Online Business Strategy, News and Startup Advice

The deep philosophy lessons in Avengers Endgame and Infinity War movies.

2019-03-14T07:32:00.002-07:00

The Russo brothers must have had a good time building up to the great philosophical question that is Thanos’ mission in the Avengers: Infinity War. The big philosophical question is that of sacrificing lives to save the species.

We have all heard of the saying “cut off the arm to save the head”, Thanos’ mission is similar but on a Universal scale. Beyond the philosophical conundrum of killing some to save the whole, goes a lot of philosophical and psychological literature about wars and destruction and being part of human psyche and even necessary for continuity of life on this planet.

In the early 1930s, seeing the horrors of the First World War, Albert Einstein wrote to the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud to ask his thoughts on how further war might be prevented. Freud wrote that Thanatos “is at work in every living creature and striving to bring it to ruin and reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter”.

The way I see this in The Avengers Infinity War and Endgame movies is the real way Thanatos presents itself to those that carry it out. Not as destruction, but as salvation like the way Thanos sees it. This destructive drive convinces its perpetrators that it is the right way of preventing something even more catastrophic. Adolf Hitler wanted to fix the world from his own perspective.

Same way Thanos uses the space stone, Thanatos can be everywhere. Thanatos is the unconscious psychological urges towards self-destruction, manifested in the kinds of inexplicable behaviour.

Bottom-line, even though the avengers movies are fiction, their creators have come up with real ideas from deep psychological and philosophical basis and may be, just may-be, this is why Infinity War resonates with our reality as humans and the audience.

In fictional story telling, there is a lot more meaning to the audience when it comes from the basis of the nature of reality. People’s Imagination is stretched but they still find a way of understanding, even though not agreeing with the villain’s point of view. The audience is forced to consider either side of the fight and know why each side is fighting with full resolve.

This is the kind of creative work you can learn at http://woodlig.com. Visit us to learn more.

Watch the Avengers Endgame Trailer here:

Outlook For 2016

2016-02-09T04:51:00.000-08:00

I remember, the so-called days of future past. I am not talking about watching X-men as a kid, but watching the build up to the past Global financial meltdowns. I wasn't always a bear. In the mid-2000s like most newly self-proclaimed "students of the markets", you couldn't find anyone as bullish on the stock markets as I was. I could see a bright economic future for Nigeria and I thought with that, the stock market would follow suit. I was right, at least at first.

Back then, while we were out for an evening stroll, I was pitching a friend, whom would be my future boss, about the prospects of the Nigerian stock market. Following up to that, the stock market made me a millionaire, briefly on paper (and in Naira). And faster than one could ever imagine, my "networth" in the stock markets fell to around 10% of its peak. I waited for it to go up thinking it was a temporary crash. It looked like it would, but it went down to less than 5% of it's peak. There was it. My first lesson as an investor. What I am now just realising, it was the beginning of a long bear market.

only crooks win all the time in investments

It's very hard to guess the direction of stocks, based on sentiment, or even data. This isn't limited to investing in stocks alone, it includes forex and commodities like oil.

And speaking of Oil.....

Mistake by the Saudis?

With oil hovering between $26 and $32, I just hope the Saudis are sure of what they are doing, if not, it could sink the world. I hope they have the end planned out because the rivalry between the Saudis and the newly opened oil taps of Iran if not anticipated and calculated for by the Saudis could spell serious lost revenues for all OPEC nations and other oil producers. A competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia could make the oil glut last longer than most analysts expeced and may in the long run be bad for many growing economies.

India which just surpassed China's economic growth rate may stand to gain a lot from the above scenario. I should just move to Bangalore. ;)

Soros sees another 1930s

In the George Soros's World Economic forum interview that has been repeated lots of times on every business news TV channel and has lots of articles written about, he mentions similarities between todays economic uncertainties and the lead up to the great depression. Well, Soros is probably the only authority that can make such comparisons.

China

From an investment and infrastructure driven economy to one driven by consumption and services. Everyone claims this to be good, but where does it leave the commodity producers that are so reliant on China's production growth that is supposedly ending now.

China has been the engine of Global growth I believe not just because China has been growing 8% but because production and investment in China drives 6% and 7% economic growths elsewhere in the World. China drives the Global economy by buying from commodity producing EMs whom have been growing and now risk slowing with China's shift from production growth.

The Bears vs the Bulls

The bears think we are heading for a recession while the bulls think it's just a correction. Both sides make compelling arguments and back them up with data.

Nobody really knows, unless it's past then we look back at history and think "it was so obvious" like the dotcom crash. Many are worried about the slow down in China while others argue that after the recent economic data out of China, it's not that bad as Chinese economy shifts into a services and consumer driven one.

The Superstitious

Personally, I believe it's been 8 years since the 2008 meltdown and we are ripe for another one. Many look to history or some other indicators to suggest if we have the conditions ripe for a slowdown. This is just superstition because it's slightly always different every other time.

Nigeria's year

Hopefully, as the Nation kicks out corruption successfully, Whether oil is performing or not, we have to have other revenues sources to set up the foundation of a better economic future. Present administration's economic policy may be sound or otherwise, but the best thing to happen to Nigeria will be a "real" anti-corruption war.

The massive budget is probably an early sign of steroid shots to kick off a fast economic growth. Who knows?..

Forex strategies: How I Shorted the Naira

2015-12-17T13:15:00.001-08:00

[Disclaimer: This post is just a case study. I am not writing it to claim that I got rich from some currency short or to encourage any aspiring short sellers on how to make trades or deals that will affect the value of the currency of our beloved country].

It was early 2015, around January, February to be precise. The value of the Naira had just taken a beating against the greenback and our Elections were nearing. Few anticipated that oil prices would keep falling all through the year.

In 2007 and 08 I thought the oil price of around $100 per barrel was just a temporary high but it stayed up there longer than we most anticipated. Then the world became used to high oil prices. It was a lost opportunity to a country like Nigeria I believe as the government went an unnecessary spending spree while the foundations of the economy were still shaky. Fast forward to 2015, there I was, a self-proclaimed student of world economic trends with a chance to play real life "short selling" with the little that I had or didn’t have.

I first read about short selling in 2008, I was just beginning to take an interest in the stock market and I tried to buy around 300,000 Naira worth of stocks. I got just a few bucks out of that as the stock market in Nigeria collapsed the following year. I wondered if someone read a little more and analyzed a little more of the capital market situation in the country back then and found a way to short most of the overvalued stocks (most stock prices were supported with credit from sometimes the banks that are issuing the stocks). I never found a way to short the stock market, so I gave up.

