Hypernumerals
"It has never been easier to start an Internet company. Create a Web site, begin a "viral" marketing campaign to grow word-of-mouth and acquire an audience, garner some ad revenues, generate venture capital funding and sell out to a Web giant such as Yahoo! or Google."
This is how an article in Forbes starts, with the title: Good technology is nice, but a Good idea is better. http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2007/08/09/google-yahoo-youtube-ent-fin-cx_kw_0809whartonvc.html?boxes=relstories I cannot agree more, but since my RSS reader is daily filled +100, I tend to have too many ideas, so I started to give them away for free, thereby contributing to the emerging Gift Economy ☺
For instance, Techcrunch announced today that one of the finalists of Seedcamp, a European Y Combinator-like seed fund and mentoring program is a Scottish Project Fairplay which states that they want to do something with hypernumbers such as hypertext does with words. I tried to find out more, but strangely the new company has no website hyperlinked to their name ☺
Hypernumerals is an old idea, but nobody has ever touched it the right way. Everyone says it is too much of a niche market, but I disagree.
When I think of hypernumbers I do not think in algebraic systems where they are called hypercomplex or numbers with dimensionality (axes). My view on hypernumbers should do to numbers (or numerals) what hypertext does to text. This opens up a whole array of opportunity. One could set up a new advertising concept around "number advertising" instead of text advertising. The advertisement syndication or ad serving platform could be called "Addsense", for instance (instead of Adsense). One could generate frequency tables of numbers in texts ("Adnumbers" versus Google's Adwords) so that it would be possible to make a top 20 of the most popular numbers in the world. Let's not forget that any text which consists of tips and is numbered is immediately taken up by Digg or other content synidcators, people just love numbered lists.
Just like Adsense people could bid (why not a simple Vickrey auction?) to sponsor a certain number or cipher in texts all over the world in for instance a CPA model (cost per action instead of cost per click as Google now does which would lead to price discovery in this niche market). This would require a new search engine (let's call it "Numeratica"), for numbers only, which could be an add-on to Firefox and an alternative to wikipedia. The field of numerals should include both the idea of numbers and symbol for numbers (so that I could for instance sponsor a variable number such as the US debt). My definition of numberals would also include zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers.
The idea is infinite. Just like numbers and our imagination.
August 30, 2007
Never Jam Today
NEVER JAM TODAY
I have talked about Pajamanation extensively in more than 12 blogs in a qualitative way and if you want the quantitative appraisal of Web Grader you can find it here (I have made it particularly tough for us by comparing us to two giants www.guru.com and www.elance.com). Here is the report http://www.websitegrader.com/wsgid/192307/default.aspx
Now that the end of the holidays is approaching, we need to prepare some action. We have nine milestones to go before we are ready to leave Terra Incognita (nomad's land)
1. V2 should be ready
2. The new contracts should be ready and send out to the managers
3. We need a Web Farm
4. V2 must be tested by all of us (and perhaps even by www.inviteshare.com) and all the suggestions and glitches have to be incorporated
5. A designer must make the site extra yummy
6. A copywriter must look at the texts
7. The SEO must be done
8. The country sites must be ready
9. A global press release must be done by a PR bureau
These milestones must be done in the next six months and then we will be ready, but we will emerge in a complete new landscape. Let me just tell you about what I think are three of the new parameters:
Apple
The iPhone will change everything: it will boost web mobility and search will move from the laptop to the handheld, it will boost mergers between manufacturers and providers (10% margin deals by Apple), Apple will be the number two computer sold in the US (it is now just in number three place having increased its sales enormously) and there will be an ever greater amount of switchers (from pc to Mac) by the pressure of consumer technology such as iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPhoto etc..
Google
Google will probably take over Firefox in the browser market, Gears will fill the disadvantages of desktops versus webtops (offline), Google will push its webtop strategy as an alternative to MS, the Gphone will gradually displace GPS systems because Google will have its own phone OS (through the acquisition of Android). Google together with Apple will be responsible for a renaissance of micro-entrepreneurship and a return of work to the homes.
Venture Capital
VC money will become tougher to get hold of because of the amount of high quality deals, the uncertainty of stock markets and the nervousness of their shareholders. The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass)
☺
I have talked about Pajamanation extensively in more than 12 blogs in a qualitative way and if you want the quantitative appraisal of Web Grader you can find it here (I have made it particularly tough for us by comparing us to two giants www.guru.com and www.elance.com). Here is the report http://www.websitegrader.com/wsgid/192307/default.aspx
Now that the end of the holidays is approaching, we need to prepare some action. We have nine milestones to go before we are ready to leave Terra Incognita (nomad's land)
1. V2 should be ready
2. The new contracts should be ready and send out to the managers
3. We need a Web Farm
4. V2 must be tested by all of us (and perhaps even by www.inviteshare.com) and all the suggestions and glitches have to be incorporated
5. A designer must make the site extra yummy
6. A copywriter must look at the texts
7. The SEO must be done
8. The country sites must be ready
9. A global press release must be done by a PR bureau
These milestones must be done in the next six months and then we will be ready, but we will emerge in a complete new landscape. Let me just tell you about what I think are three of the new parameters:
Apple
The iPhone will change everything: it will boost web mobility and search will move from the laptop to the handheld, it will boost mergers between manufacturers and providers (10% margin deals by Apple), Apple will be the number two computer sold in the US (it is now just in number three place having increased its sales enormously) and there will be an ever greater amount of switchers (from pc to Mac) by the pressure of consumer technology such as iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPhoto etc..
Google will probably take over Firefox in the browser market, Gears will fill the disadvantages of desktops versus webtops (offline), Google will push its webtop strategy as an alternative to MS, the Gphone will gradually displace GPS systems because Google will have its own phone OS (through the acquisition of Android). Google together with Apple will be responsible for a renaissance of micro-entrepreneurship and a return of work to the homes.
Venture Capital
VC money will become tougher to get hold of because of the amount of high quality deals, the uncertainty of stock markets and the nervousness of their shareholders. The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass)
☺
August 27, 2007
META time
META
Sunday, September 2, 2007. That is the date, when I will tell you the date for our launch. I do not want to break another promise, I will make this deadline, but therefore I need to be sure.
I have also discussed with Yosi, the openness of our dialogue. We let the world see the teenage mentality of a young global company, I quite like it. It proves that CEOs are mere mortals, companies make mistakes, and entrepreneurship is closer to art than science. Above all, it sets one thing right: leadership comes from the bottom up, the CEO only moderates it. But shall we close the blog or leave it open. As a Belgian, I am a man looking always for a win-win. Therefore I have decided to daily write two blogs starting from Monday: one for the CMs which will be closed, and one for the public and the users, which will be open.
