taking "the purple pill"

I've been flipping back through the book "The Art of The Start" by Guy Kawasaki. It is a really fantastic book for anyone trying to start a new company. If you are in this position, it is required reading.

I went back to the section entitled "Take The Red Pill" in which he refers to a scene in the movie "The Matrix". Morpheus presents Neo with the difficult choice between taking the Red Pill or the Blue Pill. The Red Pill takes him back to the harsh reality while The Blue Pill takes him back to the fantasy world. Guy recommends taking The Red Pill and getting a Morpheus on the team.

I'm happy to say I have some people that fit the bill in my team. They are experienced people that know what it takes and they force me to take The Red Pill while others are convinced it's a slam dunk. They believe but question most things forcing me to get back to reality. As for me, I regularly take The Purple Pill. I need to have enough reality to stay on my toes but enough fantasy to remain encouraged.

The company I'm launching will be fighting for your attention, Mr. and Mrs. consumer. You probably surf the web, listen to radio and CDs. You might have an MP3 player and possibly listen to streaming music. You might even have satellite radio and if you don't could get one if you wanted to. You have lots of choices but each has its own pros and cons and none provide the complete experience I'm looking for which compels me to create it. I think the team I'm pulling together can create something totally different and better ... but is it enough?

The real enemy is "good enough". This is where The Red Pill comes in handy. It is not too hard to make things better. However, incremental improvements are not the realm of startups. We need to make things 10 times better or cheaper or create an entirely different experience or paradigm. We have chosen the "entirely different" approach. Nevertheless, we'll be fighting for your attention and so in the end, you'll need to be compelled to come over to our side.

So what are you really looking for you fickle customer? I'm going to eventually find out but I could use some help. Share with us and you'll probably be rewarded by a new experience that will finally satisfy you. Tell us what you like, dislike, love, hate and what really drives you crazy about:
-AM/FM radio
-MP3 players
-Satellite radio

I'll seed this a little without leading the witness too much:
-I feel like listening to a specific song right now and I don't own it ... tough luck
-I get in my car in the middle of a great song ... tough luck
-The local stations cover only hockey but I'm also interested in basketball ... tough luck
-I heading towards the main highway but I just missed the traffic report ... tough luck

I could go on and on. There are lots of problems and things that drive me crazy. How about you?

I promise I'll take The Red Pill ... but for now, The Blue Pill tells me there are lots of problems that need to be solved and that I can do it. Perhaps I need The Purple Pill.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Entrepreneur with an Iron Ring

Feel free to email me directly at 5628isfan@rogers.com

Is this legal?

Remember when you used to record radio? That was a long time ago ... at least for me ... but this fad is coming back. In the search for free music, it is amazing what amazing tools people will come up with.

A number of MP3 players with FM tuners allow you to record the radio to your local memory. This is interesting but not necessarily that exciting at first thought. However, some of the legal tools that have popped make this a potentially very useful way to get all your music for free.

I recently downloaded a trial version of a product called Replay Music from a company called Applian http://www.applian.com. The product can record the music you are streaming on the net, determine the song and artist, clip the beginning and end so that you get a neat and tidy mp3 of all the songs, complete with artist and song info! It even asks you if you want the songs added to your iTunes library!!! I tried it and was amazed by how good a job it did. With the quality from many streaming services being pretty decent, this is an amazing way to huge quantities of music for essentially nothing (except for the S/W) and all legally so far. They also have many other cool products, such as a Radio TIVO recorder.

It don't know if that's just me but this is huge once it hits the mainstream. It could certainly impact the operation of streaming services in major ways. Hints of changes are already coming. Creative recently removed a feature from their mp3 player that prevents you from recording from the built in FM tuner. This of course is pissing off lots of their customers that bought the player specifically due to that feature. Fortunately, you have to apply a "patch" for this improvement to take place. Naturally, the patch includes things some people may want so some may get suckered. There's lots of banter on the net regarding what caused Creative to pull this feature? Was it pressure from the RIAA (radio cops)? Quite likely. This is the same reason satellite radio players don't have a record function.

Before all hell breaks loose, I'm grabbing as much music as I can legally before someone shuts this down. Have fun.

Some start up stuff now. I continue to have discussions with many people, with some of the discussions being at very high levels (CEO, Chairman, VP, President, VC partner ...) and I keep being amazed about the positive feedback regarding the concept I'm shooting for. It is extremely encouraging. I will continue to have these discussions but I already know we just need to build it.

So here we are ... quit job in April ... consult on the side... dream up ideas for months ... hang by the pool with family and friends ... get serious in September ... nail down general concept in October ... get friends to help ... and start building. Seems simple doesn't it? That's the easy part, but you have to start somewhere. There is no better way to raise money than to actually build something and use that in your pitch instead of just powerpoint. Seems obvious I suppose but it wasn't obvious to me months ago.

If you are interested in start-ups, here is a great link several people forwarded me recently from a blog written by Paul Graham (I quoted some of his stuff in an earlier post). The article is entitled "The 18 Mistakes that kill startups" http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

Since many of you on this post come from companies developing broadband, I thought you might like the analysis I've copied below from "The New Yorker". The full link to the story is http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061016ta_talk_paumgarten

"In the church, he presented meticulously researched, technically correct, but completely ridiculous charts and graphs. He compared various data-transfer systems: ISDN, ADSL, Wi-Fly (that is, pigeons). Then he showed a slide of a snail hitched to a tiny chariot with DVDs for wheels. If each disk contains 4.7 gigabytes of data, and if the snail (chasing a scrap of lettuce) travels at 0.000023 metres per second, the snail-system performance rate is over thirty-seven megabits per second. That blows ADSL out of the water. (There are flaws, however. As Vardi noted, “In some regions, most notably France, culinary habits may pose a denial-of-service problem.”) Dubno rang a bell and shooed Vardi from the stage."