Early 2015 I had a trip planned. I was terribly worried about the fall of the Naira and I was scared the Naira could fall even further. Then it hit me, this is a situation I could short and make a profit. But before I attempted a short I realized with nervousness of the coming elections, the Naira could fall more and if oil prices keep falling, it could fall even further. So I used the excuse of the trip I was going on to collect a Naira loan which I then changed into Dollars at a rate of around N185 to the dollar and I kept the money.

After I came back from my trip and it was time to pay back my loan, I sold the Dollars at the rate of 220 each. I made a profit of N35 on every dollar I bought at N185. I paid back the loan and kept the N35 profit on every N185 I borrowed.

At today’s rate, a day after the U.S Fed raised interest rates, I would have doubled my profits if only I kept the loan long enough. I would have kept it till next year as I anticipate an oil price fall to follow the U.S. Fed rate hike.

"We just wanted to build the market, so we burned through our money," Unknown.

2015-12-09T15:20:00.000-08:00

Many high flyers are flying straight into a banner with the words of the headline above written on it. It's not totally dumb for a startup to try to burn through a pile of cash and create a new market that it will turn into a future cash cow. It takes though, a lot of vision to achieve, and, of course, very patient investors.

Jet.com is the highest of these flyers, it is trying to take "some" of Amazon's business by spending it's way to growth in a span of a few years. As crazy as it sounds, these guys have vision. I must say. But there is a difference between vision and desperation, and the smaller "wanna be' flyers that I am seeing are more of the latter.

Selling stuff so cheap that a company shifts it's losses to it's investors is just the tip of the "losses for growth startup" icebergs we've been sailing through lately. Now startups give away money to users to have them sign up. You read that correct. You sign up with them, you get paid!

Not to pass any naive judgments here, many believe this is now the secret to building big startups fast, by losing money very fast in order to have growth. Uber, Airbnb, and many more are all doing this. My gut tells me this is not the right way, the Facebooks and the Googles where not built this way.

The main reason for this is probably the cheap money that is about to dry up in the coming months as credit is tightened with the coming rising interest rates. Then the market will get a reality check and we'll see if this strategy has worked or if it will backfire and then we'll see the ones saying - "We just wanted to build the market, so we burned through our money,"

App That Finds Your Birthday Mates Launched by Nigerian has the potential of going Viral.

2015-11-18T06:59:00.003-08:00

Launched by a Nigerian, the app that helps you find other people with the same birthday with you I believe is both exciting and has the opportunity to go viral and engage users with new exciting birthday activities and connections. Here is how..

Find My Birthday Mates is an app launched by a Nigerian Kanayo O. that connects to social networks and finds those with the same birthdays with you and connects, it also looks for those in the same area as you so you could organize a collective celebration, may be dinner or even a party.

Apps like these are very exciting especially when used for the first time, they are fun to try. Discovery is fun and so is connecting with new people and almost everyone will be tempted to give them a try when the first use them. Any app that gives you the opportunity to connect also gets the opportunity to go viral in return when you invite new people or try to reach your network using the app.

But we have seen apps that go viral quickly without any utility use (they are only fun the first time) and then disappear quickly. www.birthday-mates.com can thank their lucky stars that birthdays don't just happen once in a lifetime, it's a yearly occurence. And, if they can build out more features, like help users organize birthday events and have notifications when a new birthday mate moves to your city, they can be as useful as the apps we use daily and can't imagine living without.

How Sustainable is The Startup Ecosystem in Nigeria

2015-09-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

Always launched with much fan fair and a long guest list of celebrities and media people. The Nigerian startup ecosystem may be already partying too much, like it's 1999. Except for the biggest media companies and some fast cash burning big ecommerce sites, I doubt if any of the startups have much revenue or even profits to be dropping these launch parties. Yeah, launch parties and events, By "launch" being pre-revenue, pre-sales and sometimes even pre-product.

I'm sure it's nice to mix business and partying like Jordan Belfort even before the first sales start coming in. And I am open to the claims that these PR events are essential for press coverage and early realeases. For example, SlotMobileApp that launched recently, is already at the top of high traffic Nigerian ecommerce sites. But What's the main difference between them and Huntella Gadgets, a similar site that has been around for a while and which in a sustainable way acquire much of it's business through social media and search traffic. Which of the two is profitable and which will outlive the other?

Think of Nigerian music apps that sponsor weekly events with big name celebrities, Are they profitable or will they run out of cash? This is all debatable.

Noise isn't always performance. just take a look at SHOPA. The fast growing $11 million venture funded ecommerce startup that just closed it does after a high profile party attended by models and clebrities and then follow-up campaigns featuring the same class.

Seems we have forgotten the importance of Organic growth. We have no retrospect of how Startups like Instagram and even Facebook and Google got to where they are. They grew by lowering their costs of acquiring new users. Sometimes that cost is brought down to zero with their viral marketing.

Seriously, if you have to pay celebrities to acquire new users (and you are not even an entertainment company) how long will you be in business without again raising a lot of money to keep paying these celebrities and again and again till the funding surpasses your actual business or we hit a funding crunch and you are out of business.

Lastly, I forget where I saw this quote, but the saying goes like this "If you wanna survive in business, be a cockroach." I know investment is good in a booming market to grab as much market share and as quickly as you could, but being wasteful is equally bad and can kick you out of the market.

4 Things That Helped Win World War II Which Are Unthinkable Today.

2015-08-28T05:20:00.003-07:00

World War II was a deadly conflict, it killed millions of soldiers and innocent civilians. It was a war that had to be won at all costs. Some of the tactics employed are unthinkable in this modern day but they were what needed to be done in order for the allies to come out victorious over the axis.

1. Countless Human Sacrifice in the Front Lines: The Soviet's red army lost more than 10 million men in the eastern front. It was the necessary cost of stopping Hitler's troops march to Moscow with powerful weapons like the German machine guns and the Panzer tank. Endless ground troops were sent to face the advanced German weaponry. They were basically marched into a slaughter.

2. City Infernoes: A number of cities were completely set ablaze with air raids and fire fights when they were contended by opposing troops. Including Italian cities, the German city of Harmburg and the Russian cities of Kursk and Stalingrad. Thousands of civilians burnt in the blazes.

In modern day, Unless for military and communication targets, Cities are not indiscriminately targeted in warfare.

3. Poor Working Conditions in Weapons Assembly Lines: In the assembly lines of war hardwares in the US, workers worked very long hours in order to out manufacture and out supply the Germans in weaponry to the front lines. When the workers tried to unionize and strike, President Roosevelt threatened to enlist them in the army unless they returned to work.

