Tightrope Media Systems

Part IV: Starting Your Own Business In Less Than 3600 Words

2010-03-05T04:19:46Z

In last week’s post, we covered pressure, partners and niches. This week, we’ll wrap things up with some observations and final thoughts…

Observation 1: The World Is Infinitely Large

We are more connected than ever, which often leads us all to think about a shrinking planet. The planet is not shrinking. In fact, it’s expanding. Thanks to the Internet, Skype, free trade, the pervasive use of the English language in business circles and UPS, our access to markets has never been greater. The world is now infinitely large as far as your startup business is concerned.

Understanding this fact will help you in many ways.

First, there is always someone out there who thinks that they have no other option but to buy your undocumented product that you just made in your basement. They don’t have a full picture of the market and trust you are their only option. Lucky you!

Likewise, if you screw up really badly, there is always some customer who doesn’t know about your screw up. Your worst mistake won’t mean the end. You may just have to leave town for a while.

Third, there is no niche too small, given that it’s likely that even the smallest niche is potentially 10’s of millions of dollars of annual revenue in size. You probably only need 10% of one of those 10’s of millions to be happy.

To help illustrate the scale of opportunities out there, the next time you’re on a plane and descending onto the runway for landing, look down at the houses, streets, schools, play fields, stores, warehouses, cars, trucks and office buildings.

That’s the view from one window from one plane on one approach on one runway at one airport in one city in one state in one country. Just think about how much steel and concrete someone had to sell. Think about all of the crap that had to be invented. Think of all of the commerce that you witnessed. Think about how many niches you just saw.

The world is infinitely large.

Observation 2: All Things Are Relative

Your best attempt is worse than someone else’s worst product, but it’s better than what the potential client in front of you has ever seen and better than what they have.

It never ceases to amaze me, the crappy digital signage systems out there that people buy. Whenever I’m upset that Carousel doesn’t meet some internal utopian system that I’ve got in my head, all that I need to do is walk the Digital Signage Expo floor for 5 minutes to get my confidence back. Relative to my competitors within my niche, Carousel is at the very least competitive. It’s easy to forget that when you are around a great staff that has extremely high standards.

Tightrope goes to InfoComm. When we first started, we were in one 1/4 of someone else's 20x20. Now we're in our own 20x30 and we're still a pretty small exhibitor!

When we first started out, I once foolishly assumed that all of the digital signage business in Minnesota was about 2 million dollars. I told JJ in our first year of business, “If we ever sell a million dollars in a year, I’ll quit.” We’ll most likely do that in one single month this year, yet relative to where we could be, we’re still a very small company.

As you grow, you’ll be amazed at how little things really change. The numbers get larger but the verbs and nouns do not budge. Cash flow is always king. Support is always a work in progress. You’re always on the edge of something, waiting to break to the next level.

JJ and I were going through another set of struggles in the early days, just after we bought the company from Visual Circuits. Sales were low, cash flow was in the tank and, again, we didn’t know how we were getting out of it. We were at InfoComm, pecking over the wreckage at dinner, contemplating an exit strategy. That meal was awful.

Our good friends invited us out to dinner the next night, their treat, at Fogo De Chao. We had all-you-can-eat steaks of just about any cut. There were green olives the size of key limes and as crunchy as apples. We loosened our belts and retired to the bar to smoke stogies and sip cognac, returning after a nice belch to have more steak.

The scene of gluttony.

The contrast could not have been greater. We were choking back Applebee’s-quality pasta the night before, depressed over the condition of our life’s work. The next night we were with friends, forgetting our troubles, laughing our asses off and eating like pigs.

At the trade show floor the next day, things were going to be fine.

Why does this matter? Just keep in mind as you move along that you’re never as insignificant as it may seem. Things are never as bad as they could be. As long as you are in control, your attitude and resolve will be your fate, far more than any set of mere facts will be.

Keep your head up.

At least you’re not working for that jackass back at that company you worked for before you realized that you were unemployable.

All things are relative.

Observation 3: People Are Good

The world is filled with excellent people that want you to succeed. Most pay their bills and are honest. If, in turn, you are disarmingly honest about your business, your motivations and your struggles, you will find that almost without exception, people will help you.

Roger and Doug: Two close friends who'd do anything for us, and we'd do anything for them.

Find great mentors who’ve been there before and lean on them. You cannot have enough people around you that are willing to share their experiences.

JJ and I once had this great idea about charging for support. We scheduled a conference call with some of our mentors and laid out the plan:

Customers abuse support.
They don’t read the manual.
It costs us a lot of money.
Let’s charge them for support.

Everyone listened politely, asked questions and then departed. Shortly after the call, Tom Walsh, also known as The Old Man, called back.

Tom: “I think you guys are ruining your business and I’m going to fly up there to stop you from doing it. Are you around next week?”

Wow. Tom came up and, for free, laid out the problems he had with our plan. During the few days that he was at The Rope, he talked about support, cash flow, management and product development. He gave us advice like, “When you’re little, spend less money than you make.” and “If you have a support problem, you really have a development problem.”