In the beginning when I talked about Pajamanation, I told people the philosophy that was behind it, but now, I don't anymore. Because Pajamanation is a Black Swan (Nassim Taleb just wrote a book about the Impact of the Highly Improbable). "We produce 30 year projections of social security deficits and oil prices without realizing that we cannot even predict these for the next summer."
He is right, we are a young, reckless, superficial and very unfair race, but we have our moments of grandeur and vision. You need a story to displace a story. We are building this story together. Ideas come and go on web 2.0 but I believe our story will stay. The desertion of corporate cubicles for the home office, the renaissance of entrepreneurship at the individual level, the leapfrogging of the third world, the opening up of the source code of entrepreneurship, the final Maslov level of self-realization, the unsustainability of the present unfair model of social structure, the displacing of a decennium of jobtakers by a new decennium of jobmakers and the feast of creativity. This fills me with joy and anticipation. It is a great story and one I love to tell.
Sunday, September 2, 2007. That is the date, when I will tell you the date for our launch. I do not want to break another promise, I will make this deadline, but therefore I need to be sure.
I have also discussed with Yosi, the openness of our dialogue. We let the world see the teenage mentality of a young global company, I quite like it. It proves that CEOs are mere mortals, companies make mistakes, and entrepreneurship is closer to art than science. Above all, it sets one thing right: leadership comes from the bottom up, the CEO only moderates it. But shall we close the blog or leave it open. As a Belgian, I am a man looking always for a win-win. Therefore I have decided to daily write two blogs starting from Monday: one for the CMs which will be closed, and one for the public and the users, which will be open.
In the beginning when I talked about Pajamanation, I told people the philosophy that was behind it, but now, I don't anymore. Because Pajamanation is a Black Swan (Nassim Taleb just wrote a book about the Impact of the Highly Improbable). "We produce 30 year projections of social security deficits and oil prices without realizing that we cannot even predict these for the next summer."
He is right, we are a young, reckless, superficial and very unfair race, but we have our moments of grandeur and vision. You need a story to displace a story. We are building this story together. Ideas come and go on web 2.0 but I believe our story will stay. The desertion of corporate cubicles for the home office, the renaissance of entrepreneurship at the individual level, the leapfrogging of the third world, the opening up of the source code of entrepreneurship, the final Maslov level of self-realization, the unsustainability of the present unfair model of social structure, the displacing of a decennium of jobtakers by a new decennium of jobmakers and the feast of creativity. This fills me with joy and anticipation. It is a great story and one I love to tell.
August 26, 2007
Red Queen
Red Queen in Wonderland
Yesterday I have been thinking about the Dagan rule: 33% are doing all the work, 33% do something and 33% do next to nothing. Last time I said that this was a reflection of the world. But there may be another explanation.
If you look at the people subscribed to my blog and our Pajamanation group at Facebook, the Dagan rule holds: 33%, those that doing all the work. But I cannot believe that 66% are unconcerned about our efforts.
Suppose (like Chomsky's formal grammars) there are four types of people nowadays: Type-0, Type-1, Type-2, Type-3 and these types reveal the way that technology is digested buy them. I mean, our world is not any longer a reflection of the world five years ago, it is a world filled to the brim with technology.
For type-2 and type-3 I would suggest that they buy a Macbook and get an DSL connection and then configure their i-google page. They outsource their mail address to Google, join Facebook, put their itunes music on igoogle, their youtubes videos, the alert page when their name is mentioned, the weather forecast, babelfish and of course, the most important Google reader, so that they can daily read all the articles they want from all the magazines they want (and my blog!). If they are temporarily out of signal, they can use Google Gears to read them offline.
In short: it is to us Type-1's, to educate Type-2's and to Type-2's to educate Type-3's. But first we have to know, if this premise is true.
Tomorrow is a special day: I will tell you about the date when we become Overlords, a frequently delayed operatation to gain a foothold on in cyberspace. When D-Day?
Walter
Yesterday I have been thinking about the Dagan rule: 33% are doing all the work, 33% do something and 33% do next to nothing. Last time I said that this was a reflection of the world. But there may be another explanation.
If you look at the people subscribed to my blog and our Pajamanation group at Facebook, the Dagan rule holds: 33%, those that doing all the work. But I cannot believe that 66% are unconcerned about our efforts.
Suppose (like Chomsky's formal grammars) there are four types of people nowadays: Type-0, Type-1, Type-2, Type-3 and these types reveal the way that technology is digested buy them. I mean, our world is not any longer a reflection of the world five years ago, it is a world filled to the brim with technology.
- Type-0 people are like Chris, our CTO, they span the complete horizon, there is very little gaps in their knowledge, they have been TO almost from birth.
- Type-1 people are like the 33% who are reading my blog. They are extremely updated on all the new technologies and apps that come out every day. They probably spend 60% of their day learning just to keep up.
- Type-2 people are like the 33% who do something but not enough. Perhaps they are like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, they are running very fast to stay in the same place. Perhaps they want to read my blog but do not know where it is, they want to read it daily but do not know what an RSS reader is or how to configure one, they want to join the party on Facebook but they do not find 'groups' and if they do, they do not find 'join'.
- Type-3 people, probably have intermittent access to the internet and are just e-mailers and all the rest escapes them.
For type-2 and type-3 I would suggest that they buy a Macbook and get an DSL connection and then configure their i-google page. They outsource their mail address to Google, join Facebook, put their itunes music on igoogle, their youtubes videos, the alert page when their name is mentioned, the weather forecast, babelfish and of course, the most important Google reader, so that they can daily read all the articles they want from all the magazines they want (and my blog!). If they are temporarily out of signal, they can use Google Gears to read them offline.
In short: it is to us Type-1's, to educate Type-2's and to Type-2's to educate Type-3's. But first we have to know, if this premise is true.
Tomorrow is a special day: I will tell you about the date when we become Overlords, a frequently delayed operatation to gain a foothold on in cyberspace. When D-Day?
Walter
August 24, 2007
A little bit of Steve
A little bit of Steve
At this very moment, we are all entrepreneurs doing an entrepreneurial project together, Pajamanation. But this is only the beginning of our entrepreneurial activity. Think of what we will be in a year. They have asked me about the size of our market, so we put something together and said a couple of millions sure, 20 to 30 perhaps. But all this is aiming too low. Really too low. We should not look at our new economic agenda like a botanist who says how many potential homeworkers will there be? A botanist does not make any sense in the Cambrian Explosion (the mashup world of today). There will not only be homeworkers making use of Pajamanation, or consultants with a home office or freelancers, or women staying at home with the kids, or the kids themselves outsourcing ideas or school papers. There will be many more, think of the disabled, think of the sick, think of the unemployed, think of the economically challenged worlds out there, think of people in their day job quickly doing a microjob on the side (sunlighting), think of moonlighters (people who have a day job and do a microjob in the evening), think of teleworkers who are looking for a pause and do a microjob instead of playing solitaire, think of SMEs who will outsource all their bottlenecks in the form of microjobs, think of corporations where internal entrepreneurs will outsource feasibility projects, think of individuals, think of families as a whole who are doing microjobs.
