How a Cinematic Hit-Making Approach Could Bring Something "More Like Fulfillment" to Mavericks + GEMAYA
With all the talk about Vanilla Yahoo + Peanut Butter (and .com constituents wonder why the US is viewed um, differently, from outside it) Dave Winer summarises the ethos and working environment alot of us want to create and work under - but there are no guarantees whether you are within a smaller bootstrapped web 2.0 cheaper to start, easier to exit, business (with less staff on average than Dot Com companies did) or at a large public co' with endless product lines, armies of people and functional delineations.
Scripting.com : "Hanging out here with Doc Searls for a couple of days last week was like what I'm looking for, but I want ten Docs, and I want to be around them 200 days a year, developing ideas across disciplines. This is what my soul yearns for, not fame, or wealth, more like fullfillment."
In Australia, there we are seeing some financially driven rollups in digital (esp now Photon and Emitch are worth $100m+ more ea than was thought 5 years ago) : Mr Pascoe sent me BlueFreeWay's rollup which Bell Potter are floating, which aside from economics and exit, also exhibits the natural order to consolidation. People want to feel a part of something.
I found working as a Solo Freelancer (previously) sucked and employing one full time technical person is far worse for output and good feelings than employing two or three. It's great as a business grows to 6 to 9 people (a few geeks, founder/managers, a sales guy. admin, etc), and can then sometimes make a run at 15 but the per square inch brain power starts to decrease downwards from employee 10.
Growing from 15 to 60 is another whole exercise (podshow is around 60 employees now I heard on DSC recently) and I've seen many businesses implode at this level. However the best local online businesses (eg ninemsn, Seek, Carsales, Hitwise) have scaled extremely well to 150 to 300 staff. Exception that proves the rule. (remember DStore, Wishlist, Scape, Spike etc)
But back to Dave's original point, as he's not talking about traditional employees, contractors and collectives. I think of new web projects, and the related "Hit-Making" as similar to a film set; A group of tech specialists and talent form around an elevator pitch that a studio funds, which is turned into a script and then a shoot. 6-12 months of magic or dysfunction ensues. Then the product goes into distribution, and is ultimately absorbed into the media machine.
Playing the role of today's Studios are the VC's and angels, who are in effect middle men, who provide a bridge till the Networks pay a large acquisition premium for the latest successful beta. Wouldn't it be neat if YahooGoog could give decentralised Cell Leaders (like Dave and other leading experts) who then Exec Produced, and sometimes directed (but not always:) new projects. Basically, the Y-Combinator model funded by large customer aggregators. (it would be money better spent than some of the too far out R+D that occurs) Also similar to how Al-Qaeda works in a highly decentralised cell manner.
Compare new product development within a GEMAYA entity now and it's a very different proposition. If the model works for the film industry (the irony being private equity is getting increasingly into movies), why couldn't it work for Internet media ? Because by definition, the best people do not want to be employees in mature businesses earning salary plus fixed dividend like stock options returns; And sometimes being a Solo Entrepreneur or Maverick (with or without VC) isn't the way either. They want to be working on the New Thing. With Best of Breed people and friends.
Master of 500 Hats, a classic post by Dave McClure : "now & in the future: STEP ON THE FUCKING GAS ON THE DEALS, GUYS! do small acquisitions (<$50M) once or twice a month, do a large deal ($100-500M) every quarter, and bet big once a year ($1-2B+). buy LOTS of stuff, and do it FASTER -- then distribute it to your worldwide audience & monetize it using your own advertising engines. so far, Yahoo has only done a good job on the small stuff. they've whiffed on most other big deals since Overture."
Scripting.com : "Hanging out here with Doc Searls for a couple of days last week was like what I'm looking for, but I want ten Docs, and I want to be around them 200 days a year, developing ideas across disciplines. This is what my soul yearns for, not fame, or wealth, more like fullfillment."
In Australia, there we are seeing some financially driven rollups in digital (esp now Photon and Emitch are worth $100m+ more ea than was thought 5 years ago) : Mr Pascoe sent me BlueFreeWay's rollup which Bell Potter are floating, which aside from economics and exit, also exhibits the natural order to consolidation. People want to feel a part of something.
I found working as a Solo Freelancer (previously) sucked and employing one full time technical person is far worse for output and good feelings than employing two or three. It's great as a business grows to 6 to 9 people (a few geeks, founder/managers, a sales guy. admin, etc), and can then sometimes make a run at 15 but the per square inch brain power starts to decrease downwards from employee 10.
Growing from 15 to 60 is another whole exercise (podshow is around 60 employees now I heard on DSC recently) and I've seen many businesses implode at this level. However the best local online businesses (eg ninemsn, Seek, Carsales, Hitwise) have scaled extremely well to 150 to 300 staff. Exception that proves the rule. (remember DStore, Wishlist, Scape, Spike etc)
But back to Dave's original point, as he's not talking about traditional employees, contractors and collectives. I think of new web projects, and the related "Hit-Making" as similar to a film set; A group of tech specialists and talent form around an elevator pitch that a studio funds, which is turned into a script and then a shoot. 6-12 months of magic or dysfunction ensues. Then the product goes into distribution, and is ultimately absorbed into the media machine.
Playing the role of today's Studios are the VC's and angels, who are in effect middle men, who provide a bridge till the Networks pay a large acquisition premium for the latest successful beta. Wouldn't it be neat if YahooGoog could give decentralised Cell Leaders (like Dave and other leading experts) who then Exec Produced, and sometimes directed (but not always:) new projects. Basically, the Y-Combinator model funded by large customer aggregators. (it would be money better spent than some of the too far out R+D that occurs) Also similar to how Al-Qaeda works in a highly decentralised cell manner.
Compare new product development within a GEMAYA entity now and it's a very different proposition. If the model works for the film industry (the irony being private equity is getting increasingly into movies), why couldn't it work for Internet media ? Because by definition, the best people do not want to be employees in mature businesses earning salary plus fixed dividend like stock options returns; And sometimes being a Solo Entrepreneur or Maverick (with or without VC) isn't the way either. They want to be working on the New Thing. With Best of Breed people and friends.
Master of 500 Hats, a classic post by Dave McClure : "now & in the future: STEP ON THE FUCKING GAS ON THE DEALS, GUYS! do small acquisitions (<$50M) once or twice a month, do a large deal ($100-500M) every quarter, and bet big once a year ($1-2B+). buy LOTS of stuff, and do it FASTER -- then distribute it to your worldwide audience & monetize it using your own advertising engines. so far, Yahoo has only done a good job on the small stuff. they've whiffed on most other big deals since Overture."
posted by redbarren at 5:21 PM
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