It’s fun working in the high tech industry, or so many of the occupants would have you believe. The reality of course is that it’s an emotional rollercoaster fraught with screamingly frantic peaks and unbearably plunging lows. After about twelve years in the industry I often wonder why I didn’t pick something more relaxing like the armed forces or perhaps lion taming. You see, behind the geeky facade of glamour and excitement some very delicate plates are spinning, precariously balanced on the end of some very wobbly poles. Most high tech companies are funded by those impetuous and demanding fools, the venture capitalists (see earlier column), and these people want results. Or…at least one would expect them to want results. The continued existence of companies such as General Magic and Geoworks would seem to contest this argument. Anyhow, trying to get the technology good enough for the market and having enough greenbacks left over to promote it successfully is fraught with peril and whatever our Chasm Crossing friend Geoff Moore tells us, it’s a combination of luck and common sense that see you through. When a product makes it, everyone gives knowing nods and says I told you so. When it fails you get the same result, but of course there is the bitterness and drawn out, step by step analysis of the final death rattle, which the media and industry will feast over but seemingly learn nothing from. Also bear in mind that no-one is around forever (except Lloyds of London of course, who invented insurance, clever bastards).
I watched Forest Gump over Christmas and had a little chuckle to myself. Part of Gumps’ success somewhere in the early eighties was attributed to investment in a fruit company, actually of course this was Apple Computer. Of course now this is slightly less of an impressive investment, though they have just turned a profit for the first time in quite a while. Some may attribute this to their latest in illiterate advertising campaigns “Think Different”. Personally I think its because they are slicing staff and assets until the books actually balance. One would assume they can keep this up for about another six months, when presumably there will be just Stevie J. and his ridiculous beard and an old Apple II collecting dust in the corner of the remaining Cupertino office. Then Stevie J, sporting his new beardie Grizzly Adams look, will disappear to the South American hills with the cash (about $24.50 by current estimates) and start a religious cult based around apple shaped hallucinogens and the principle that there’ll be a second coming of Apple and a “third coming” of his ego (which by this time will be so big, he’ll have to carry the excess around in a rucksack).
What this really illustrates of course is the impermanence of all things. Even Woolworths are closing down all over the US because they have repeatedly failed to make a profit, but at least they survived for the better part of a century. In high tech your lucky if you can make it through the end of the week. I was CEO of a multimillion dollar company yesterday, but then we had the aggressive buyout around lunchtime and the shares went artificially high, so we had to layoff all the people we’d added at breakfast. By the time we had afternoon tea we’d been asset stripped, evicted, and bankrupted but we’re looking good to be back on line by Wednesday, when we’re celebrating our third day in business by throwing a party for our client(s).
How many people have forgotten about Commodore already. They were one of the biggest names in computing at one stage, but now merely a distant digital memory.
Really succeeding in the high tech industry is a bit like being a drug dealer. It’s about stealth, lies and dirty shinnanigans (and maybe videotape?). Here is a recent formulae made popular by everyones favorite egomaniac:
1. Get into a developing market segment with a product suitabloe for it. Whether it’s really any good or not does not make any difference. The “luck” part is whether the segment is going to be big or not. In reality, whether it’s a success or not will depend totally on the press, so get ready to lick some journalistic bottom. Forget about the product, this is not as important as the “marketing” of the product. Lie copiously about it at every opportunity.
2. Make outrageous claims about the next product you are going to launch in about nine months time, eg. Brings you closer to God, Never Crashes, Wireless, Easy to Use, Totally Compatible, Penis notably larger after usage, etc. etc. Spend a lot of money at this stage enforcing the lies. Make sure the lies are either suitably nebulous or are about fun sounding features that no-one will actually use anyway, such as voice recognition. Get people to buy into platform and standards, but only support these loosely. Lie particularly heavily about upgradability and backwards compatibility. This will have the effect of killing the interim business for the rest of your competitors and build an anticipation frenzy for launch.
3. Launch early (or late it really doesn’t matter, people are stupid) with excuses about certain missing features, coming soon on the free “plus pack”. They’re already hooked so you can do what you want with them now, while you spend the next three years dribbling out add-ons to almost live up to your original promise. Of course you already have them gagging for the next release, like good little Pavlov’s Dogs.
4. Repeat this formula a couple of times till you own the segment and become very rich, then make freinds in government to protect you when the question of foul play or monopolies comes up.
5. Find a new market and buy or destroy the competition with your new found wealth and political protection.
6. Repeat until you own the world and suddenly you become a religion before anyone has really thought about what you were doing. Usually you go mad at this stage and either ban freedom of thought in a 1984 style blitzkrieg, or utterly destroy everything on the planet.
Of course the marketing machine has built you up to be a visionary at this stage and retrofit an incredible virtual image to your actual sad daemon of hell reality. The thing is, so many of these so called visionaries take themselves far too seriously and like bad politicians, lack a sense of humor about themselves. If you let people like this have too much control, then they in turn will dictate the level of acceptable social humor and the next thing you know, you’re annexing Poland and invading France, with dreams of social engineering, which as we’ve seen is like Civil Engineering only a lot messier.
Alright, so maybe I’m being a little harsh on Bill and his band of rebel conformists (Hey look Bill, I’m wearing a T-Shirt without a logo, I’m so crazy!), but wasn’t there a quote a while back, something like: “We will say absolutely anything to a customer to get their business”. This sounds more like propaganda, than marketing. And alarmingly ambitious at that. Anywho, it seems that even the general public are finally getting the idea and the recent bout of activity in the US courts has perhaps enforced the reality a little. The eternal balance must be maintained, for every action there is an equal and opposite, etc. etc. Well, we’re still waiting for a suitable challenger to wear the cloak of “opposite reaction”. Clearly this is not Adolf “Big” Jobs or “Oraculously” constipated Vampire Larry (who I’ll admit, at least makes some interesting and valid observations occasionally). A realistic challenger will appear, perhaps in the form of an anti-technology action group like the Luddites, and Bill will be exposed in pretty much the same way the tobacco companies are being publicly undressed at present. The world will be shocked for at least a week and we will be left with the following epitath, in the words of Jimmy Cliff (infamous reggae star): “The harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all.” FX: Thunderous applause, exit stage left. MM.
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