The right question for PajamaNation is: how many people on earth have creative ideas, at least one a year. A wild guess: one billion. But this means that I exclude 5 billion and label them Zombiestan and it also means that people normally only get one creative idea a year, which is nonsense.
Critics of course are saying that they need access to computers. But talk to young people nowadays, wherever you are: they cannot envisage their lives not having a cyberspace. They will live digitally.
Lately I have been feeling a bit like Steve Jobs (I wish ☺ launching the iphone. I have been approached by people wanting to make products, services and even companies for the sheer mass of people we are going to reach and this is good. This is very good. Here come the apps, de dev kits, the links, the services, the cross-fertilization. Yummy.
As I told you before we have been talking to www.worldlawdirect.com. They want to set up a legal desk for homeworkers, they want to do micro-insurances for us, they want to do escrows for us. They smell the potential. One of our greatest deals www.lulu.com said yes to an alliance whereby all our members can publish their books. Lulu is more than famous, they smell the potential. Yosi found two other companies that want to offer services www.zira.biz and www.websplanet.com
But recently I have been approached by others with more ideas. Nasir, our manager of Malaysia came up with a good idea for our pajamadomains and is now thinking of a venture to involve all country managers to be the biggest second-level domain shop next to www.marcaria.com. Charles Palanco, the CEO of www.paltrust.com is not only convinced he should join us with P2P lending he also came up with two new products (PeopleTrust and Cardtrust) for our specific audience. An interim office in Montana wants to add us as another line of business. I told you about the great project that Stephen Wolfram offered us.
But you? Ask yourself what you can do for your nation ☺)
A killer product you can offer to all of us, someone in your country we should talk to, a service that is badly needed. Be creative, before somebody else is, because before you know it we will be booming and then it is too late (although you were on the front row).
Walter
At this very moment, we are all entrepreneurs doing an entrepreneurial project together, Pajamanation. But this is only the beginning of our entrepreneurial activity. Think of what we will be in a year. They have asked me about the size of our market, so we put something together and said a couple of millions sure, 20 to 30 perhaps. But all this is aiming too low. Really too low. We should not look at our new economic agenda like a botanist who says how many potential homeworkers will there be? A botanist does not make any sense in the Cambrian Explosion (the mashup world of today). There will not only be homeworkers making use of Pajamanation, or consultants with a home office or freelancers, or women staying at home with the kids, or the kids themselves outsourcing ideas or school papers. There will be many more, think of the disabled, think of the sick, think of the unemployed, think of the economically challenged worlds out there, think of people in their day job quickly doing a microjob on the side (sunlighting), think of moonlighters (people who have a day job and do a microjob in the evening), think of teleworkers who are looking for a pause and do a microjob instead of playing solitaire, think of SMEs who will outsource all their bottlenecks in the form of microjobs, think of corporations where internal entrepreneurs will outsource feasibility projects, think of individuals, think of families as a whole who are doing microjobs.
The right question for PajamaNation is: how many people on earth have creative ideas, at least one a year. A wild guess: one billion. But this means that I exclude 5 billion and label them Zombiestan and it also means that people normally only get one creative idea a year, which is nonsense.
Critics of course are saying that they need access to computers. But talk to young people nowadays, wherever you are: they cannot envisage their lives not having a cyberspace. They will live digitally.
Lately I have been feeling a bit like Steve Jobs (I wish ☺ launching the iphone. I have been approached by people wanting to make products, services and even companies for the sheer mass of people we are going to reach and this is good. This is very good. Here come the apps, de dev kits, the links, the services, the cross-fertilization. Yummy.
As I told you before we have been talking to www.worldlawdirect.com. They want to set up a legal desk for homeworkers, they want to do micro-insurances for us, they want to do escrows for us. They smell the potential. One of our greatest deals www.lulu.com said yes to an alliance whereby all our members can publish their books. Lulu is more than famous, they smell the potential. Yosi found two other companies that want to offer services www.zira.biz and www.websplanet.com
But recently I have been approached by others with more ideas. Nasir, our manager of Malaysia came up with a good idea for our pajamadomains and is now thinking of a venture to involve all country managers to be the biggest second-level domain shop next to www.marcaria.com. Charles Palanco, the CEO of www.paltrust.com is not only convinced he should join us with P2P lending he also came up with two new products (PeopleTrust and Cardtrust) for our specific audience. An interim office in Montana wants to add us as another line of business. I told you about the great project that Stephen Wolfram offered us.
But you? Ask yourself what you can do for your nation ☺)
A killer product you can offer to all of us, someone in your country we should talk to, a service that is badly needed. Be creative, before somebody else is, because before you know it we will be booming and then it is too late (although you were on the front row).
Walter
August 22, 2007
It is Amazing, is it not
On the beach of Cap d'Antibes
Today I was sitting at the beach of Cap d'Antibes (that is in France by the way) with our Pajamanation manager of Austria, Markus Schuller. We joked about the many directions we took with PajamaNation. It is quite extraordinarily, when you come to think about it, that we still exist! That is probably the most astonishing fact of our endeavor; we seem to survive against odds. And while we are debating that we need a better site and better systems, customers come and go, they are not bothered, not even conscious about our problems. They just post microjobs (which is not easy, believe me, I tried it), they do microjobs for others, they leave their profile, they register. My God, they have guts and patience! This is certainly the best proof of our future success, that with such a lousy site and such whimsical management (I target myself here), we grow every day. Amazing.
But actually we did the same as our customers, while some of us were debating, others worked on it and when the workers stopped and started debating, the debaters started to work and this is the result, let's sum it up.
1. We have companies with VAT numbers, with shareholders, with bank accounts
2. We have a great mission statement which makes me feel proud and a good positioning too as Entrepreneurship 2.0. Open the source code of entrepreneurship to the world (difficult? Of course this is difficult! Changing the world has never been easy)
3. We have 84 trademarks worldwide and a great name (which makes people smile when you say it)
4. We have more than a hundred second-level domain names in these countries (and for the Spanish-speaking countries we have an alternative name –pyjamanation- because pajama seems to mean masturbation which could trigger the wrong sort of 'microjobs'
5. We have more than 60 country managers (as Yosi says 33% are doing their best, 33% are doing something and 33% are doing nothing). Fair enough, that is a reflection of the world as well. We are human, not superhuman.
