Posts tagged “Business”
“Roberson says the goal in expanding [Kanye] West’s brand is to decrease his dependence on music for money. Just as a magazine publisher wants to have a balance between advertising and subscription revenue, for instance, West wants to have something resembling parity between his music and non-music related ventures. Or, to borrow a line from his mentor Jay-Z, West doesn’t just want to be a businessman, he wants to be a business, man.”
The Daily Beast
Isn’t it ironic how after you make it as an artist your goal is diversifying cash flow? Cash is king.
by Clayton M. Christensen
The powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.
Silly business jargon but with three practical points:
- Start with business outcomes.
- Direct the evolution of business capabilities.
- Provide design implementation models oriented around business change.
Marketing: P&G’s $57 Billion Bet on Gillette Five Years Later - Advertising Age - News
When Gillette married P&G it was supposed to be about ‘reverse syngergy.’
Jack Donaghy would be proud.
“Samsung’s TV plant in Tianjin, China, increased productivity by two-thirds last year by standardizing parts and replacing conveyor-belt assembly lines with production in which each worker builds sets from start to finish. Using identical software, printed circuit boards, and virtually all other components has cut the time Samsung needs to roll out a model worldwide to one month, from 16 weeks four years ago. Television analyst Riddhi Patel at researcher iSuppli reckons such techniques have been instrumental in Samsung’s success in TVs: “This lets Samsung react to market needs in a very timely manner.”
“We (Zappos) formalized the definition of our culture into 10 core values. We wanted to come up with committable core values, meaning that we would actually be willing to hire and fire people based on those values, regardless of their individual job performance. Given that criteria, it’s actually pretty tough to come up with core values.”
“Nobody has had a better World Series so far than a former pitcher with a 5.55 earned run average in his only season as a Montreal Expos farmhand. He is Darek Braunecker, 39, and as he strode through the tunnel between the clubhouses at Yankee Stadium early Friday morning, he was the only person fully satisfied with the outcome of both games. The Yankees paid more than they expected for A.J. Burnett. But they wanted him more than pitcher Derek Lowe.
Braunecker is an agent based in Little Rock, Ark. His top two clients are Cliff Lee, the Phillies’ left-hander who won Game 1, and A. J. Burnett, the Yankees’ right-hander who won Game 2. The series is tied as it shifts to Philadelphia for Game 3 on Saturday, but Braunecker is 2-0
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1. That I Can Has Cheezburger? purchase price was probably lower than the $2 million Time and others (ahem) reported. Huh is unflappably mum on what he spent, but he’s too good a business man to have ponied up that much—even as fast as the profitable site was growing. Plus, regulatory filings show his angel round he raised to buy that blog and build a company around it was just $2.25 million. When I asked why he’d spend almost the entire amount on one acquisition, he didn’t so much nod, answer or agree as make a face that said “Yes, thank you for not assuming I’m a total idiot.” But, yeah, he won’t comment.
2. Huh has really studied what makes humor catch and made an interesting observation: Male sites and female sites grow distinctly differently. Men tend to share by gut instinct, so male oriented sites grow faster but can churn users quickly too. Women are more trust-oriented, says Huh. That means they share links and sites less frequently, but with more credibility. So the sites grow slower but maintain their audiences better.
It’s an interesting observation given how much of the early breakout Web 2.0 were so male dominated, and Huh should know seeing the traffic patterns of Hawtness![]()
(slightly NSFW) andLovelyListing![]()
. (Guess which one is for men?)
For the record I Can Has Cheezburger? is about 50%-50% male-female, but nearly 100% geeks-who-love-cats, both of which have aided huge and sustained growth. As Huh explains it, dog people go to parks, cat people sit inside on computers.
3. Just how good that traffic is. The Pet Holdings Network boasts 12 million uniques a month and does 1 billion page views every four months. Those numbers are astounding for a 26-person, user generated content company built largely on frivolity.
We all know about Cheezburger, which surpassed 1 billion page views last month. But FAIL blog went from zero to 10 million page views-per-month in just 90 days, and the recently launchedThereIFixedIt.com ![]()
has matched that pace.
That said, Huh doesn’t hugely care how fast a blog grows, as long as it grows. What gets one of his sites shut down is a huge spike and then a fall.
His newest site, NotVeryTalented.com ![]()
launches on Friday.
4. Revenues. Huh has done a great job making money in tough industries. While a lot of blogs are sputtering, his have 30% margins, posting CPMs anywhere between 15 cents and $8. The least profitable is clearly Hawtness, which Huh doesn’t even try to sell ads on, given the dodgy inventory. “It just hooks in readers,” he says.
Here’s the shocker: The company also makes 30% margins from book publishing deals, and advances and royalties make up nearly a third of the company’s revenues, which are in the “single digit millions.” More shocking: Huh can’t seem to get a publisher to sign him to a multi-book deal. This despite the fact that the first LOLcats book![]()
spent 13 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Really, New York publishing houses?
Huh plans on releasing six books next year and – SPOILER ALERT- the third LOLCats book will be all about kittens.
5. Huh has a social network too. Even if you knew all of the above, this one must surprise you because it recently surprised Huh. Pet Holdings has long offered a log-in and profile for contributors who regularly post images and passively given them the ability to friend each other. The result? A niche social network![]()
with 1.3 million users. Huh hasn’t quite decided what to do with this revelation, but he’s thinking about it. As comparatively well as he’s done with blog ads and book sales, to really scale the company, he’d like a sexier revenue stream that can grow fast without massively growing content.
TechCrunch
Amazing story of Motorola’s 2009 Q4 offerings from a year ago. How’d they get so lucky with Verizon?
Moto’s CEO is one of the highest paid CEOs anywhere, if he makes Droid work, he’ll have earned it.
This is the best example I’ve seen about the future of R&D and it’s happening right now.