I cannot count how many times Tom has stopped JJ and I from doing something stupid, not that we always listened. He also lets us know when he thinks we’re doing the right thing. Tom and his business partner Tracy are a part of Tightrope. We would not be the same company if not for them.

You cannot succeed in starting your business without finding your own Tom and Tracy. And no, you can’t have ours.

Wrapping It Up

So, these are the things that we’ve Learned so far. I’m sure that we’ll learn a lot more in the next 12 years. There is so much that I don’t know and our days of leaning on mentors are far from over. I look back with extreme embarrassment on the assumptions and the actions and the mistakes that we made in the early days. As proud as I am of where we are today, I know that in another 12 years, we’ll look back on these Good Old Days with the same feelings. Because, after all, all things are relative.

I hope that this was helpful and I hope that you find satisfaction, no matter what you decide to do with your life. Maybe this marathon set of blog posts scared the shit out of you and you’ve decided to suck it up and be the stellar employee that you always knew you could be.

But, if you’re insane enough to try your own thing, then with all sincerity, good luck! That is unless you plan on starting a digital signage or broadcast server business. Then my good luck is dripping with sarcasm.

Part III: Starting Your Own Business In Less Than 3600 Words

2010-03-02T21:32:10Z

In last week’s post, we covered the depressing topics of failure and venture capitalists. We continue this series by talking about pressure, partners and niches.

Step 4: Along with Failure, Get to Know Pressure

As we illustrated in parts of Step 3, you need pressure. Having a wife and kids is no excuse to not start a business. In fact, they make it even more likely that you’ll succeed! Nothing focuses the mind like feeding your family. It’s part of our hunter/gatherer evolution.

I use to tell my wife all of the time, “It’s only bankruptcy. They’re not going to take our kids away.”

This was of no comfort to her, of course, even though that’s why I was saying it.

JJ and I just took on some office space. JJ did the build out while I answered the phones.

About four years back, after having very slow sales for a few months and then a big rush of orders the next, JJ and I hit a massive cash flow hole. We had exhausted every line of credit available to us. We were, flat-out, out of money. I was lying prone on his office floor. He was hunched over his desk, weeping softly. Where was payroll coming from? How were we going to order parts for the POs that we had? We had to make tough decisions that day and those changes made us a better company and better leaders.

If you never have to put yourself in that situation because you’ve carefully laid everything out, averted all risk by pilling it on to some VC, you’re not going to feel the pressure. You need it to focus your energy and you need it to keep you moving forward.

Sidebar: This is why it is so hard for the children of business owners to have the same success as their parents and why it’s hard for large businesses to enter emerging markets, like digital signage.

The success of the child is never appreciated because it’s in the shadow of the parent’s much greater achievements. A parent company will likely ask, “Why are we wasting our time on this tiny division loosing 500k a year when we’re a 500 million dollar company?”

Also, the parent (or parent business) ends up shielding the child from important lessons by using their own success to bankrolling their ventures. There is never enough pain and never enough pressure, so they only learn with a small ‘l’. They don’t own it.

Step 5: Be a Why or a How

Okay, enough about pressure and failure. Let’s talk about you. Most of the businesses that I’ve observed are started by what I call a How person and a Why person, or they have a completely bat-shit crazy person that is both.

The Why in any business is the “Why we are doing this?” person. They convince people, often much smarter than they are, to go in on something even though they are almost certain to fail. They are evangelists.

Two people, much smarter than me, that I suckered into working for TRMS. Steve Israelsky and Richard Turner.

They usually spend money like it comes out of a faucet, have no aversion to risk and have no shame. They’ll walk into any meeting believing they’ve got the right solution and make any promises necessary to close deals not out of a lie, but because they know they can get it done. They’ll take money from their mother’s retirement account and their child’s piggy bank to fund the business.

They have an unwavering, irrational belief — belief — in what they are doing. This is the sales person. They sell to their own partners, they sell to the wives and they sell to the customers. Again, they are the ‘Why’.

Sidebar: Belief is the most powerful force in the human condition. Belief is absolutely immune to fact or truth. People do the most outlandishly horrific and beautiful things in the name of belief. It’s what causes us to lift each other up or to die in the name of something. A world without belief would be unrecognizable from what we see today.

Visual Circuits bought Tightrope back in the year 1999. They had us for a full nine months and then the bottom fell out of the tech bubble and they got squeezed. First to go was this tiny division called Tightrope Media Systems. Oddly enough, the only employee that they “laid off” was… me! It’s because I’m unemployable.

So, newly unemployed with three month’s severance, I decided it was time to get the band back together. I called JJ up and made my pitch. JJ was finally making money (he never got paid when we owned Tightrope). He was getting married in a few months. He was building a house. He had every reason in the world to ignore me, but I kept at him.

“This is the moment, JJ. Right #%$in’ here! This is that moment you will look back at and say, I took my chance and I did it. Do you really want to end up working for Visual Circuits for the rest of your life?”

I got fired. I had nothing to lose. But I did really believe that there was no way to fail and I really believed that JJ wouldn’t be happy unless he stepped out and took another chance.