6. We have customers, more every day, hits in more than 50 countries (Venezuela and Kenya on top, which means that we have rescheduled the world as we know it), microjobs from a lot of countries (I have not seen this in any site) and 3000 people who registered and left their profiles. We even had to pay money back to people who paid mistakenly, how about that!
7. We have the best architecture in the world (our new system works with catalyst and Mason- not that I really know what this is, but Chris tells me it is the Bentley of programming) and we paid the top guy at Amazon to work that out for us. We only had him on our payroll for two months, but God that hurt!
8. We have a great management team who work for free
9. We have a blog (which I write every day and I love to read it too, it is actually one of my favorites), a wiki, a group on Facebook, several movies on Youtube in two languages; we have been on TV in Portugal and Venezuela and shortly in India (I love the way Ricardo sat their in pajamas, that is the kind of brand we need, it should be in the contract that all our managers have to wear pajamas during interviews)
10. We have closed great partnerships with www.lulu.com, www.bitwine.com, www.paltrust.com, www.worldlawdirect.com, and some others are in the make
11. www.Wolframscience.com has a three-year job for 1000 microworkers for us which will get us global press when our new system is out. It is a great assignment believe me.
12. In September we will have our own server farm in Sweden and a series of new contracts made by our lawyers, which will solidify our positions towards licenses and option agreements.
Amazing, is it not, that we sometimes think, that we do not really exist, although even a passing thought, it is a wrong one. We are changing the world, but our pace could improve.
I would like to end with the lyrical words of a Skype email I got today and it made me think of all of you, so here it is:
When the unexpected happens, it's important to remember the people who stuck behind us and whose loyalty humbled us. I want to thank everyone for their support, patience and being part of the Skype community. And for those of you who missed out on using Skype last week - I want to especially thank you as well.
Today I was sitting at the beach of Cap d'Antibes (that is in France by the way) with our Pajamanation manager of Austria, Markus Schuller. We joked about the many directions we took with PajamaNation. It is quite extraordinarily, when you come to think about it, that we still exist! That is probably the most astonishing fact of our endeavor; we seem to survive against odds. And while we are debating that we need a better site and better systems, customers come and go, they are not bothered, not even conscious about our problems. They just post microjobs (which is not easy, believe me, I tried it), they do microjobs for others, they leave their profile, they register. My God, they have guts and patience! This is certainly the best proof of our future success, that with such a lousy site and such whimsical management (I target myself here), we grow every day. Amazing.
But actually we did the same as our customers, while some of us were debating, others worked on it and when the workers stopped and started debating, the debaters started to work and this is the result, let's sum it up.
1. We have companies with VAT numbers, with shareholders, with bank accounts
2. We have a great mission statement which makes me feel proud and a good positioning too as Entrepreneurship 2.0. Open the source code of entrepreneurship to the world (difficult? Of course this is difficult! Changing the world has never been easy)
3. We have 84 trademarks worldwide and a great name (which makes people smile when you say it)
4. We have more than a hundred second-level domain names in these countries (and for the Spanish-speaking countries we have an alternative name –pyjamanation- because pajama seems to mean masturbation which could trigger the wrong sort of 'microjobs'
5. We have more than 60 country managers (as Yosi says 33% are doing their best, 33% are doing something and 33% are doing nothing). Fair enough, that is a reflection of the world as well. We are human, not superhuman.
6. We have customers, more every day, hits in more than 50 countries (Venezuela and Kenya on top, which means that we have rescheduled the world as we know it), microjobs from a lot of countries (I have not seen this in any site) and 3000 people who registered and left their profiles. We even had to pay money back to people who paid mistakenly, how about that!
7. We have the best architecture in the world (our new system works with catalyst and Mason- not that I really know what this is, but Chris tells me it is the Bentley of programming) and we paid the top guy at Amazon to work that out for us. We only had him on our payroll for two months, but God that hurt!
8. We have a great management team who work for free
9. We have a blog (which I write every day and I love to read it too, it is actually one of my favorites), a wiki, a group on Facebook, several movies on Youtube in two languages; we have been on TV in Portugal and Venezuela and shortly in India (I love the way Ricardo sat their in pajamas, that is the kind of brand we need, it should be in the contract that all our managers have to wear pajamas during interviews)
10. We have closed great partnerships with www.lulu.com, www.bitwine.com, www.paltrust.com, www.worldlawdirect.com, and some others are in the make
11. www.Wolframscience.com has a three-year job for 1000 microworkers for us which will get us global press when our new system is out. It is a great assignment believe me.
12. In September we will have our own server farm in Sweden and a series of new contracts made by our lawyers, which will solidify our positions towards licenses and option agreements.
Amazing, is it not, that we sometimes think, that we do not really exist, although even a passing thought, it is a wrong one. We are changing the world, but our pace could improve.
I would like to end with the lyrical words of a Skype email I got today and it made me think of all of you, so here it is:
When the unexpected happens, it's important to remember the people who stuck behind us and whose loyalty humbled us. I want to thank everyone for their support, patience and being part of the Skype community. And for those of you who missed out on using Skype last week - I want to especially thank you as well.
TRANSPARENCY TOTAL
Day 8: Transparency (let's kill another taboo)
I think we covered a lot since 7 blogs. This one gets a bit more practical. In order to do everything what we want to achieve, we need to rethink our model. Originally I had enthusiastically promised 50% of the company to the country managers. This is no longer a viable position for VCs to come in. So, we restructured that position in ways where everyone still benefits: 20% for country managers and 10% for management, together 30%.
An option pool will be created for country managers of 20% or 45,000,000 shares. The option strike price will be fixed at 0.01333 Euro so with 225, 000,000 shares it is set to when the value of the company is 3M€. When we sell or do an IPO the option pool will be exercisable, that means that you get the difference between the strike price (0,01333) and the purchase price (hopefully 2$ :-). The option pool is dilutable as are all other shares.
The CMs will receive 30% (net) of the revenue. If a merger is being made, 25% will go to the company which brought the users and 8% will be retained by the CM; so we give 3% extra to the CM because we know he is adding value for the rest of us.
It may seem less, and it is of course, but in the end positions are meaningless. I ended up with 0.6% of Qwest Communications and this was more than enough.
At this very moment we are also consolidating our management team, all of which I must add, work for free.
