved in video/film production, the


David Mamet decries a similar trend in sty

Ruckus Goes to Yale! (is music on ipod the ultimate goal?)

Ruckus Goes to Yale!


In the article it said that Ruckus was giving away the service to anyone with a working “.edu” address. I registered as an alum and gave my class year, as opposed to saying I was a current student (I don’t know why I took them at face value).

 

I clicked on the registration link sent to my school address and was shown two really enormous and annoying ads. First there was a “free ringtones” service sign up (cancel anytime etc) as the landing page, on which I clicked “No thanks”- marveling at how much customer goodwill they just wasted.

 

Then they showed me an ITT tech ad! This seemed moronic-surely there is an advertiser out there who would pay more that ITT to show ads to people who went to actual 4-year universities. Besides, I have this thing about ITT Tech that looking at their ads is inherently bad luck (silly superstition that dates to when I was applying to college).

 

I bet Ruckus could have made this service, with the no-downloading to iPod, available to anyone with a college e-mail address (that would be a huge potential audience right there- 80% of the 142 million US adults in the online population have at least “some college” education). I bet that would have been an interesting play, but that’s not what they did. I thought, I’m not giving them my credit card info, I thought, but I still want to explore.

So after all this clicking…all they offered me was a free 3-day trial. 

 

Another thing I turned up last week was that technically, you can use rhapsody with an iPod if you are willing to forego the fact that it’s an iPod and let Rhapsody manage your collection of songs purchased  from Rhapsody, as well as MP3 and aac files.

 

To set up your iPod to work with compatible Rhapsody files:

 

- Update Rhapsody

- Install the iPod software and iTunes

- Update iTunes

- Activate your iPod

- Turn off automatic song updating and podcast updating in iTunes

- Enable disk use in iTunes

- Attach the iPod and open Rhapsody

 

These steps are not supported, that this would be way way too complex for the average user, and as likely as not to stop working unexpectedly.

The commercial logic for legal DRM free access to content on the web

This post at The Equity Kicker is an interesting follow-on to the news of major labels considering sales of DRM-free mp3s.  For aspiring artists, I wonder about the revenue model for their business (imagine the artist as a business).  If a large enough share of your revenue comes from concerts and merchandise sales, how much legitimate (DRM or no) online revenue would you give up to increase your local bookings/merchandise/touring.  Some people call that marketing.

“Mega stars have all the exposure they can handle and sell out their gigs in minutes, so there is little marginal benefit to them in a few extra fans having a copy of their music.  They will be better off with one extra CD sale.”

The blog quotes Cory Doctorow (scifi writer and editor of the BoingBoing blog) that some authors would be rather be pirated than unknown.  They would rather have an audience, a fanbase, a source of ongoing and loyal paying customers.

Verizon & FairPoint Agree to Merge Verizon's Wireline Businesses in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont

Saw this coming months ago when Verizon didn't want to commit to putting FIOS everywhere.  There were also many articles on speculation that VZ would not be interested in the legacy wireline businesses.

This is interesting.  On the one hand, perhaps this is good from a media
de-concentration perspective, though it probably doesn't affect industry
HHI very much.

On the other hand, this is really unfortunate for people who thought that VZ
scale and scope would give them access to FIOS at some point.  I think
the headline should more accurately read "Verizon  Chickens Out- Admits
Bloated Operations Stand in the Way of Serving Customers."

Three cheers for VermonTel?

A thought from the first quarter of the Giants game

In The Hunt for Red October, Captain Marko Ramius explains to his officers that the reason he told the Soviet navy of his intention to defect (and thereby assured that the Soviet navy would hunt them down) with this anecdote: "When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result his men were well motivated."

Something about the Giants march down the field for a score to take a 7-0 lead reminded me of that.  Maybe it was the ridiculous assertion by a radio talk host that there were Giants fans rooting against the team just to get rid of Tom Coughlin.  Wow.  Maybe it was just the general feeling that the Giants were fighting their coach and the opposition at the same time, or that the public and the team seem very hostile to TC.

But something about that drive said to me: they're using Tiki Barber, they're motivated, they are ready.  So maybe it's "proper motivation" that Coughlin feels- the motivation of being about to lose your job in a hail of gunfire.