Equally important to your success is the How person, as in “How are we doing this?“ This person puts up with the Why person. He/she is pragmatic, practical, consistent and talented. They too have an unwavering belief in their ability to get the job done, even if they’ve never done it before and in fact suck at it, at first. But, they deliver on that belief with action, quickly picking up skills as they go along.

JJ and I were heading down to our first trade show. To that date, he had only learned VisualBasic Script and had used that language to program the very first versions of Axis MC (our media retrieval system) and Axis TV (our video bulletin board system). On the way down to Texas in my 1987 Honda Accord, JJ whips out the laptop to start programming the television control software. For this, he needs to learn VisualBasic, which he tags as, “super easy.”

Later, when JJ needed to learn the C programming language, he said to me, “C is easy! It’s like VisualBasic but with semicolons.” I think he was joking.

JJ never really stops to think about how hard something is. He just does it. He’s a How.

The How person would not be in business if it were not for the Why person. The Why person would have no hope of success without the How.

Every now and again, you find someone so insane that they are able to embody both of these personalities. You will know that you have found such a person soon after you’ve met them. They’re extremely obsessive and they’re quirkiness is often taken for genius, which makes up for their lack of sales ability.

A friend of mine is close friends with someone like this. We’ll call the insane businessman Chris, because that’s his name. Chris owns a retail outfit that sells consumer products through the web and at a local store. He rose to become one of the two largest retailers in his niche industry.

One day, Chris was fighting his point of sale system (the cash register and inventory computers). Having very little outside retail experience and even less computer knowledge, he decided to write his own system using a Linux box and PHP.

My friend who knows Chris would go to his house and marvel at the perfectly organized CD collection, where every case would open in the same direction once removed from the shelf and every CD label was perfectly level with the floor. That is, until my friend would randomly open cases and tilt the CDs just a little bit, forcing Chris to go through the whole collection and re-straighten the molested CDs.

Are you bat-shit crazy like Chris? If not, you need to either be the Why or the How and find the one you’re not, because you need both.

Step 6: Do Only One Thing Better Than Anyone Else

Focus on one thing and own that one thing. It’s very easy to go after what will pay the bills in the early days, instead of focusing on bettering the organization and the product or service that you set out to change the world with.

“If we just add this one thing” or “if we can just make this product we’ll have an extra 50k in the bank.”

These are wastes of time that will kill your business. Unless the special thing that you’re going to do is something that makes your product better and contributes to the assets of your company, you need to ignore it as the noise that it is.

Your best shot as a startup is to pick a neglected niche that is under served by established competitors that are chasing after more lucrative markets. You come in, offer something that is custom made for these poor neglected souls and keep hammering away until nobody can possibly knock you off this beachhead. You have the killer application for these people. This is pretty much a text book play. In fact, the name of the text book is Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore.

JJ and I got introduced to some really cool guys that were building an entertainment network for bars using digital signage technology. Unlike the dozens of other people that have tried this, these guys had the relationships with the bars and the beer companies that would want to advertise on their network. They also had more than enough cash and were ready to go.

We got very far down the road with these guys. We had spreadsheets that laid out how we were going to make very good money being a part of something that had a really high likelihood of success.

We sent our trainer, Pete, out to their facility to show them how Carousel would work as the beginning of a system that we would later change to fit their needs. Pete came back with a notebook full of changes to Carousel. It looked nothing like our vision for digital signage.

We already learned that lesson, illustrated in Step 3: Get to Know and Love Failure. We had to shut it down —one of the most painful, and correct, decisions in our company’s history.

Next week we’ll wrap things up with three observations and some parting thoughts…

Part II: Starting Your Own Business In Less Than 3600 Words

2010-03-02T21:24:06Z

Last week I started this four part series on starting your business. I talked about the importance of being unemployable and becoming an unreasonable person. Hmm….

This week, we’ll continue the happy thoughts with…

Step 3: Get to Know and Love Failure

The only lessons that you ever truly learn come from failure. Since you’ve never done this before, you need lots of lessons. Success only brings money. Money means taxes. Figuring out the ins and outs of a K1 and quarterly withholdings will take you at least 5 years.

Early on in Tightrope’s history, we made a product called a media retrieval system, which played back video in classrooms from VCRs and DVD players located in a central head end. Teachers scheduled and controlled these playback devices using our web application.

One day, a college contacted us about our system. It was a big job and in order to land it, we had to do some custom programming. They wanted to play VCR tapes in a window on desktop computers. We would do this by installing tuner cards that would switch to the television channel that any one of 32 VCRs were playing on… hmm… this may sound too confusing. Let me recap:

Computers, which are good at playing video files, are controlling VCRs located in a remote head end, which are playing video over a television channel on their closed circuit television network. Said computer tunes to said VCR’s TV channel and the person at that computer then controls and watches the tape, which must be loaded into the correct VCR, at the appointed time, by a highly paid librarian.

If this doesn’t sound like the most insane application of technology that you’ve ever heard of, then you need to read the above paragraphs again. If it still doesn’t seem incredibly stupid, then consider this: After we installed the system, they installed Cytrix on all of the desktops. This is a system that centralized all of their desktop applications, turning these same computers into dumb terminals, which in turn made local video playback from the newly installed TV tuner cards completely impossible.