• Walter De Brouwer, ceo (Belgium)
• Yosi Dagan, Sales and Marketing President (Israel)
• Chris Vertonghen, CTO (Belgium)
• Andy Roberts, Country Site Coordinator (UK)
• Jean-Antoine Bord, Vice President Africa (Kenya)
• Ricardo del Rio, Vice President South-America (Venezuela)
• Paul Velho, Vice President Europe (Portugal)
• Chanterria Mc Gilbra, PR Officer
• Sunita Raho, Design
We still have openings for VP Asia, VP Pacific, VP Eastern Europe and VP USA/Canada but we will fill these in later. Of the option pool for management we have reserved until now: Yosi (4,5m), Chris (4,5m), JA Bord (1m shares), Ricardo (1m), Paul (1m). Of the 22,500,000m shares we have reserved 12m shares and there are still 10,5m in the pool. Also note that at this point, none of these have vested.
What will happen now is that Worldlawdirect, Brad Haskins, is going to put this in contracts (country managers, Vice Presidents, staff, option contracts) so that our legal dashboard is in order.
I think what would be cool now is to hear from our three new vice presidents how they see their new role. I would like to invite Paul Velho to be the first.
Walter De Brouwer
I think we covered a lot since 7 blogs. This one gets a bit more practical. In order to do everything what we want to achieve, we need to rethink our model. Originally I had enthusiastically promised 50% of the company to the country managers. This is no longer a viable position for VCs to come in. So, we restructured that position in ways where everyone still benefits: 20% for country managers and 10% for management, together 30%.
An option pool will be created for country managers of 20% or 45,000,000 shares. The option strike price will be fixed at 0.01333 Euro so with 225, 000,000 shares it is set to when the value of the company is 3M€. When we sell or do an IPO the option pool will be exercisable, that means that you get the difference between the strike price (0,01333) and the purchase price (hopefully 2$ :-). The option pool is dilutable as are all other shares.
The CMs will receive 30% (net) of the revenue. If a merger is being made, 25% will go to the company which brought the users and 8% will be retained by the CM; so we give 3% extra to the CM because we know he is adding value for the rest of us.
It may seem less, and it is of course, but in the end positions are meaningless. I ended up with 0.6% of Qwest Communications and this was more than enough.
At this very moment we are also consolidating our management team, all of which I must add, work for free.
• Walter De Brouwer, ceo (Belgium)
• Yosi Dagan, Sales and Marketing President (Israel)
• Chris Vertonghen, CTO (Belgium)
• Andy Roberts, Country Site Coordinator (UK)
• Jean-Antoine Bord, Vice President Africa (Kenya)
• Ricardo del Rio, Vice President South-America (Venezuela)
• Paul Velho, Vice President Europe (Portugal)
• Chanterria Mc Gilbra, PR Officer
• Sunita Raho, Design
We still have openings for VP Asia, VP Pacific, VP Eastern Europe and VP USA/Canada but we will fill these in later. Of the option pool for management we have reserved until now: Yosi (4,5m), Chris (4,5m), JA Bord (1m shares), Ricardo (1m), Paul (1m). Of the 22,500,000m shares we have reserved 12m shares and there are still 10,5m in the pool. Also note that at this point, none of these have vested.
What will happen now is that Worldlawdirect, Brad Haskins, is going to put this in contracts (country managers, Vice Presidents, staff, option contracts) so that our legal dashboard is in order.
I think what would be cool now is to hear from our three new vice presidents how they see their new role. I would like to invite Paul Velho to be the first.
Walter De Brouwer
August 21, 2007
Day 7: God spoke to us and apologized
Day Seven: Never thought this would happen
Google apologized!!
We take pride in moving quickly, and we think this philosophy helps to create lots of new and innovative products. But it also leads to errors that -- upon reflection and your feedback -- we need to rectify. This was one of them. We make mistakes; we do our best not to repeat them -- and we really do try to fix the ones we make. That said, the very least that our users should expect from us is that our mistakes be new and innovative, too. ;)
Customers not happy with Facebook's Open Doors Closed Policy (we should learn from this, open up, no closed platforms)
For those of us that use normal email for our day to day business, getting Facebook messages is more of a problem than a feature. That's because Facebook makes you log on to the site to read messages/emails from your friends. They'll send a note to your normal email address when a new message comes in, but they make you log on to Facebook to actually read it. I rarely do that, and have missed some important messages from people trying to contact me. As a next step, I think Facebook should offer to forward the actual messages to an outside email address (and/or provide a password protected RSS feed). Eventually Facebook should offer full POP or IMAP support for their email. They can still restrict it so that you can only receive messages from friends, but at least you could access it from your desktop or web based mail application.
Thank you for your comments in email, but now, thanks to Andy and Yosi, the comments on the blog are enabled, so comment freely. You asked me how the coops would look like, well this was my original idea for people setting up a virtual company. What do you think?
How do I set up Me Inc. in 15 easy steps?
1. What will be the name http://www.domainsbot.com/
2. Write the 1-Pager containing:
• Launching date
• Ownership
• Mission
• Vision
• Contact
3. Make a preliminary spreadsheet of the first two years (P/L) and see how much money you must lend from F3 (Fools, Friends and Family) not to have to worry about cash flow
4. Write the contents for a website and
• register a domain name www.pajamadomains.com
5. Choose a logo and house style (business cards, stationery, email signature) www.pajamaproducts.com
6. Find a template for your website www.pajamaproducts.com
• find a host provider www.pajamahosting.com
• add some digital pictures www.istockphoto.com
• introduce payment software www.paypal.com
• Keep the statistics to adjust what you offer www.google.com/analytics
7. Open a bank account (online or offline)
8. Find an accountant online to provide you quarterly with three statements (P/L, cash flow, balance sheet) and make him do the tax formalities www.pajamaproducts.com
9. Find a lawyer for a cheap lawyer on monthly subscription www.worldlawdirect.com
10. Create your tiger team and divide the labour
• secretary www.pajamanation.com/cybersecretaries per hour
• Translators www.pajamanation.com/translators
• Credit Collection www.pajamanation.com/creditcollection
• IT remote help www.pajamanation.com/ITremote
11. Select your marketing mix:
• lead generation www.pajamanation.com/leadgeneration
• Internet Marketing
12. Collect your Business docs and contracts library www.worldlawdirect.com
13. Build up your confidence with some merchandising (cap, T-shirt, mug) www.cafepress.com or www.zazzle.com
14. Lend money from the community www.paltrust.com
15. Become a member of www.linkedin.com and www.facebook.com Pajamanation Groups
Google apologized!!