A heroic 4th-quarter Giants drive, which included three consecutive Giants penalties creating a 1st and  30 from the Eagles 33 culminated in a game-tying TD pass, but the Giants defense couldn't stop the Eagles from getting into field goal range.  Eagles 23, Giants 20.

I wonder how long he'll still be the head coach. 

E-Paper! I've Been Waiting For This

Digital Media Wire reports:

   

"Cambridge, UK – UK-based Plastic Logic, announced that it has secured $100 million worth of venture capital, one of the largest deals in European venture capital history. The funding was co-led by Oak Investment Partners of Palo Alto, Calif., and Tudor Investment of Greenwich, Conn.

The company intends to use the funds to build a manufacturing facility as it shifts its business model away from a licensing strategy to manufacturing its own products. The company expects to begin manufacturing standalone flexible active-matrix display units that include connectivity hardware by 2009.

According to the release issued by the company, the products will enable the first “take anywhere, read anywhere” electronic reader products."

This product sounds like the future of newspapers to me.  People like the tangible nature of paper.  It is a really cool medium.  Add some advanced nav features and content that refreshes itself and I think we have a winner.  Hopefully they can get the price right so it's not a $300 mistake if you lose it.  And hopefully, it also won't be plagued by content partnership problems.

The Venice Project lifts off to others

USV partner Fred Wilson writes on his blog "the content is nowhere and I don't see how it gets somewhere. I can't upload anything to it. I can't put an RSS feed into it. I am stuck with whatever content they got licensed to showcase."

I did not have the good fortune to be a beta tester, but from reading the Venice Project blog, delivering what content they do have is done with limited infrastructure.

They have come content, and a few thousand registered beta testers...is it over for them already? Isn't it unfair to judge them before they get more infrastructure and more content?  Seems like the beta is proof that they can deliver video- they can pirate HBO and add lonelygirl15 and your Youtuber quicklist later, right?

Web without rules

From yesterday's NYT: Young Turn to Web Sites Without Rules

Stickam, based in Los Angeles, says it has 260,000 registered users — 50,000 of them say their age is 14 to 17 — and is adding 2,000 to 3,000 each day.

While I’m as wary as anyone about missing the next myspace or YouTube, it’ll be decades before they catch YouTube at this pace. There will always be a set of wild west sites, which will be great uncensored wastelands for porn and script kiddies pirating videos.

But just to keep from being negative, 15 of the top 30 most-viewed movies on stickam.com are women in their underwear. The top clip has 60,000 views. Congrats to the NYT for adding an infusion of dirty old men to the site’s user base.

The famous “Evolution of dance” video has been viewed 9,730 times. Er, 9,731- I love that video.

I Won!!!!!!!!!!

NPR has a weekly news/quiz show called “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” which is highly entertaining- I subscribe to the podcast version [itms link]. One recent show had a question about Time Magazine naming “You” the 2006 Person of the Year, 1101061225_120 and one of the guests quipped, “I will send a genuine United States Dollar Bill to anyone who puts that on his resume."

 

I thought that was a fantastic idea- I would contemplate trying it. You're either in great shape or totally screwed, I bet.

2007...meet 1994?

So I keep seeing all the hype over the iTv, the new device from Apple which will be for broadband video and connect to the TV.  Expectations include a robust download driven broadcast platform and DVR-like features.  I hope no one is quoting me for what the mac rumor mill is saying.

If true, or close to true, it will only be 14 or so years after the ill-fated MacTV- which was basically a Performa colored black and with a CATV in card.  You could only watch TV or use the mac, not both at the same time, and it had still but not video capture.   Remember those cartridge-loading CD-ROM drives?  My dad got one for my grandparents, and I think they were happy with it, sort of until everyone realized it was just an underpowered marketing mistake.

I think Apple is in a much better position to execute on a TV-related venture at this point, but I guess you never know.

I am I am I am I am....Superman?

So I decided to take the superhero quiz.  I'm evidently equally Superman and Ironman.  Somehow I always picture myself as less of a good guy in these things...less bound by the morays of society, but Superman is pretty cool, right?


You are Superman

Superman
75%
Iron Man
75%
Green Lantern
65%
Spider-Man
60%
Catwoman
55%
Robin
42%
Supergirl
37%
The Flash
35%
Batman
35%
Hulk
30%
Wonder Woman
27%
You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...