Not one person in this college ever played a single video from this convoluted piece of crap system that we had our name attached to.

In short, we failed.

What did we receive for this tuition? What did we get for wasting 6 months of our time and loosing money on plane trips, unpaid invoices and lost reputation? We Learned, with a capital ‘L’, that you don’t do custom work unless it makes your product better and adds value to your company over the long term, no matter how much you need the money in the short term. (we’ll talk about this more next week)

Each time you make one of these bone-headed mistakes, you’ll Learn with white-hot intensity a valuable lesson that a book or a marketing teacher could only tell you. When you learn with the capital ‘L’, the lesson is permanent.

By the way, how do you react when you fail?

Again, early on in Tightrope’s past, I was driving home and decided to call a venture capitalist whom I had begged for money from. He finally picked up his phone after several attempts at reaching him and graciously informed me that we were not a part of his plans and bid me good luck.

I thanked him, said goodbye and then hung up. Next, I reenacted the scene from Pulp Fiction where Bruce Willis is beating the hell out of his Civic as he’s screaming at his lover, who forgot his watch, in a way that he could not if she were actually in the car. Then I called my mom and used her as a proxy for the VC guy because screaming into thin air wasn’t satisfying enough.

You need to be the kind of person that gets mad, not the kind of person that gets sad. You double down when you fail. You don’t question your idea, you just work harder. That VC that turned you down or that account that you lost or that loan officer that said no?

Each one a fatally flawed moron.

They will one day be a part of a row of mounted heads in your world headquarters — a monument to their disgrace and a testament to your unappreciated genius.

Step 4: Avoid Venture Capital

Venture capital almost never works. You’re better off using your own money, credit cards or a relative to help you with any capital that you absolutely need.

When you have venture capital, you’re spending their money. This is now their venture, their business and you work for them. What they want and what you want are different things and they get what they want and you do not. It will feel very much like the employment you were trying to escape back in Step 1: Get Fired.

You want their money and then you want them gone so that you can change the world.

They want to treat your business like they’re flipping a house; tarting it up for others to see, spending as little as possible and then selling their interest as quickly as they can for as much as they can. Not exactly the Bo to your Luke.

What’s worse, however, is that a VC can put a million dollars worth of novocain between you and your stupid mistakes. Pain means you fail fast and move on. Money dulls pain, which greatly reduces the pressure that you’d otherwise feel and frees you to keep acting stupidly.

Caarousel was the world's first digital signage system that you updated with a web browser! We somehow got there without VC money. weird...

To be sure, the VC will put pressure on you, but it’s not the same. That pressure is annoying and unwelcome. It’s not the sphincter tightening pressure that comes from delaying your mortgage payment by a couple of weeks or going without a paycheck for the second time in a row. Watch your kids eat romen noodles because you have a 7 dollar a day food budget if you want to feel real pressure. That kind of pressure focuses the mind.

What’s your percentage chance of permanent failure if you strike out on your own with no VC backing?

Answer: 0%

Every setback is just another lesson and we’ve already established that you’re pig-headed, arrogant and unemployable back in last week’s post. We know that there is no end to the number of lessons that you’ll tolerate.

You’re also perfectly convinced that your idea is rockstar, stated somewhere in that same post. If you’re not both of these things then money isn’t going to help you anyway, so why hedge your bets?

Bankruptcy? A chance for a court-ordered fresh start! Even if you get thrown in jail because your idea violates some obscure decency law, you can still visit your clients during appointed visitation hours. In fact, the only way that I know of to fail permanently is if you’re dead and if you are dead, you’re much less likely to care anyway.

What’s your percentage chance of permanent failure if you secure VC funding?

Answer: Much more complicated…

23% chance that you miss some arbitrary deadline imposed by the VC and he pulls funding or denies additional funding, calling the idea a failure.
8% chance the economy tanks or he gets a divorce and pulls all of the money he can out of his investments to throw under his mattress.
6% chance he gets bored and wants to pull out in order to work on something that is newer, shinier and goes, “Beep! Beep!”
47% chance that the VC forces poisonous ideas designed to gain market share, defensively combat entrenched competition, or to make the product attractive to other huge markets and more investors, all of which turn your idea into a huge pile of crap that could never possibly succeed.
14% chance that he figures out that you’re just bilking him for a steady paycheck and bonuses.

Even though I passed Algebra II with two Fs for each quarter and a C- in the final, I can say with some authority (and the free calculator on my Mac) that you have a 2% chance of success.

Sidebar: When is venture capital a good idea? When you’re a successful company that is looking to make the leap from being relevant and awesome to world dominating and all you need is a ton of cash and access to other really important people besides your rich VC buddy, like Rupert Murdoch or Donald Trump. If you’re in a land grab and you have a company with real value, you can negotiate with VCs as peer-to-peer, not master-to-servant. Sometimes it’s the only way to raise a great company up to a much higher level.

With a venture capitalist’s money, at best you’ve traded your passion for a steady paycheck for as long as you can con them into keeping the gravy train rolling. Then you’ve lost nothing. Not even bankruptcy! In fact, when they leave, you can start again, albeit delayed, but fresh with the knowledge that I was right and VCs suck!