4. The cost to animal rights: I'm not sure if there's an existing estimate on the number of horses killed during the war in Europe. The Soviet used specially trained dogs to deliver IEDs on a suicide mission to moving German vehicles.

5. Use of the Atomic Bomb: The US used the atomic bomb, twice, in order to take Japan out of the war. Atomic warfare is unthinkable today as it may lead to a full blown Global destruction.

The World today has many rules to conventional warfare that classify so many things as war crimes including the use of chemical or biological weapons. In the day of politically strong workers unions, PETA and the Hague, can desperate wars be won?

First Generation of Nigerian Startup Founders: Where Are They Now?

2015-08-10T19:47:00.001-07:00

Around 2007, with cheap money flooding international investors' pockets, Global startup funding began to pick up at a fast rate. Funding had been undergoing sluggish growth since the start of the hangover from the dot-com crash.

Social media startups were popping up, digg, reddit, del.icio.us, twitter, were becoming sites you had to visit daily. Mashable was also coming up as a half blog, half social site. New entrepreneur networks were forming online and news of new funding was being shared daily. Optimism was back and so were new ideas.

This time founding a tech company wasn't limited to Silicon Valley alone. After the crash, funding got really scarce and the cost of starting and running a startup was hitting rock bottom. This opened the doors to many, including us, a few innovative Nigerians.

If we rewind 3 to 4 years back, I was already running my startup. The African Music Network, a music and discussion site hosted on only 100mb of server space. this was during the days of Styl Plus, Plantashun Boiz and Tony Tetula. In less than 2 years, the service had to shut down, and not because it didn't gain traction, but because it was extremely difficult to make credit card payments to the American hosting company and monetization in Nigerian didn't exist at all back then.

Now I run 9flix, One of the front runners in the future of Nigerian video entertainment, well, according to them > What You Get From Video On-Demand Services - Premium Times NG

Folabi Ogunkoya - I think Folabi is one of Nigeria's first Internet success stories. He co-founded CaramelLounge together with Lawrence Bassey-Oden during the early days of social networking when it was dominated by MySpace. MySpace was more American than Global (probably one of the reasons for its failure) so it was tough to meet fellow Nigerians or Africans via the network, mostly because there were few.

Folabi and Lawrence built caramellounge to solve that, and they sold the company not long after launch. It became Afriville and later shut down (probably because of dominance of FaceBook).

Folabi Ogunkoya is now an investment banker in the UK.

Solomon Sydelle - After the reign of MothelandNigeria.com, the one time biggest Nigerian site, which was never updated, Another patriotic lady took the reigns from Boomie, the owner of MotherlandNigeria. Solomon Sydelle was an early Nigerian blogger with Nigerian Curiosity.

Loy Okezie - Loy returned and settled in Nigeria to be a part of the developing startup scene. He has played a significant role, with his blog TechLoy becoming a news platform and a launch pad for Nigerian startups. Many Nigerian startups have taken to TechLoy to announce their launch or funding news.

Loy Okezie still runs a few tech news outlets including Techloy and partakes in many Startup events.

Francis Oghuma - The Naija educated and South Africa based outgoing personality launched an innovative idea of a social networking engine for Nigerians. Together with Nanje Mambe, the founder of the AfroVision group and now Njorku the Cameroonian job search engine, Francis launched Naijaborn as a smart social network for Nigerians, which has a searchable user generated database of the global Nigerian community.

Francisnow lives in Germany and has launched other digital media businesses like Sowambe, House of Picha, and a music discovery platform Jamoflife.

The Business of Nigerian Content Business | Case Study: Gimmesom.com

2015-08-01T06:32:00.000-07:00

For a while now, I have been screaming that a great Nigerian content site needs to come out and take all the traffic. I even considered building my own site which will be easy to run and with lots of daily content flow. Nairaland is the one to beat here. Nairaland is a forum but it has let a lot of these blogs use social media to chip into it's market.

The site to be the one needs to have some news or current stuff, some interesting art and of course some really useful well written content.

One year ago, A friend explained to me her plans on developing a unique content site for the Nigerian audience. And now I am happy to say that the site has been live for the past few weeks, It has surpassed even my expectation in terms of quality, but I think the site isn't noisy enough to take the market.

Content is sometimes the quickest way to get into business and also has the advantage of high consumption. Gimmesom.com has the quality to be #1, needs more hands on the deck to tap into the Nigerian content hungry audience. More hands for the feeding....

Beyond content quality, what exactly needs to be done?

Social Media: Gimmesom's sweet looking content needs to be all over Facebook and Twitter, It's already doing well on Instagram.. It needs to have at least a single Facebook post a day for a start, preferably posts with hundreds or 1000+ reach.

Content flow: Like i mentioned earlier The content flow frequency needs to be increased. may be gradually, content is king.

A Content Hub: The best way to sustainably get lots of content is by bringing other content sources together under one platform. Kind of like Nairaland on steroids.

My Bubblevaluation

2015-06-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

Bubbles, unicorns, massive new funding rounds, that's all you hear of in the news these days. Even if you stay off the news to avoid all the bubble talk, you can't. It's usually on the front page of the site of your browser's homepage. Too much negative bubble talk and even bigger funding round news following it up, about the next startup to have "unicorn" status or potential raising a million dollars (or add some zeroes, matter of fact, add two zeroes) from some VC firm made up of dumb money, or smart money. you can't really tell the difference these days.

Yes there is a bubble, because you can find a startup for almost anything imaginable that has raised millions of dollars, and worse, there is still too much VC money chasing these startups. It's difficult to raise $50,000. Extremely difficult. Try raising $1,000,000 and booom, you've been funded.

On what grounds am I making these claims though? Sentiment and hear-say. I told a founder friend that I needed to raise $50,000 to test a new mobile media idea and he said, "well, I don't know about that, there are many VCs that would give you a million dollars but I can't think of anyone that is willing to do a small round like that." And, yes, he has raised around $2 million for his niche social networking startup.

About sentiment, I really do feel there's a bubble. And so does every other person who's screaming there is a bubble and it is going to burst. Yeah, some back up their sentiment with some data and they look convincing.

A few years back I did a lot of bubble reading, I read about the canal mania, railway mania, the great crash and the housing collapse. And even though I didn't witness the dotcom bubble, I remember what it was like in 1999 and 2000. I remember Boo.com dying and resurrecting and then finally getting the silver bullet, I remember those Nortel Networks adverts with songs from the Beetles which they must have paid a fortune for the royalties of, and last but not the least, I remember the AOL Time Warner merger, a desperate move by Time Warner to get in on it. Whenever people and companies start feeling they've missed out if they don't get in on something, it's probably a bubble.

