Not a month goes by where a member of the mainstream media writes gloriously about Hugh Hefner and the American Dream. Most people touch base on the fact that the man has 7 girlfriends and 14 bunnies to entertain him… but what always gets me psyched is this, according to Marketwatch:
In the early 1950s, Hefner worked as a promotion copywriter for Esquire. When the magazine turned down his request for a $5 raise, he quit his job and decided to launch another publication geared to young men.
(…)
Playboy magazine hit newsstands in December 1953, shrewdly featuring Marilyn Monroe on its first cover. That issue sold more than 50,000 copies.
Within a few years, Playboy’s circulation topped 700,000 and then surpassed the 1 million mark, eclipsing rival Esquire along the way. Its circulation is now about 2.6 million, according to a spokeswoman. When Playboy celebrated its 25th anniversary at Tavern on the Green in New York City, Esquire’s former editor Clay Felker presented Hefner with a replica of a $5 bill.
“My face was on it,” Hefner said with a smile. “Felker told me, ‘All is forgiven. Please come home.’”
Hef was the reluctant entrepreneur but thanks to that he has managed to become his own boss now. That, to me, is the American Dream.
Incidentally, I interviewed Mr. Hefner - or Hef, as he asks everyone to call him - back when I was resident interviewer, spokesperson, and VP of Ad Sales at a men’s lifestyle online magazine that took on Playboy et al. I chased an interview with Hef for years but by virtue of being a competitor, he never granted me one… until Playboy was celebrating its 50th year anniversary and his promotional efforts made a pit-stop at our humble online magazine.
Like Hef, I asked for something (wasn’t money) at my old job, didn’t get it, had to leave to start something new. Time will tell if WatchMojo.com will overshadow my old company.
In some ways, it never will; in many ways, it already has. Unlike Hef who started a magazine, I started a video project.
Regardless, what is important when you start something, is defining success and being able to measure it.
Measures of Merit
Americans might recall Wesley Clark as a challenger for the White House in 2004. Previously, he was NATO’s Supreme Commander. He coined the concept of measures of merit, or little milestones that would allow you to measure your progress and determine if you are going in the right direction. When you start a company, generally there are no playbooks, so you have to be able to see the forest through the trees and ascertain if the steps you are taking are helping you or not.
Baby Steps
If this concept sounds familiar, it’s because it is awfully similar to What About Bob, Bill Murray’s movie where his shrink Richard Dreyfus urged him to take little, baby steps, to succeed.
In business, and in Web-based businesses where companies go from registering a URL to selling for billions in 2 years (Bebo, YouTube), time is of the essence and you cannot always bide your time… but you do need to have baby steps, or measures or merit, as well.
For me, there are countless of milestones that I laid out, like our first video, our 100th video, our 1,000th video, our first ad client, our first syndication deal, the list goes on… connecting the dots, I also recalled thinking of our interviews.
My first interview at my old job wasn’t with Hef or another big name interviewee… it was with soccer player and actor Vinnie Jones. I had no clue who he was up to 30 minutes before the interview… but by the time I hang up my mike, I had interviewed a cornucopia of newsmakers that included Hef, Joe Montana, Seal, Yoko Ono, Tony Hawk, Jenna Jameson, Usher, Wyclef Jean, Def Leppard, Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Avril Lavigne, Wu Tang Clan, and many others.
Content is content… admittedly, so invariably when WatchMojo.com became big enough to do interviews, I joked to our resident interviewer that our initial interviews would snowball and we would get bigger and bigger names. At my old gig, for a series of odd reasons I interviewed my share of DJs. But I never interviewed Moby (I’m not a fan or anything, but he is one of the more successful DJs, after all).
All I care about are streams, and lord knows those are going in the right direction:
This past week we interviewed Moby, for example. The interview itself really does not change anything… nor does it rank anywhere near our most popular or viewed videos… but what it represents, in terms of Baby Steps or Measures of Merit is significant.