At worst, well… let’s do more math:

$0.00: The amount that your great idea is worth to the real world with nothing accomplished but a business plan.
$1,000,000.00: The amount that you get a hypothetical VC to give you for your great idea + said business plan that promises him that your idea is as secure as a bank loan, but not from CitiBank.
60%: The percentage of the company he takes from you, because it’s his money and he will not abide your dumb ass in the driver’s seat.
$75,000,000.00: The amount you sell your company to Cisco for, because Cisco buys everything for stupid amounts of money and everyone’s dream is to sell to Cisco.
60% x $75,000,000.00 = $45,000,000.00

Congratulations? In going the venture capitalist route, you’ve just received a pile of the most expensive cash you could have ever asked for. Instead of using a credit card at 25% interest, you’re using VC money at 4,500% interest, if your dream comes true. The Mafia has better terms than a venture capitalist.

Why bargain with a VC from a position of abject weakness, like when you’re just starting out and have nothing but your optimism and a business plan? As you can tell from my airtight math, you’re 98% and roughly 44 million dollars better off without them.

Next week we’ll cover the importance of pressure, finding the right business partner and focusing on one niche…

Part I: Starting Your Own Business In Less Than 3600 Words

2010-03-02T21:15:34Z

A friend of mine asked about starting his own business. All he really wanted to know was how to register a business name, which I thought as odd. Our approach to starting a business was:

Sell the product
Make the product
Deliver the product, fixing it as you try to get it running.
Make up an invoice in Word and hope you get paid.

This seemed to work fine. Wayzata School District got the world’s first web centric digital signage and media retrieval system using this approach! None of this seemed strange when I was 21 years old and JJ was 19. Of course, 5 years after that incarnation of Tightrope was dissolved, we were still dealing with latent tax issues. Once I was even served by American Express because someone of a similar company name (TMS Holdings) owed them money.

Maybe there is more to the admin side than I thought…

Anyway, this got me thinking and writing. What have we learned so far about starting a business? What advice would I give to someone who was fool-hearty enough to attempt what we have done?

So let’s begin with the first in a four part series on starting your own business.

Step 1: Get Fired

The first step is to be unemployable. This means that you are unable to suffer someone else’s suboptimal solutions, you suck at keeping your mouth shut and you become so disenfranchised at your current job that you stop playing the game. You show up late and leave early, do your job and nothing more and are constantly amazed that in a free market economy, your employer isn’t filing for bankruptcy. In any other country your boss would starve to death, but here, he orders you around.

Tom Ringdal inspired most of us at Tightrope. He's on the right and my boy, Thomas is in the middle. He is, in fact, named after Tom.

There are no successful business people that I know that are not also arrogant and unemployable. Why else would you subject yourself to the risk, pain and poverty that starting your own business will bestow upon you?

These people not only want to work for themselves, they cannot work for anyone else.

Step 2: Be an Unreasonable Person and Change the World

You need to have an idea that you cannot believe someone hasn’t thought of first and then when you find out that someone has, because there will be someone else who has because nothing is ever new under the sun, you cannot get discouraged. In fact, you must get mad. You must focus your energy on destroying them.

Sidebar: Often the best ideas come from a motivation of vengeance. When you’re vengeful, you have that extra motivation to not embarrass yourself. It’s also a lot of fun and you need to have fun, because you’re going to be poor for a really long time.

JJ and Daniel from PSG/Telvue at a trade show. Daniel is ready to throw down, tired of all of our vengeful antics.

I’ve heard more than once the words, “I want to start my own business!”

“Doing what?”, I ask.

A contemplative look and then, “I think I’ll make iPhone applications. Everyone seems to be making money at that.”

At this point my soul dies a little bit.

You cannot start a business without a burning desire to change the world! Getting into business to make money is a sucker’s bet.

Here’s a hint: Want to make money? Become a great sales person. Want to be poor, suffer huge amounts of risk and maybe if everything goes right make a profit 10 years later? Start your own business.

The only good reason to start a business is to change the world.

Next week is Part II: Getting To Know Failure and Avoiding Venture Capital…

TRMS Website Relaunch!

2010-01-22T23:09:58Z

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably noticed that the Tightrope website has been relaunched with a brand new design.

This project has been in the works for a long time, and we’re incredibly excited to finally flip the switch and reveal it to the world!

So. What’s new?