There's too much influx of money into startups, Crunchbase sometimes captures more than a billion dollars of funding in a day. Every money bag is shoving cash into the next startup that hails manicurists. That is definitely another red flag. There's probably more money than value in these startups. Valuation is not equal to value.

New ways of making and spending money go along with bubbles. Tulipmania, the roaring 20s that lead to the great crash and the depression. Vanity. Yes there's too much of it. But I don't want to go on record screaming bubble yet. We could see this last through the year and even 2016. May the smart ones eat the dumb and weak while coming out of it.

Nigeria's Un-Real Estate

2013-08-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

With the number of mentions of the word "bubble" on this blog, some of you probably have started viewing me as a doomsday sayer. Well, that's what I actually like about market bubbles, people tend not to see or agree with the predictions till they burst!

People just don't see the over-valuations, or even if they see them, they think it would last or even go higher, what they actually see is an opportunity and when everyone thinks this same way, the bubble gets even bigger. It’s called a Gold Rush and it precedes a bubble burst. A gold rush may start when the commodity (gold, stock, real estate) may still be valuable and people are still profiting, but it becomes a bubble when people pay a higher price for what it’s worth and hoping or even expecting to sell it at a much higher price in a very short time because the price keeps going up. So, once the price starts going down, everyone rushes in to cut their losses by dumping the commodity and the commodity’s price collapses, or in other words, the bubble bursts. This is exactly what may happen with the real estate market in some parts of Nigeria in a few years.

As I was writing this post, I saved a draft of the first two paragraphs and left it till I felt like writing again. What inspired me to return to the post immediately was a chat I had over a cup of tea just a few hours ago with my "economist" Dad. We spoke about the astronomical prices of real estate in Abuja and the actual cost of building the structure (cost of building materials and the labour involved).

What my father suggested was that these houses (real estate) are not actually bought with their true valuation in mind, because most of the buyers are trying to find somewhere to stash their government loot and real estate seemed like a very good idea, they are not trying to make a profit. At least they think (as people always think in a bubble) even if they over-pay for it right now, the value will go up in the future, even if it doesn’t go up, what the heck, at least they got some place to keep their money for a while and they can flip it when they need the cash, this makes the price of real estate go up artificially. So I asked him, “what will happen to these valuations if all of a sudden, everyone needed the cash?” “The market and pricing will collapse” he said. This is simply what drives a BUBBLE, thinking you can overpay now because it will be a bargain in the price of the future or you can at least get your cash out. Once everyone wants their cash out, the prices take a nose dive.

With a few people going around looking for fancy houses to stash their easy earned money, these astronomical price tags become the norm. Remember your law of demand and supply? Well, if you don’t remember that law, go back to your basic economics, then come back after to continue reading this post.

So once there is the need for the cash amongst a reasonable number of these high end property owners, they flip the properties at a lower valuation, even below the prices they bought them for and the more want to sell, the lower the prices go. Even those owners that don’t need the cash, they’ll see the valuations of there properties go down and some would panic and decide to sell before it gets any worse, and as they sell, there is more panic and more falling prices and the whole property market could take a nose dive. It’s a domino effect.

Is this similar to the collapse of the real estate market in the US? No it’s not. Their’s more like a credit crunch, people couldn’t pay back the money they “borrowed” to buy their houses so they lost their homes and as more homes were lost, the values went down and owning a home or those mortgage loans started to look like a very bad idea and the companies that made huge bets on those loans collapsed. Well, it’s pretty much more complicated than that, but you get the idea.

What we have here is different

They say, when it comes to value of real estate, 3 things matter. Location, location, location. I think that’s an excuse for over valuation. To real estate agents, they can’t see anything more important than location because it is the biggest driving force behind the real estate deals and sales. But, for me as someone into building design and construction, I know the actual cost of the building structure shouldn’t be over-looked. Last weekend I was in Abuja and one of my class mates back in Architecture class invited us to help her make a few decisions about some interior finishings shes working on at a huge estate development somewhere in the town (won’t say the location though). The estimated cost of building the houses was just a tiny fraction of the prices they were going for and trust me, there is nothing special about the location.

Another problem is too many housing estates, apartments or whatever you like to call them are being developed and sold at high prices. You know what happens to the price tag of a commodity when there is too much inventory right? The market is surely over-valued but we won’t see a sudden collapse like what we saw in the US. But in 10 to 15 or even 20 years, something will happen and shake the market and the real estate market in Nigeria will correct.

Ok this photo has nothing to do with Nigeria, but it has everything to do with the warning of a bubble.

In 1929 before the market crash that lead to the great depression, a wise Wall Street guy said, “You know it’s time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over.” Come to think of it, have we ever had more real estate agents, experts and advisors like what we have now? If everyone is doing it, then it’s time to get out. You mustn’t get out now, but be ready to when it happens.

Nigerian Startups Advertising Everywhere Are Those You Won't Find Anywhere, In The Future!

2013-04-13T10:19:00.002-07:00

My own startup dream started around 2000 and 2001 when the startup market in the US was collapsing. The time prior to the collapse was filled with memories of startup ads on TV and on every website you visited. These startups were everywhere, you couldn't get away from them. From adverts of Boo.com on anything you could get your eyes on to CNN advert videos with (high royalty paid) songs by Beatles advertising Nortell Networks. Where are these companies now?

Be it the year 1999 or 2013, it is never sustainable to spend a lot of money as a startup in order to continue to be in, or acquire new business. That is why startups are called "startups" in the first place. They find creative ways to market or build marketing within their products from the start. How many people taught Groupon was a big idea and bought shares in it's IPO. Groupon would have been a really great idea if they didn't spend so much money on sales.

So there are a ton of Nigerian startups mainly e-commerce sites and some content or media sites buying up Billboards in various locations in the big cities, buying TV spots, Youtube pre-roll ads, promoted tweets and handles, expensive Facebook likes and banners on every high traffic site that is offering to sell ad space. These startups are too focused on the short run and the money they are throwing on ads that may or may not perform at times could be used to build a great product that would promote itself for free in 5 years to come. Building a startup is not about short-term hype but building a successful company or product that would last a life-time.

There is only one way to build a successful startup, and it is by building a product that people will keep coming back to and that would be talked about by people there-by growing virally naturally. That's how I got on Facebook and Yahoo in the early days of email in Nigeria, peer pressure. My peers laughed at me because I didn't have an email address and I was mainly on Myspace till my friends pressured me into joining Facebook.