We take pride in moving quickly, and we think this philosophy helps to create lots of new and innovative products. But it also leads to errors that -- upon reflection and your feedback -- we need to rectify. This was one of them. We make mistakes; we do our best not to repeat them -- and we really do try to fix the ones we make. That said, the very least that our users should expect from us is that our mistakes be new and innovative, too. ;)
Customers not happy with Facebook's Open Doors Closed Policy (we should learn from this, open up, no closed platforms)
For those of us that use normal email for our day to day business, getting Facebook messages is more of a problem than a feature. That's because Facebook makes you log on to the site to read messages/emails from your friends. They'll send a note to your normal email address when a new message comes in, but they make you log on to Facebook to actually read it. I rarely do that, and have missed some important messages from people trying to contact me. As a next step, I think Facebook should offer to forward the actual messages to an outside email address (and/or provide a password protected RSS feed). Eventually Facebook should offer full POP or IMAP support for their email. They can still restrict it so that you can only receive messages from friends, but at least you could access it from your desktop or web based mail application.
Thank you for your comments in email, but now, thanks to Andy and Yosi, the comments on the blog are enabled, so comment freely. You asked me how the coops would look like, well this was my original idea for people setting up a virtual company. What do you think?
How do I set up Me Inc. in 15 easy steps?
1. What will be the name http://www.domainsbot.com/
2. Write the 1-Pager containing:
• Launching date
• Ownership
• Mission
• Vision
• Contact
3. Make a preliminary spreadsheet of the first two years (P/L) and see how much money you must lend from F3 (Fools, Friends and Family) not to have to worry about cash flow
4. Write the contents for a website and
• register a domain name www.pajamadomains.com
5. Choose a logo and house style (business cards, stationery, email signature) www.pajamaproducts.com
6. Find a template for your website www.pajamaproducts.com
• find a host provider www.pajamahosting.com
• add some digital pictures www.istockphoto.com
• introduce payment software www.paypal.com
• Keep the statistics to adjust what you offer www.google.com/analytics
7. Open a bank account (online or offline)
8. Find an accountant online to provide you quarterly with three statements (P/L, cash flow, balance sheet) and make him do the tax formalities www.pajamaproducts.com
9. Find a lawyer for a cheap lawyer on monthly subscription www.worldlawdirect.com
10. Create your tiger team and divide the labour
• secretary www.pajamanation.com/cybersecretaries per hour
• Translators www.pajamanation.com/translators
• Credit Collection www.pajamanation.com/creditcollection
• IT remote help www.pajamanation.com/ITremote
11. Select your marketing mix:
• lead generation www.pajamanation.com/leadgeneration
• Internet Marketing
12. Collect your Business docs and contracts library www.worldlawdirect.com
13. Build up your confidence with some merchandising (cap, T-shirt, mug) www.cafepress.com or www.zazzle.com
14. Lend money from the community www.paltrust.com
15. Become a member of www.linkedin.com and www.facebook.com Pajamanation Groups
August 20, 2007
Darwin's Coops
Darwin's Coops
I started this blog by stating that companies need to evolve, and if they are not prepared to do this, they will go to the dogs. If you look at our original idea for Pajamanation, we can safely say that we have not been afraid to evolve together with the rapid pace of evolution of the internet.
Andy in his invited blog, says that not only companies need to evolve, also we, the members of these companies need to evolve, in other words, we need to learn new things faster than before. That is why I like his idea of being the mentor of a group of country managers ready to evolve to new heights.
Yosi, in his blog tells us that our choice of partners should focus on whether they are ready to evolve or not. That is three times that we pay tribute to Darwin: our company, ourselves and our partners.
Let me now introduce a fourth stage of evolution: our clients, our customers need to evolve. Great companies predict what their customers will need in future, but the greatest change what they need. That is partly our mission: to change what our customers think they want. Therefore, I would like to introduce the concept of "coops". The idea centers around the leveraging of our identity. As a homeworker we can have several identities: ourselves, our incorporated self, an alternative identity, etc.. but there is more. We have to show our customers the way to a higher level of identity leverage. Besides their personal identity, in our future pajamanation platform they can choose to have one or more virtual companies. A virtual company is a digital entity, not necessarily a legal one. For instance, I am a copywriter and I make a living working from home for clients who need my services. But I can crave for something bigger so that I can pitch for more complex jobs. So I set up the virtual company BROCHURE. Via pajamanation I let the world know that in that company I am looking for three partners: a designer, a translator and a printer. Together we can deliver products such as brochures or websites or power points, which on my own I could not do. Therefore I have created a second opportunity to get homework for myself.
In future we are going to set up a third level of complexity (1-self, 2-virtual company): the supercoop. A supercoop is a collection of virtual companies. Suppose that one day we see an appeal on pajamanation that MEDIA (a supercoop) is looking for virtual companies doing brochures, advertising sales, ad metrics, SEO etc.. We can then apply with our virtual company to do even more complex jobs and so pitch against global media companies working for global clients. The only difference will be that we will do it at a fraction of the cost that the brick and mortar companies will do it.
Anyway, that is my rant for today. Does that make sense to anyone?
Summary
There are three wizards to be build:
1. Me Inc, individuals becoming personal multinationals working from home (for instance a translator marketing his services and connecting with other translators in other countries)
2. Coop, Me Incs working together in a virtual company to do more complex jobs
• translator + copywriter + designer + printer (brochure makers)
• SEO + internet advertising + linking (internet marketing)
• Journalists + advertising (publishers)
• Public Relations + Marketing (internet PR)
• IP radio station + IP TV station + banner ads + text ads (internet ad agency)
I started this blog by stating that companies need to evolve, and if they are not prepared to do this, they will go to the dogs. If you look at our original idea for Pajamanation, we can safely say that we have not been afraid to evolve together with the rapid pace of evolution of the internet.
Andy in his invited blog, says that not only companies need to evolve, also we, the members of these companies need to evolve, in other words, we need to learn new things faster than before. That is why I like his idea of being the mentor of a group of country managers ready to evolve to new heights.
Yosi, in his blog tells us that our choice of partners should focus on whether they are ready to evolve or not. That is three times that we pay tribute to Darwin: our company, ourselves and our partners.
Let me now introduce a fourth stage of evolution: our clients, our customers need to evolve. Great companies predict what their customers will need in future, but the greatest change what they need. That is partly our mission: to change what our customers think they want. Therefore, I would like to introduce the concept of "coops". The idea centers around the leveraging of our identity. As a homeworker we can have several identities: ourselves, our incorporated self, an alternative identity, etc.. but there is more. We have to show our customers the way to a higher level of identity leverage. Besides their personal identity, in our future pajamanation platform they can choose to have one or more virtual companies. A virtual company is a digital entity, not necessarily a legal one. For instance, I am a copywriter and I make a living working from home for clients who need my services. But I can crave for something bigger so that I can pitch for more complex jobs. So I set up the virtual company BROCHURE. Via pajamanation I let the world know that in that company I am looking for three partners: a designer, a translator and a printer. Together we can deliver products such as brochures or websites or power points, which on my own I could not do. Therefore I have created a second opportunity to get homework for myself.
