Björn Jeffery

thecatscan:

Frank the cat and her spotted belly

(submitted by babybearface)

State of the internet, 2012.

Reporter: Did you ever think that the lessons you first learned on the stage of an improv comedy theater in Chicago would pay off later in life?

Bill Murray: It pays off in you life when you´re in an elevator and people are uncomfortable. You can just say, “That’s a beautiful scarf.” It’s just thinking about making someone else feel comfortable. You don’t worry about yourself, because we’re vibrating together. If I can make yours just a little bit groovier, it’ll affect me. It comes back, somehow.

A sign of the times.

(via bjornjeffery on Instagram)

A sign of the times.

(via bjornjeffery on Instagram)

I often read references to legacy companies that repeat the same mantra at all their trade conferences, thought pieces and future predictions: we need to find new business models.

Since I never went to business school, I’m sort of stepping out on a limb here. But it seems to me that a business model consists of one or several streams of revenue. The combination of these it what constitutes the business model. Therefore it isn’t necessary to have multiple (or even new) business models, in plural, but rather to try to change the ratio or composition of the revenue streams that your model consists of.

Whether I have the terminology right or not, I think there could be a benefit in thinking about the problem in a more granular way. Coming up with a completely new model, seems big and overwhelming. Finding a single, small, new revenue stream is manageable – although it doesn’t instantly solve the issue at hand. It is more or less the difference between making big changes slowly, and making small changes all the time. 

When searching for a new business model for a company, one must also be honest about the possibility that there simply isn’t one. Constantly searching for a new model, almost like looking for a paradigm shift, is tiresome and difficult. If there isn’t a new model around the corner, it could also overshadow the work with changing the ratios and tweaking the existing revenue streams. Finding and improving smaller parts of the puzzle. The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, although in practice I think they often are.

There are industries going through substantial paradigm shifts in terms of product fit and consumer expectation. Assuming that their business model can go through the same shift could end up being a wild goose chase. And it could hinder these industries from being temporarily sustainable as the market changes, yet again.

A very solid walkthrough of parameters to consider when creating platform companies. I wish there was more blog posts like this.

All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces | Above the Crowd | By Bill Gurley

I changed my Tumblr theme as the last one didn’t differentiate well enough between quotes and my own writing. Also added an AMA which could go either way, I suppose.

Wake up early. Show up. Learn how to think. Be genuine, but appear nice. Use envy for motivation instead of destruction. Do what you say you’re going to do. Ensure balance in every area of your life. Confront repressed thoughts immediately. Surround yourself with people who are better than you (but remember the thing about envy). Work out every day. Be good at what you do. Make money doing what you love. Have good friends. Never settle. This is my personal recipe for happiness and success.

“In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.””

The other day I thought about media execs saying “we can’t give all our content away for free any more”. Now whether that is true or not is a separate issue. But for the sake of argument – let’s think about it in the opposite way:

We, the readers, have been giving you our time for free. We helped you launch on digital in an amazing way. Your brands are still extremely well recognized, and your web and mobile traffic is, generally speaking, very high in every market – local and global.

But now, we as readers have reached a point where perhaps we should move our reading elsewhere. We’re getting so many roadblocks, bad ads and other trouble that we might simply go somewhere else instead. Perhaps we just can’t give our time away for free any more.

*

It is an over-simplification, of course. But the current rhetoric implies that the readers have been a bunch of freeloaders for 10+ years, and that is not correct. It has always been a transaction between the two. The readers have visited and thereby helped media companies to the position where they are today. A position that most companies would _kill to have.

Now, what to do with that position?

Start by appreciating it. And appreciating the readers that got you there.