New features

It’s much easier to find what Tightrope has to offer. Right on the home page, you can click through to our digital signage products, see our professional broadcast offerings, or get quick access to our world-class support team.
Tightrope Creative is proudly featured as part of our digital signage services. If you want your Carousel digital signage system to really catch eyes, you need to get in touch with our creative team.
Every product we sell has its own page with information, photos, and specifications. Curious about our broadcast video servers? Take a look at the Cablecast SX4. Looking to get started with digital signage? Give the Carousel Solo-230 a whirl.
Looking for digital signage case studies or application ideas? We’ve featured a few industries and how they can maximize their digital signage investment. Have a look at our K-12 Education,
Healthcare, Worship, Banking, Auto Dealer, University, and Corporate case studies.
We’ve always been busy with trade shows and events across the country, but sometimes it was difficult to know exactly where we’ll be and when. With the new site, you can easily see all of the upcoming events that we’ll be participating in. At the bottom of every page, you’ll find an “Upcoming Events” section with all the crucial details.
Free training videos! We’ve always had training videos on our site, but now it’s even easier to get to them. Check ‘em out in the support section.
The homepage now sports an up-to-date news ticker featuring information from our blog. It’s incredibly easy to see what’s new with Tightrope by just visiting our site!
We’re a friendly bunch. Did you know Tightrope has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube?
Need to quickly access particular pages of our site? Every page has a “Quick Links” section in the footer that links directly to the most common areas and pages on our site.
Not sure where to find something? The top of each page has a search box that searches our website, our blog, and our support forums. It’s powered by Google, and works incredibly well. Give it a try!

Launching a new site is a monumental undertaking, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the tireless efforts by Amber Ward, Andy Atkinson, Jeremy Cleek, and Steve Israelsky. It’s always a shock to realize just how much work it takes to make something look seamless, but it’s the millions of details that matter. Everyone really went above and beyond to made this project a success, and personally, I’m just grateful to have been given the chance to work with them. Well done, team!

We’re really proud of this new site, and can’t wait to hear what you think. Feel free to get in touch with us on our forum if you have any feedback!

An Open Letter to PEG: Tightrope’s Commitment to Open Source Software (OSS)

2010-01-23T02:32:19Z

We have received a number of inquiries about Tightrope’s commitment to open source software, particularly as it relates to the Open Media Project, and also as it relates to our implementation of the ACM’s Community Media Distribution Network. I will answer those questions, and also to tell you about some software of our own that Tightrope has decided to make available as open source software.

As an organization, Tightrope Media Systems has always supported open source software and the tech community. Many developers on Tightrope’s staff contribute to open source projects personally, and as a company we are very active in various user groups and local community tech events. Tightrope also supports the open source efforts of our peers. This not only means that we support open standards in our products like iCal, RSS, and XML Web services, but our team also contributes to OSS projects that benefit the PEG community.

One of these open source projects, FixMpeg, is a perfect example of an OSS project that is available to the entire PEG community. FixMpeg is a simple front end to ffmpeg that will convert the audio format and sample rate in an MPEG 2 file (.mpg) to a broadcast standard file. It was intended to aid the migration of files to the Tightrope Media Systems Cablecast SX Video Servers by converting files with an incorrect audio sample rate to the standard 48kHz, or to convert the consumer based AC3 audio format to MPEG1 layer 2 audio, the broadcast standard used in Tightrope’s Cablecast SX video servers.

FixMpeg also has the ability to process files other than MPEG, such as WMV and most AVI files. It converts the audio in those files as well as fixing problems in the video by scaling to 720 x 480 and converting the frame rate to 29.97. As it converts these files to the ubiquitous MPEG2, the utilities can be used with servers that are restricted to playing out in MPEG2 only.

Tightrope is also proud to announce that DVDImport, formerly closed sourced, has also been made available as an open source tool. DVDImport copies the content, unaltered, from a video DVD to a MPEG2 program stream file. It extracts MPEG2 video from the VOB file, transcodes the audio to MPEG1 Layer 2, and muxes the audio and video back into a single MPEG2 file. This file is compatible with every major video server used in broadcast application, especially PEG.

You can check out FixMpeg, DVDImport and Tightrope’s other open source projects at labs.trms.com. Feel free to fork, contribute, download and use anything that you find there, even if you don’t have products from our company!

Tightrope is also hard at work on our application in support of the ACM’s Community Media Distribution Network, even though we are very late in this effort. This program will automate the process of uploading and downloading video files that are shared on the ACM’s media server. Our application runs on both Macs and PC’s and will check the quality of video being uploaded to the ACM server, ensuring that it meets the standards before it proceeds. What’s more, in addition to being tightly integrated with Cablecast, it will work with any video server solution or as a standalone application for any producer with an ACM account! This application will also be released as part of out our commitment to open source projects, and will be available at labs.trms.com.

Tightrope is also extending its Web Service API for Cablecast. Cablecast has always had the most accessible data of any system with RSS, iCal, CSV, HTML, SQL, and XML web service outputs. Customers are using this capability to create tighter integrations with Cablecast than ever before. In support of this effort, we are extending our XML web service beyond reading schedule and show integration so that Cablecast customers will also be able to create shows and producers. This functionality will facilitate integration with Denver Open Media’s Open Media Project allowing Open Media partners to automatically add shows into Cablecast systems and to even schedule Cablecast to record shows directly from their system!

As Tightrope has grown, and has branched out into other areas, it is important to remember that there are fifteen employees at Tightrope that have worked or volunteered consistently at PEG facilities across the country. Access is in our DNA, it remains a passion. We will always look for ways to increase that commitment and to participate in all of the exciting development that is happening in community media!

Announcing Carousel 6.0

2010-01-21T17:23:50Z

Tightrope Media Systems announces the release of Carousel 6.0, a major software update to the Carousel Digital Signage System. Carousel 6.0 includes a number of new features that improve the Template Editor used in the bulletin creation process, the utility of Alert Bulletins, and the functionality of the Remote Data Adapter.