In future we are going to set up a third level of complexity (1-self, 2-virtual company): the supercoop. A supercoop is a collection of virtual companies. Suppose that one day we see an appeal on pajamanation that MEDIA (a supercoop) is looking for virtual companies doing brochures, advertising sales, ad metrics, SEO etc.. We can then apply with our virtual company to do even more complex jobs and so pitch against global media companies working for global clients. The only difference will be that we will do it at a fraction of the cost that the brick and mortar companies will do it.
Anyway, that is my rant for today. Does that make sense to anyone?
Summary
There are three wizards to be build:
1. Me Inc, individuals becoming personal multinationals working from home (for instance a translator marketing his services and connecting with other translators in other countries)
2. Coop, Me Incs working together in a virtual company to do more complex jobs
• translator + copywriter + designer + printer (brochure makers)
• SEO + internet advertising + linking (internet marketing)
• Journalists + advertising (publishers)
• Public Relations + Marketing (internet PR)
• IP radio station + IP TV station + banner ads + text ads (internet ad agency)
August 17, 2007
How to build a Win-Win partnership and leverging the power of more than 50 country managers
I would like to thank Walter for inviting me to post on his blog. I really appreciate this blog as it expose the ‘behind the stage activity’ in Pajamanation.
I would like to write about partners and partnerships, but before going into that we should look on the value that we can bring to table.
We have country managers in more than 50 countries. Pajamanation’s country managers are special people with talents in various fields and with entrepreneurship soul.
The power of our organization is when we can leverage the power, efforts and knowledge of the country managers.
When I look on any activity that we are doing on global level, I ask myself if it can be leveraged by the country managers. If it is not, it is a waste of efforts from my point of view. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do activities that are good ideas for a specific country and maybe , on a local level, but then it will be handled by the country manager and not by the corporate (and it might be that other country managers will learn from it and follow it).
Real good and long lasting partnership means to build a Win-Win situation.
What can we bring to a partnership:
2. Local PR activity in more than 50 countries
3. Our growing user base
4. More revenues
Now let’s look on what we can get from a partnership:
1. Best services in the world for our visitors to improve the quality of their life and to professionalize their home services, integrated into Pajamanation
2. More revenue
3. More users
4. Promotion and good story
When we are looking for best service from potential partners, we are looking on the current best service and try to see if the potential partners are open to evolve.
Then , if the service is the best and has a value, people will likely pay for using it.
As we moved into the free model, and we are selling services around our core business, we need to have many users. At this stage, the best we can get from a potential partner is more users.
The partners that we are selecting now are partners who want cross-promotion.
Cross-promotion means that they are going to promote the partnership via the press, their user base and other means and we are going to do the same with every country manager.
And you know how it is in life, if someone is easy to get, probably the value is low, and if someone is playing hard to get others are eager to get him/her J and probably the value is higher.
The same is with partnerships. If it is just “put our link or widget on your web page and start earn money” the value is low.
We are aiming to meaningful partnerships, and this takes efforts, understandings and misunderstandings, agreements, technical coordination, development and business coordination but the value is much higher.
We should be proud of the wonderful team of country managers and in the business we have built so far. We should be proud in our noble vision and mission of changing the life of many people around the world. Look on our mission on the right side of this blog and you will see how great it is.
And I can tell you, my dear friends, that many of the potential partners I’m talking with, are very interested in what we are bringing to the table and see in it a lot of value for them and for the society.
Together we WIN BIG!!!
Day Five: Namaste Gary
Day Five: Namaste Gary
New Jersey, May 2004. A Saturday evening just after nine o’clock. An engineering student from Bergen County Technical High School in Teterboro (ok, a ‘nerd’) just installed a new toy, a webcam. He is playing around with it and makes a webcam video of himself miming to the song "Dragostea din tei" by Moldovan pop band O-Zone. Little did he know that the following 1:40 minutes were not only going to change his life but also the complete direction of the internet economy.
The video became such a phenomenon watched by millions of people and downloaded more than 1,000,000,000 times. It switched to YouTube for sheer mass. On YouTube itself in the first month it was translated in 87 languages by 263 performers out of 148 countries. There were derivatives of this song as rap, country, rock.. all done by internet consumers, not professionals. Gary Brolsma became known as Numa Numa, after a phrase in the song. He was with Ophra, ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's The Tonight Show, and VH1's Best Week Ever. The unwilling and embarrassed nerd became a mainstream celebrity, subject of a large article in the New York Times and frequent guest of NBC Today Show. Gary’s Numa Numa song is the most downloaded song on earth now.
Gary Brolsma is credited with singlehandedly
• justifying the existence of webcams
• the power of YouTube
• the proof of viral marketing
• the impossibility of a record house to uphold their copyright when all the world is singing their song.
What made Gary universally viral was the fact that he was genuine, that he was totally happy with the new toy he just installed but above all Gary was a “Mensch”. We recognized ourselves in him.
Today I was going to tell you how we are going to go to millions of visitors. We will be able to if we are genuine, if we are proud of what we do and if we are “Menschen”. This is very, very difficult and most viral programs fail, because they do not have these ingredients. Faking reality if a lot harder than you think (although at my age the difference between stimulation and simulation becomes blurry :-).
For us this means that we need to be proud of our product, install it, be so happy with it that our passion and our enthusiasm flows over in the cups of millions of others. Mensch to Mensch.
P.S Gary graduated but still every day, millions of people download him and more than a hundred new versions appear on YouTube. He was voted the Number 1 Internet Icon by 40 Greatest Internet Superstars on VH1.
New Jersey, May 2004. A Saturday evening just after nine o’clock. An engineering student from Bergen County Technical High School in Teterboro (ok, a ‘nerd’) just installed a new toy, a webcam. He is playing around with it and makes a webcam video of himself miming to the song "Dragostea din tei" by Moldovan pop band O-Zone. Little did he know that the following 1:40 minutes were not only going to change his life but also the complete direction of the internet economy.
The video became such a phenomenon watched by millions of people and downloaded more than 1,000,000,000 times. It switched to YouTube for sheer mass. On YouTube itself in the first month it was translated in 87 languages by 263 performers out of 148 countries. There were derivatives of this song as rap, country, rock.. all done by internet consumers, not professionals. Gary Brolsma became known as Numa Numa, after a phrase in the song. He was with Ophra, ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's The Tonight Show, and VH1's Best Week Ever. The unwilling and embarrassed nerd became a mainstream celebrity, subject of a large article in the New York Times and frequent guest of NBC Today Show. Gary’s Numa Numa song is the most downloaded song on earth now.