So I boldly predict that you won't be able to find most of the Nigerian startups making noise right now in the next 5 years. By 2018 a lot would have crashed after burning a lot of venture capital and smarter technology focussed startups come in and disrupt there business. Actually, 5 years is a long time but trust me a lot will happen within the time. If you are building a startup, make sure you make technology your biggest advantage, not a money-bag or some noise making bloggers.

To cut a long story short, very soon a highly focused technically talented startup would come along and optimize the whole e-commerce system in Nigeria, and also a hardware focused, great product genuises would come and change the content and data game. Watch this space :)

9Flix Will Give You N100,000 to Make Your OgaAtTheTop Video Trend!

2013-03-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

Make any video about #OgaAtTheTop and make it trend on our website http://9flix.com and we will officially crown you Our Oga At The Top with a N100,000 cash gift.

The first 5 Ogas to submit their videos will get an instant N1500 recharge card as a thank you from us and the winner of the N100,000 cash prize will be the OgaAtTheTop video with the most views.

Just upload your video to Youtube and tweet @9flix or email us the link at myogaatthetoptrend@yahoo.com and we will embed the video on our site and send you the link to the embedded video to share with your friends and let the viewing begin. On Sunday 24th March we'll announce a winner and they'll get their cash deposited by Monday ;)

P.S Remember, the site is http://9flix.com. The dotcom is not silent :|

4 Business Lessons From The #MyOgaAtTheTop Trend!

2013-03-14T16:14:00.002-07:00

Unless you have been sleeping under a rock for the past 2 days or don't know the web address of the World's biggest social networks like Facebook and Twitter, (Warning: Don't forget the dotcom at the end of the url) you must have at least noticed, that is if you are not already taking part, the trend/craze about a Nigerian civil defense commandants blunders in a TV interview where he did not even know the web address of his organisation's website and answers tough questions with "I don't want to say one thing and then My Oga At The Top will say another"

So what I'm sure most did not realize or see while they were having fun mocking Oga commandant, was the business opportunity and lessons every viral event like this comes with. So I want to open your eyes and discuss a few ways you can learn and take advantage of such events.

(1) If it is popular, make and sell merchandise fast!

I am really impressed by how fast Nigerian made T-Shirts with the My "Oga At The Top Meme" and began selling them in just less than 2 days from the beginning of the craze. If something is popular, you might as well monetize it.

(2) Piggybacking on a trend.

When people are already laughing at something, it is easy to give it a little twist and even get more people laughing. So if you can be imaginative and creatively insert your brand without messing up the flow or the fun, you got yourself some free marketing because people will share as long as your variation of the joke is also funny.

(3) Influence is everything.

I noticed that a lot of people were using some of the pictures as their twitter or blackberry messenger display photos and making tweets, Facebook status updates and bbm personal message updates with the MyOgaAtTheTop jokes without actually watching the video. Well, this is actually what makes a trend, when it influences people and they don't even care what started it and why it is done, they just wanna be part of it. Following wisdom of the crowd.

This means if you are looking to start a trend for your brand or anything, start by putting an effort to seed influencers. If a few of them follow, the crowd would follow. Identify influential people on a topic or market before you start a trend and make sure the a participants in it.

(4) How things go viral.

Things go viral when they are funny or amazing and interactive. That Is All! ;)

People share something with their friends if the thing is funny or amazing. But if you want your little funny or amazing experiment to really blow and go viral, make it interactive. Let people mess around a bit with it by customizing it, editing parts of it and even more. Makes people feel like they have vested interest in the trend and promote the message for you.

THAT IS ALL! :)

So tell us what have you observed or learned from Nigerians with this latest trend? I'll be reading the comments and discussing further with you in the comments area. Cheers!

How Could Femi Otedola Pay Back $1.2 Billion When He's Not Donald Trump.

2012-09-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

Seriously, who gets out of a negative net worth of a billion dollars, how long do you need to pay that back? How big of a fuel subsidy scam do you need to pull? I know Donald Trump did it, but who else has his leverage?

Forbes valued Femi Otedola's net worth at around $1.2 billion, so since he owes the same amount, technically he is a broke guy with many mansions, and a fleet of sport cars and yachts. Some leverage huh?

Right now I know what you are thinking, "since Femi Otedola is worth as much as he owes and technically that's $0, technically you are in the same net worth?" I know that would make you feel good about yourself, anyways you are wrong! Sorry, keep following, let me show (teach) you how the trick works. Also his $1.2B is from Forbes listing in 2009 which is a while back.

Leverage, connects and building a brand is what makes you wealthy, not the crap some hack wrote on Nairaland the other day here http://www.nairaland.com/1054816/5-proven-tips-multi-millionaire-nigeria/5#12288333 and like 65 of you guys clicked the "like" button on it.

How did Donald Trump get out of his debt? Simple, he leveraged the brand he has built over the years. How did he build the brand? Before you start making up stories about God father-ism and American greed, the environment in co-operate America is different from what we call "business" in Nigeria. We don't really care about branding or building value into our name or business name, all we care about is cashing out anytime we want. But this is exactly what got Donald Trump out of more than $10 billion in debt and got out of the red even bigger than ever. His passion which helps make him a business symbol and why people feel comfortable investing in him and pay tens of millions of dollars for apartments at Trump Towers.

So can Mr. Femi also get out of debt without getting "FIRED?!" I really don't think he has enough leverage to do that but my bet is he will continue to work with people in GOVERNMENT towards forgetting (forgiving) that debt that he no longer owes the banks but the GOVERNMENT's bail-out body ;) AMCON which swallowed the debts from the banks.

We Welcome New Competition, Seriously!

2011-08-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

The time is exactly 9:15 in the morning. I didn't wake up early just to write this post, the truth is, I've been awake all through the night. I'm really finding it hard to hibernate the computer and go to sleep these days.

You can put it how you like, say, I'm losing sleep over competition.. Well, I'm not ashamed. Its a good thing, it has changed me and helped me see the bigger picture better than i did earlier.

The emergence of huge competition only last year like Nollywood Love has given us new determination. It has shown us a bigger market exists more than we anticipated or planned for.

Here is why you should welcome competition

1. Market validation
You can use either your competitors traffic or revenues to boost your own confidence and work harder or you can show the figures to investors to give them an idea of the market.

2. Show signs of a boom
If you see startups similar to yours springing up all over, like in the case of Groupon, then the market is experiencing a boom. Do what you can to grow as fast as possible.