The New Template Editor

The Template Editor in Carousel 6.0 has been completely rewritten to increase its utility and to adhere to Tightrope’s mantra, “Ease of Use”. Editing of the template is now a drag-and-drop process; text blocks are simply dragged into position, into shape and into size. Blocks can be easily duplicated, rotated, ordered, and also positioned within the template using the new “snap-to” guides which allow the user to align the blocks relative to one another. Tightrope has also added basic HTML formatting for text blocks, block shadow, block gradient and block reflection enabling users to quickly create highly stylized bulletins.

Additional content creation enhancements in Carousel 6.0 include the ability to preview the content you are working on in “full screen” mode during the creation process. A user can see exactly how the bulletin will look before it is published. Tightrope also added the ability to automatically create seamless backgrounds with Carousel 6.0. A user can import a background from a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop, onto a multi-zone channel layout, and Carousel will automatically break up the image in accordance with the pre-established zones; a huge time saver.

Enhancements to the Remote Data Adapter

Carousel’s Remote Data Adapter (RDA) enables bulletins to be called and/or generated by XML data strings thereby opening virtually unlimited application possibilities. In Carousel 6.0 player status can be polled with the RDA, bulletins can now be selected via pre-defined tags, and bulletins can also be assigned to multiple zones by name or tag. In Carousel 6.0, the triggering of alert bulletins has been reduced to milliseconds, and any bulletin can be moved or copied into the full screen alert zone.

Upgrading to Carousel 6.0

In order to facilitate a smooth upgrade process, we are going to offer Carousel 6.0 upgrades to customers that have purchased Gold Assurance first, followed by those with Silver Assurance, and then we will offer upgrades to those that purchase Gold or Silver Assurance in order to upgrade to Carousel 6.0.

Please keep the following schedule and requirements in mind as you initiate your upgrade to Carousel 6.0:

Those of you who have Gold Assurance and have Carousel 5.0 or higher will be able to upgrade your software beginning Thursday, January 21. The software upgrade will be free. Once you are ready to install the upgrade, send an e-mail support@trms.com and they will verify your eligibility and then e-mail back a license key. Remember, this is a self install.
Those of you who have Silver Assurance and have Carousel 5.0 or higher will be able to upgrade your software beginning Monday, January 25. The software upgrade will be also be free. Once you are ready to install the upgrade, send an e-mail support@trms.com and they will verify your eligibility and then e-mail back a license key. Remember, this is a self install.
Those who have Carousel 4.5 to Carousel 5.0 (build code 1008 or higher) will be able to upgrade your software as well, and you will not be charged for the software, but it will take approximately 2 hours of Tightrope support, billed at Tightrope’s hourly rate of $90/hr. in order to facilitate the upgrade. You will be able to upgrade your software beginning on January 29. If you decide you would like to upgrade your software, send an e-mail to support@trms.com and they will verify your eligibility and schedule a time to provide the support you will require for the upgrade.
If you do not have Gold or Silver Assurance, and you want to upgrade to Carousel 6.0, and your software version is 4.5 or higher (build code 1008 or higher), you can purchase Silver Assurance and receive the upgrades. Contact your dealer to purchase Silver Assurance and they will help facilitate the upgrade to Carousel 6.0.
If you have Carousel hardware that does not support Carousel 6.0, and you would like to upgrade, you will have to purchase new hardware. The good news is that Tightrope offers upgrade pricing at a tremendous discount to existing customer. Please contact your dealer for upgrade pricing.

As you know, we have recently started regular training webinars on specific topics of interest to Carousel and Cablecast dealers and customers. We will hold a special training session on Thursday, January 28 from 1PM to 3 PM Central time on utilizing the new Template editor and other new features of Carousel 6.0. In order to register, click here and complete the registration form.

Best regards,
Steve Israelsky
VP Sales/CMO
Tightrope Media Systems
612-866-4118 x 214

Over Selling and Economic Profit

2010-01-18T23:57:10Z

I like money. I use it to buy goods and services, which help me with things like transportation, iTunes purchases, American Girl dolls for my daughter and SmartWool socks for my feet. The great thing about money is that once you have it, generally speaking, you're awesome!

Case in point: I can't stand Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys. He's got that arrogant Texas swagger that just rubs a Minnesota boy like me the wrong way. But he's got money. Lots and lots of money. If I were to actually be in Jerry Jones's presence, perhaps in his huge office across from his huge desk, I'd start to think, "Gee, this guy isn't so bad. Maybe I'll give him a deal on a Zeplay system." In fact, Jerry, if you're reading this, I love you and you're welcome for all of those awesome draft picks that your team got from the Herschel Walker Trade.

It's not that I'm a shallow person, mind you. It's just that money has an intoxicating effect on even the most non-materialistic among us.

The secret to accumulating massive amounts of money is in maximizing profit. Actually, it's more than that. You need to maximize economic profit. Economic profit, in short, is extra profit that you probably shouldn't get. It's the difference between what you are paid and the minimum amount you would accept to do the exact same job.