It’s just one small step in our efforts to live the American Dream. Enjoy it… all 6 parts, here is Part 1:
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WatchMojo NewsletterReading about how VCs are threatening to sue TheFunded.com to shut it up, I wondered:
- If you want something to go away, the worst thing you can do is take legal action: nothing adds more credibility to something that when you throw a $500/hour lawyer at it.
- If VCs don’t want a bad reputation, they should avoid doing bad things. Not all of them do bad things, some of them do… word would get out, one way or another… so if not on a centralized location like TheFunded.com (where they can access the info and see what is said about them) then it would be in back-channel places; trust me, that will hurt them more.
- Every thing about VCs boils down to control: control in a company, control in a fund, etc. VCs need control to be relevant (hence one reason they seek Preferred Shares and want veto on a number of things). I think they dislike the site in general but they hate the fact that they cannot control what is said about them on such a site.
- VCs have all of the power in the world thanks to their money. In other words, with enough investing power they will be able to mend bridges and get over anything one pissed-off entrepreneur will say. Smart entrepreneurs take the good, bad and ugly into account but they make their own conclusions, by throwing a fit, VCs are showing that they give entrepreneurs less credit than we deserve.
- All entrepreneurs work with and co-exist with other entrepreneurs, so we know that not everything that an entrepreneur says is 100% accurate, but not all entrepreneurs work or interact with VCs. So net-net, chances are that we will realize that some of the entrepreneurs’ feedback on TheFunded is not 100% accurate or at least, biased.
- Lastly, wouldn’t it be funny if VCs teamed up and started to give feedback on businesses and entrepreneurs… oh, wait, they already do!
Anyway, this seems like much ado about nothing… and I think net-net, TheFunded.com is something that VCs and entrepreneurs should welcome, after they take everything on the site with a grain of salt.
Read more on TheFunded:
- My 15 minutes with the Founder of TheFunded.com
- TheFunded Adds Term Sheet Info, All Hell Breaks Loose in VC-Land
Read more on VCs:
- Mistakes VCs Make
- Why do Entrepreneurs Accept Some VCs Draconian Terms?
- The Biggest Mistake VCs and Entrepreneurs Make: Hogs get Slaughtered
In the wake of Bebo’s sale to Time Warner AOL for $850M, musician Billy Bragg asks: where’s the money, Birches?, referring to would-be, accrued royalties that he and other artists should have been paid from the site off its 40M users (basically, like radio).
Nick Carr says Bragg is right. The hippie love crowd says Bragg is wrong.
Here’s the thing: anyone who says one argument is right or wrong is wrong. This is complex. Admittedly, Bragg’s argument traces back to MySpace, who would try to seize ownership right of uploaded music and ended up selling for $580M to News Corp. Ironically, MySpace itself is an example of “ripped off talent and sweat” for its founders probably feel like they got jipped as parent Intermix and their VC Redpoint Partners walked away with over $550M (if not more) of the proceeds.
You see, in life, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate for: Bragg says that artist royalties were the white elephant in the room when Birch asked him for feedback on artists’ demands and outlook (when he was introducing music to the site). Well, Sir, why didn’t you bring it up? The fact that the Birches did not raise the issue does not absolve them of any duty, but it does not make them wrong or criminal, at worst, it makes them opportunistic… and more power to them… for we live in a dog-eat-dog, capitalistic society.
Why is this important? Mr. Bragg argues that artists and musicians are no less important than accountants, engineers, investors. He is right, but I really, really, really doubt investors would have plunked down any money if Bebo had a guaranteed liability to artists yet had no tangible guarantee of any upside, revenue or value created.
I met the Birches very briefly in LA at Paid Content’s shindig and they seemed like genuinely nice people. I’ve never net or heard of Mr. Bragg but am sure he is no devil, either. Life is complex, business is even more so.
Ultimately, the lesson is very simple: sadly people don’t get what they deserve (good or bad), they don’t even get what they ask for… no one hands you anything, especially not in the super competitive music or business worlds.
PLAY