The main issue is, AfricaMars Media is what I'd like to call "first generation of African video sites", together with a few early competitors.. We were ahead of our time and the was not much traction to be gained. We were ahead of our time.

With the new African TV services, the time is now and what matters is who's still here in the next 5 to even 10 years!

How African Artists could use new media to boost earnings

2011-07-18T04:49:00.004-07:00

This is a write-up a posted on a couple of african entertainment blogs some weeks back. They have generated a lot of buzz, some meaningful commenting and lots of Facebook shares.

After the whole noise has subsided, I figure I should bring the article to my readers after all, lately I've been distracted with some other work and I may have neglected this blog a bit.

Here goes the article;
There is a shift from the traditional means through which we consume entertainment to a more convenient and social medium. Since the new medium is more convenient and interesting than the traditional, in the future, it will replace what we know today as media consumption.

Mobile and digital entertainment technologies are gradually making their way into Africa and the artists and entertainers are quick to jump on the wagon in order to get their names and works out there. With convenience, consumers’ money will move from buying CDs (traditional consumption) to streaming from their mobile phones, the web and soon renting storage space on cloud services to store their entertainment and access it from their cars and other digital platforms.

This shift will definitely favor online marketing and promotion savvy entertainers and the best thing; the Global playing field would be leveled. Works by African artists would be accessible and easily sold globally due to ease and low cost of distribution of new media.

The main problem African artists and producers are facing is the problem of piracy. Illegal CD copies of their copyright materials are made and sold in huge quantities without any royalties being paid or even their consent. Even though p2p sharing and other pirate applications have given the web a bad name as far as music and movie studios are concerned, digital media and the web have a declining rate of piracy thanks to new Internet startups like Spotify and Pandora offering users music for free and making money off advertisement which they share with the record labels. This model and also paid music subscription models would decrease online piracy significantly in the very near future and digital will soon be the main money source for the music industry.

The bottom-line is, the money is in new media and the earlier African entertainers take advantage and make a name for themselves out there, the easier it would be for them to earn in the near future. The only problem is, African artists have to really focus on quality entertainment content in order to compete in the Global multi-billion dollar entertainment market share. I know we have what it takes here in Africa.

WHAT DOES FACEBOOK’S MOVE TO MOVIES MEAN FOR MEDIA COMPANIES?

2011-03-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

Recently, Warner and Facebook announced that they will be offering the rental of the movie Dark Night on the social networking site.

I’m sure even if they wouldn’t want to accept it, this move by Facebook has given many new media startups and media incumbants sleepless nights. The announcement even sent Netflix’s stock down. The billion dollar question is, is this a real threat to media content distribution companies or just another move by an over-grown startup that is trying to own everything else online, of course apart from search which Google already owns.

If you have followed Internet companies for at least 6 to 7 years, you should know that every move facebook makes should be taken seriously.

If you look at their continuous iterations and for the fact that they have more than 600 million registered members, you will see the large distribution power they have over anything. If there is one thing they learned from creating a huge open platform, is that the money is not on the platform itself (facebook) but on ecommerce services third parties have shown them how to create, grow and monetize off their own platform. This is the best thing about creating an open platform and giving users and third parties control, you get to tap into their creativity and ultimately find monetization ways you wouldn’t have thought of. {This is a complete post on its own on how to get users to creatively show you how to monetize}.

So Facebook can definitely give media startups a run for their money and yes, we in the business should be worried. Even media companies and startups in Africa should be worried, this is why;

Facebook is good with taking things Global, advertisers may argue Facebook ads are not as effective as Google’s adwords but believe me, Facebook ads are more geo-targeted.

Facebook’s global strategy was one of the reasons they beat myspace. Facebook grew well with International markets and Myspace was still bigger than Facebook in America.

Big brands are all jumping on the Facebook ride. It’s completely debatable if this is going to last or not, afterall we’ve seen AOL. But personally I believe Facebook is different and could get even bigger than Google. Facebook taps into our behaviour to design how we interact and use the site, so unless human behaviour completely changes, Facebook is here to stay (I know this is a very bold prediction, still I’m ready and willing to make).

Social gaming is very succesful on Facebook, and social TV could even be more successful. Facebook can even make local social TV successful for their recorded success in scoring local advertising deals.

If Facebook could connect people based on their interest and location through movies and TV? Boom!! It would be the biggest media company. I’m not exagerating here...
So with all these, what do you do as a small video content startup?

1. Niche Distribution.

This is debatable because Facebook is divided into networks and that covers lots of niche markets. Still if you have a huge reach in a niche, lets say lovers of movies in a particular African language or setting, then you have a stay of execution.

2. Exclusive content.

Netflix is moving to create it’s own network quality TV content. You need exclusivity to differentiate and that exclusivity is going to be hard because the content owners will go to someone with bigger distribution to produce more revenue for their content.

3. User experience

This is the one that will actually determine if you’ll win or lose. User experience in media design is everything. Content of course is king, and once your technology doesn’t suck, the one with the best user experience wins. If you can beat the geeks in designing for viewing (social networking and watching a show or movie are active and passive things respectively) since the people at Facebook may not hit the nail on its head the first time, then you’ll get some much needed traction in time.

Even though the Netflix boss said “people don’t go to Facebook to watch movies”, we at AfricaMars media are taking nothing for granted.

Facebook is bigger than just a social network, its becoming a global community and in every community people live, eat, work and do so many other things. Same with Facebook, people mainly connect on facebook, but soon they will work on it, discover information and entertainment on it, may be even study and of course always go there to kill boredom (watching movies) ;)

The 2011 Forbes List (Tips another Bubble?)

2011-03-09T19:15:00.000-08:00

Just read a report and went through the new Forbes top richest people's list and well, it shows an unexpected or even shocking increase in global wealth accumulation. I dont want to go into the detail of the list, here is a link for your thorough investigations of the complete list Forbes 2011 Wealthiest.

What I wanna do is discuss why I see signs of another bubble forming and how people should be careful not to fall into another unanticipated financial melt-down.

First-off I wanna start by saying that I am not an economist in anyway, I have no economic authority to issue any harsh warnings, rather, I have experience. A decade of closely monitoring patterns from stock rises to rich lists and so on.

Here is a bit of superstition....

In 2007 prior to the economic downturn, number of billionaire in China around doubled, same with this years list. Also prior to the burst Russia had the most number of billionaires. Russia has also claimed the most billionaire in 2011.