The inability to get economic profit is why teachers are paid so little and it costs 150 bucks an hour to get someone to unclog your drain. Lots of people value the non-monetary incentives that come with being a teacher, so they work for less than they would otherwise be worth. Nobody really wants to come to your house and stick their hand down your drain to pull out clumps of hair. Unless they're insane.

In established markets, everyone gets paid pretty much what they are worth. Marketing can skew this and there are always temporary exceptions on specific sales, but when you're talking about putting cables in walls and hanging monitors in public areas, there is profit, but generally no economic profit. In theory and on average, one dollar less and I won't send my tech out to your place to do the work. One dollar more and I'm ahead of the game. We all want to be ahead of the game.

This brings me to what has been consuming my life for the past month: The Starks Family Kitchen Remodel! Lately, everything that I see is somehow relatable to my kitchen and economic profit and how to get some is noooooo different.

Heather and I have been acting as wrecking crew and general contractors on our remodel. We've got a trusted construction guy named Rich Roase, whom we have used in the past, so we called him for our remodel. We love Rich because he cleans up after himself, does what he says and is generally very easy to work with. He also has a dog that he brings and my daughter Ellie loves dogs. She and Sky have become very close.

The great thing about Rich is that there are no surprises. When he says something will cost 2,000 dollars, that is what it costs. If there is something that comes up, he minimizes the impact and it's at least in line with reasonable expectations, if not a little better. Is Rich cheap? I don't know. Maybe? It doesn't matter. If Rich says Tuesday it's Tuesday. If he says it will take 3 months, then that's what it takes. Said is done with Rich.

Then there is Jason the electrician. Here's a guy who quoted us 1200 dollars for 2 days of work. To finish up the installation, "It won't be too bad. I'll get it done in less than a day." Another 1200 dollars later and I'm pretty upset. If he had said 2400 dollars at the beginning, then that's what it costs and I would have been okay with it. I could plan and make decisions based on 2400 dollars worth of damage. Maybe I would have found someone who would have quoted me 1800 dollars and that's why Jason shied away from the truth. Maybe he too was surprised at how much it cost. The fact is, he got the job and was able to get almost double the amount of money I was expecting to pay him.

Here's the upshot: Customers don't really get upset about paying for things. What they get upset about is getting surprised.

Which brings us back to economic profit. The key to short term economic profit is to surprise the customer. Here is how that works:

Bid a job for less than it will take, which gives you a much better shot at winning the business. Half way through, tell them they need more money while you're standing in their ripped apart lobby with cables and video equipment thrown all over their building. Now you've put them in a spot where they have no choice but to pony up and you can charge more than it's worth, since the change order won't go out to bid. You've just made more money than you should have! Congratulations? You'll never get another job from them again.

Long term economic profit is trickier. You're up against the joker in my last paragraph, screaming that there is no way they can get the job done for that price. You show them plans. You show them equipment lists. You explain in great detail why they won't be happy with analog RF modulators on their brand new LCD monitors. You lose the job.

Next time around, however, they're wiser. The other vendor is dead to them and now you become the Rich's Construction of my kitchen remodel. Said is done. Price is not in the driver's seat.

I was sitting in the office of one of our dealers with our rep, who was pitching a replacement for Extron. I remember what the salesperson at the dealership said to him. He said, "Look, it may be better. It may be cheaper. But I'm not switching because Extron gives me perfect service. They bend over backwards for me, I've never had a problem with their boxes and it's just not worth the risk."

Extron is able to charge more because their customers value them, not just their products.

That's our goal at Tightrope Media Systems. Regardless of where we are with price, which will unavoidably be an important factor, I want our partners to have the sense that in any given situation, we will do what it takes when it comes down to it. It's a goal that not even the best companies are perfect at and it gets even harder to achieve as we grow, but in order to be a lasting company, we need to recognize that the technology that we sell can become a commodity at any minute. The strength of our business and its ability to thrive will rest almost entirely on our capacity to build loyalty and to make fans of our customers.

Without focusing on that goal, my capacity to buy an ever increasing amount of SmartWool socks will be limited. That is a future too terrible to imagine.

Tightrope Topical Training Sessions

2010-01-08T19:48:59Z

Join us next Thursday, December 17th at 3pm (Central) for our first of many Tightrope Topical Trainings. We’ll be discussing two main topics:

Weather bulletins in Carousel. We’ll cover how easy it is to create these bulletins, how to handle common problems that occur, and how to design bulletins that only show the current temperature or conditions.
Block copying with Cablecast. Block copy lets you automate schedules that repeat on a predetermined basis saving hours and hours of time. We’ll discuss creating and deploying these blocks.

To attend these training sessions, you will need to register with us. After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with the online access code, instructions, and technical requirements by Wednesday, December 16th.

Be sure to register today! Please contact Nicole Reed at (612) 866-4118 ex: 219 or nicole.reed@trms.com with any questions.

Fall ‘09 Channel Designs Now Available!

2009-12-21T20:19:48Z

Fall ‘09 Collection

New to the Store this season:

Clean click for details

Fresh click for details

Opera click for details

Modern Lobby click for details

Examples of icons and templates included with every channel