We also have a record number both in terms of billionaires and also their combined wealth. But I can't come up with a theory based on superstition.. I need genuine logical proof. Here we go

The Bubble..

The cause of the last financial crisis was the housing bubble, the one before it was caused by the Internet bubble. So, what bubble do I see for ming now?

I think the bubble may not have formed yet, but its gathering momentum and getting ready to form, blow up and burst in the future.

Why do I see a bubble now?..

We are still in the road to recovery while we are see bloated valuations for companies, assets and net-worths. The truth is the Global economy hasn't fully covered, may be not even halfway but we are seeing record wealth and net-worths. By the time the economy fully recovers, we'll completely be in a bubble.

Internet assets..

Internet companies are being valued much higher than media companies, while the Internet companies can't earn half in revenue of what media companies earn given the same content.

Due to this, many TV shows are skeptic of forgoing Network dollars of streaming chicken change.

Africa..

There isn't a bubble forming here, Africa is actually undervalued and has lots of potential in the coming future. As economies improve and new development comes to Africa, we will see similar growth rates to what we have seen in India and China in the past decade.

Lessons Entrepreneurs should Learn from the Uprising in the Middle East

2011-03-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

The #1 lesson entrepreneurs could learn from the recent uprising in the Middle East is ...... No, not Social Media.... Guess again! Social media is surely one of the top lessons but the top-most lesson you can get out of the events in the Middle East isn't so obvious.

#1. Momentum in a trend is good.

I know most people won't agree with me because Social Media organized and spread the whole revolution so it should be number one on the list. The truth is, I disagree.. Without my number 1 lesson to be learned here, the revolution would have taken place in Tunisia alone or may be Egypt and wouldn't have spread protests and potential (as for now) regime changes in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and the minor demonstrations we are starting to see in Saudi Arabia and Iran. The momentum created a wave across the whole region, and now that the momentum is still building, it's really a crucial and fragile time for regimes in the region and elsewhere to hold on to power to survive the momentum's waves.

Increasing momentum convinces people in business, warfare, politics and so on (by building a growing hope for change or a certain event). When people see build of power, confidence or activity, they tend to believe in some sort of coming result and they follow.

With this strategy, entrepreneurs can learn to project confidence with investors, employees and even customers by constantly achieving milestones. You could stay silent for a while, but once you start, keep moving with a series of activities and coverage. Inconsistency kills (kills momentum and confidence).

I'm pretty sure the leaders whose regimes are facing these protests wouldn't want to see any more leaders step down due to pressure because that would build confidence in their own protesting oppositions and increase the whole Middle East uprisings momentum. I predict if one more regime should fall, then it wouldn't be the last ruler we'll see step down due to protests in 2011... The fall will make the protests spread more across the region and beyond. Also, if no leader should fall in the coming weeks or days, (Libya being a crucial point) then the momentum may begin to die down... Therefore, the fate of many other Middle Eastern regimes facing protests may lie in Tripoli. Just saying... ;)

#2 Social Media

The lesson #1 would be an entrepreneurs greatest take-away from the recent uprisings. Understanding this whole psychological concept of using momentum to project confidence would be a great asset to you. Lesson #2 is obviously everyone's favorite lesson from the happenings. It is SOCIAL MEDIA..

Social Media gave power to the people in these regions through mass real-time connection, spread and organiztion.. The campaigns that toppled decades long regimes started on the 2004 founded social network Facebook. Give people social media and they have freedom..

Also, engage your users on social media and they'll work for you through spreading your message. Especially if you can relate to a cause, social media sites like Facebook or Twitter can make your message go viral.

#3 Greed isn't good afterall.

Another take-away for entrepreneurs from the recent events is the fact that greed isn't good for anything you are doing in the long term. The toppled regimes have been accused by their followers of embezzling of billions and not providing necessities and jobs to their followers.

Therefore, what this means to entrepreneurs is, if you want to build the next big thing, don't be greedy towards your employees, investors and customers... Don't be too self focussed.. Stand up for them if you want your venture to go far.. Don't focus on yourself, focus on the company's interest.. Forget making a huge net-worth for yourself, rather, build a very valuable company. If you think in the long run and shun greed, you and your company will do more financial and the party will last much longer.

Lastly, if you believe there is more to be learned from the recent uprising in the Middle East both as business or life lessons, let us know in the comments below.

Does saying goodbye to user uploads put zoopy in direct competition with Africamars?

2011-03-02T05:26:00.000-08:00

I got an email in January from zoopy.com about the new change on the site. In the email, their CEO Jason Elk talked about a change in Zoopy’s strategy to focus more on Zoopy TV. The African online video streaming site will discontinue user uploads and focus more on the more popular Zoopy TV section of the site which delivers TV content like shows and other programs.

Well, Zoopy started a few years back and grew popular in Africa, I think mostly in Southern Africa. In startups, pivoting a product or service to focus on an area with more traction or revenue potential is very vital for long time success. The same happened with my own African video startup AfricaMars TV. We from the beginning did not want to host user videos, because we thought Google was doing that for everyone in the World with Youtube. What we wanted to do was provide live video streams from African TV stations online.

Our Initial idea had lots of setbacks both infrastructure wise and biz dev wise. Then, after all the setbacks, we were forced to re-think how we were going about the whole project, then it hit us.. Boom!!! "Users don't want live streams (with a few exceptions like sports programming) on the Net, they want convenience. TV Anytime, anywhere."

When you look at all the Live TV streaming and User generated video sites that popped up between 2007 and 2008 and see how many of them have grown or gained usage anything close to what Netflix and Hulu have, you'll find out that there are none.. Once upon a time, there was Jhoost, Zattoo. Where are they now? Overshadowed by Hulu and Netflix like how Youtube overshadowed anything else including Dailymotion and Vimeo.

With all these at the back of our mind, we decided to carve a niche which we were already targeting but to do it differently, cost effectively and more convenient for the users.

We decided to go for TV shows, drama, news clips and movie clip streams on-demand. A model similar to that of Hulu but for African TV content. We believe this model is the way to go in-order to really solve a problem in the African entertainment market and not to jump into a very competitive market for user generated content or even a service whose market rarely exists.

So by going this way, the big question is, are we really in direct competition with Zoopy another African online TV service?

I think only time would tell but some regional factors may carve each service's niche for it. By the way, Zoopy is gradually broadening to a Global entertainment site while AfricaMars will focus more on African entertainment.

Is your product just another product's feature in the future?..

2011-02-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

Recently, I read about location based services being just an added feature and not a full pledged product on itself in the very near future.. I believe we can say that about so many products, possibly many of Today's startups are just features in the not so far future.

With huge Internet monopolies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook, it's very easy for them to add a full product as just a feature iteration on their huge platforms. Also, most of the products that many startups are being built on these days are only features and once they get popular, they'll have to be integrated with larger platforms to gain any usage traction for them to become good business.

Apart from location based services, other startup/product types that could end up as features in other products in the future are collaboration tools. A good example is how Myspace swallowed Threadbox.

This list of products that are future's potential features goes on, including messaging services and so on...

So should you look into the glass ball to see if the product you have been killing yourself to bring to market will end up being copied and offered to millions of users as part of another product in the future? Well, this is really hard to say...

Whoever builds a startup is totally aware of the risks they are taking because whatever they are building is not guaranteed to bring results. With all the risk awareness, its still heart aching to see a big company take an idea that is genius and that you first developed to market just because they have more manpower and distribution to execute better and much faster than you and your small team.

This fact shouldn't stop you though from developing an innovative product even though it could possibly be taken from you. What you should do instead is work tirelessly and smartly to get the first mover advantage and once you gain traction, expand your product further by adding utility features and keeping your potential competitors on their toes. Also keep in mind there is always the pivot. If you are not doing well in a market, look at other potential use of the technology you've built and do a quick shift. The pivot also works when you build a product and find out your market doesn't exist or its too small.

Lastly, the ability of your product to be integrated into another product as a feature may be a blessing to you in disguise. Especially when you have competing big companies in that market space, it will turn out as a good thing for you because you'll most probably be approached and if you are lucky and your product is good you'll possibly get acquired by the big company.

From day one, you can put this in your exit plan or even start building a product just to be acquired and integrated as a feature into a larger company's product.

Social Media Marketing: Twitter "follow suggestion" best thing yet!

2010-08-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

I believe the only reason Twitter has not surpassed Facebook is due to its poor early user retention. (strictly my own personal opinion).

Well, another personal opinion too, in the long term, Twitter is by far more engaging than Facebook! So if Twitter will find a way to keep new users and keep them engaged so they come back more and more once they've signed up, then Twitter will be on its way to becoming bigger than Facebook.

The new suggestions for people to follow, which now twitter shows you has put the short messaging service on that road to becoming the next biggest web service, and guess what... If and when Twitter reaches the #1 status, its going to stay up there for long just for its nature and how engaging it can be to users in the long term.

So what's in it to gain for marketers and businesses as long as this new development is concerned?

Twitter is going to help Marketers engage consumers much more than Facebook. I believe the only reason users would leave Twitter is if they are not following the people they should follow. I mean the right people who reflect the users interest. Consumers will be engaged by twitters feature that allows users to quote, re-tweet and @replies. Brands that know what they are doing are already making great use of twitter.

By the new suggestion feature, if the site will be smart enough to suggest to users the right people to follow, then Twitter is going to grow more rapidly in the coming months. And as more of our friends from Facebook and in real life get on Twitter, we will begin to use the service more and stay longer.

Conclusively, Twitter is the future.. No seriously it is!

Google Discontinues Nexus One, Android May Now Lack Hardware Rythm!

2010-08-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

This is not a blog about gadgets, phones and the likes. But it is a startup blog and today I am focusing my post on user experience around hand-held gadgets! Specifically Smartphones.

User experience or user interface design is a must learn for any startup in a consumer market.

I am talking about android, nexus one and the user experience around the combination here. Many users reported the nexus one (users that have other smartphones, like Iphone or Blackberry) as the best smartphone they've ever used, and Google stopped the nexus phone. Is android going to end up an orphan in the mobile OS market? Not at all. Android has got Motorolla, HTC and even a tablet called Inye soon to be unveiled in Abuja Nigeria.

Google's main problem is being massively out-sold by Apple's Iphone. The Iphone 4 sales where heading for the million mark while Google had only sold a little above a hundred thousand phones. But is the Nexus one really a better phone than the Iphone? Well. a lot of users that have used both phones say so!

The Nexus one gave android the hardware match it needed. If you doubt this, here is an example for the Blackberry user who use their phone to tweet. Before the Blackberry had its own Twitter app, there was UberTwitter. And when RIM launched its official twitter app, those that switched to the app, would certainly witness a change in performance and experience when the use their blackberry phones to tweet.

For some reasons, I wont say on this blog if the change the Blackberry users witnessed is positive or negative. Nonetheless, it's a good example of software/app and hardware rythm or fit! Same goes with OS and the hand-held device.

The Nexus one is the phone that users had the best experience running android on. Now that its gone, where does the android stand against othe mobile OS!

The facts show surprisingly, android is even gaining ground by beating all the rest smartphone operating systems. Including RIM and Iphone OS who make their own hardware for their OS exclusively!

Android is number one selling mobile OS in the US for the second quater of this year reports the NPD Group. I still believe, Android would have done better with the Nexus, which I believe brings out the best of the OS. I guess its still all good for Google's mobile OS.

Startup Advice: Get Ready To Go Big Or Go Home Early!

2010-08-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

Right from the beginning of the commercial web, you have to be super ambitious as a startup in other to stay longer than the next code innovation!

You have to be ambitious and focused on a market for a start. But you have to keep your eye on the big picture by following market shifts and new products or new startups launching. You have to think how you are going to gain more n more market share over time.

Your team also needs to be obsessed with innovation if you don't wanna be the next Myspace. You have to try new things, new ways and new code to improve your products performance. If elese, someone will get inspired by your idea and move to your market and beat you.

Come to think of it, Google came up with the "don't be evil" slogan and from the search engine that they started with, now they have a blogging platform which I am now writing this article on, an architectural design software (Google sketch), an operating system, a smartphone OS, a mobile phone brand, Google Earth, a mobile ad platform, the list goes on and on.

The point I am trying to make here is that, to be a big success, you have to think of dominating the World atleast a few times before you go to sleep! :). No... Seriously.. You have to dream of ruling the market you are in and you have to try to see that it comes true! Just trying to be a player in the market isn't healthy for an aspiring startup to dream.

Now Lets take a look at Facebook. You think Mark Zuckerberg only wanted to build a social network for college students? Well may be you buy that, but I don't. I don't know how true the stories in the book "accidental Billionaires by Ben Mizrich" is, but Mark is really an ambitious person. You can check out the book here http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Billionaires-Founding-Facebook-Betrayal/dp/0385529376

You really need to hope to be big when you are just starting and work towards that. If not, you may not even get to start. Did I confuse you? Well, I'm sure the ones that really have the startup DNA in them know what I'm talking about!