Gary Brolsma is credited with singlehandedly
• justifying the existence of webcams
• the power of YouTube
• the proof of viral marketing
• the impossibility of a record house to uphold their copyright when all the world is singing their song.
What made Gary universally viral was the fact that he was genuine, that he was totally happy with the new toy he just installed but above all Gary was a “Mensch”. We recognized ourselves in him.
Today I was going to tell you how we are going to go to millions of visitors. We will be able to if we are genuine, if we are proud of what we do and if we are “Menschen”. This is very, very difficult and most viral programs fail, because they do not have these ingredients. Faking reality if a lot harder than you think (although at my age the difference between stimulation and simulation becomes blurry :-).
For us this means that we need to be proud of our product, install it, be so happy with it that our passion and our enthusiasm flows over in the cups of millions of others. Mensch to Mensch.
P.S Gary graduated but still every day, millions of people download him and more than a hundred new versions appear on YouTube. He was voted the Number 1 Internet Icon by 40 Greatest Internet Superstars on VH1.
August 16, 2007
My comments to Pajanamation Concept 2.0
Hey, way to go for Pajamanation!!! This is Ulises from Mexico
I completely agree with this premises:
Pajamanation should be Free
Pajamanation should be Miscellaneous
Pajamanation needs to have a higher purpose
Pajamanation should not focus on profiles
Pajamanation layout was stiffy (inflexible)
I think mixing the power of the Toffle's "prosumer" with the higher purpose of developing entrepreneurs we can do that the people using PJN will virally extend the use of it and will be willing to retribute in money the service they are getting.
The model of suscriptions is very hard to virally grow, perhaps a model in which the user pay for results. In our CPA, CPC, network the growing has been astonishing cause we are helping the people to make sales, and they are willing to invest without a top if they get real buyers for a ROI logic price.
The question is how to charge in a micropayment form, how do we get to all that people that is not willing to give his credit card or doesn't have one in the many countries we have? How do we find an easy way to collect money from the millions of users we are going to have?
perhaps collecting money from the providers of solutions allied with us will be easier, cause eventhough marketing budgets are growing worldwide we can't rely 100% on them.
Greeting to all!
I completely agree with this premises:
Pajamanation should be Free
Pajamanation should be Miscellaneous
Pajamanation needs to have a higher purpose
Pajamanation should not focus on profiles
Pajamanation layout was stiffy (inflexible)
I think mixing the power of the Toffle's "prosumer" with the higher purpose of developing entrepreneurs we can do that the people using PJN will virally extend the use of it and will be willing to retribute in money the service they are getting.
The model of suscriptions is very hard to virally grow, perhaps a model in which the user pay for results. In our CPA, CPC, network the growing has been astonishing cause we are helping the people to make sales, and they are willing to invest without a top if they get real buyers for a ROI logic price.
The question is how to charge in a micropayment form, how do we get to all that people that is not willing to give his credit card or doesn't have one in the many countries we have? How do we find an easy way to collect money from the millions of users we are going to have?
perhaps collecting money from the providers of solutions allied with us will be easier, cause eventhough marketing budgets are growing worldwide we can't rely 100% on them.
Greeting to all!
The Cambrian Explosion (Day Four)
Day 4: The Cambrian Explosion
The Cambrian is a major division of the geologic timescale that happened about a million years ago. During this time, roughly fifty separate major groups of organisms or "phyla" emerged suddenly, in most cases without evident precursors. Fish with legs, lizards with one wing, organisms who feed through their arse. This time of hypercreation where survival of the fittest was in full range is called the Cambrian explosion.
Nowadays, we live through that Cambrian explosion again in cyberspace, we call it Mashups. My RSS reader is daily filled with 100+ articles about new ventures: some interesting, some outdated before they begin, some have spend a lot of time reinventing something that exists already, some are just lost efforts looking for the bigger fool to get their money back. My average of interesting items per day is 3, but lately this has gone up to 8%. A whopping 5% increase in the holidays!!
Let me tell you what I found interesting today for Pajamanation homeworkers: www.asksunday.com (a personal assistant but only for the States, this can be replicated by our team of 60 countries); the new wikiscanner (to know who keeps on deleting our stuff about PajamaNation on wikipedia ☺; www.pikipimp.com (to pimp photographs); www.webresizer.com(to adapt our pictures on the web before we send them to a social network); www.peopletrusted.com (these guys are specializing on trust, which we might need) and www.emurse.com (a resume maker). For my own pleasure I also downloaded http://www.ted.nu (TV series downloader) and www.vconvert.net (easy converter of youtube to any format).
I promised you today to tell you how we are going to make money by being totally FREE. Suppose we reach millions of free visitors, (that is the idea), in that case, we are going to make money by dealmaking. We are going to select the best services in the world for our visitors to improve the quality of their life and to professionalize their home services. We will partner up with these new services and slipstream them in our package for free as tryvertising. They will try it out and when they like it, they will buy it and we will get a commission (CPA). At this moment we are finalizing contracts with five of these partners: www.lulu.com, www.bitwine.com, www.worldlawdirect.com, www.globalpaynet.com and www.spongecell.com. In our contracts it is stated that we want cross-fertilization of our contacts, so that we get new streams of visitors to our site and vice versa. I invite Yosi to write a blog about this, since he is our dealmaker.
But how on earth are we going to get millions of visitors in the first place? That is the subject of tomorrow's blog.
I would like to thank Andy for his great invited blog. And as in a mysterious web of correspondences, Chanterria send me the following link today (how to make money while blogging) http://erevenueselect.com/freestepstepprofitablebloggingcourse
So, tomorrow, the big answer. Stay tuned.
The Cambrian is a major division of the geologic timescale that happened about a million years ago. During this time, roughly fifty separate major groups of organisms or "phyla" emerged suddenly, in most cases without evident precursors. Fish with legs, lizards with one wing, organisms who feed through their arse. This time of hypercreation where survival of the fittest was in full range is called the Cambrian explosion.
Nowadays, we live through that Cambrian explosion again in cyberspace, we call it Mashups. My RSS reader is daily filled with 100+ articles about new ventures: some interesting, some outdated before they begin, some have spend a lot of time reinventing something that exists already, some are just lost efforts looking for the bigger fool to get their money back. My average of interesting items per day is 3, but lately this has gone up to 8%. A whopping 5% increase in the holidays!!
Let me tell you what I found interesting today for Pajamanation homeworkers: www.asksunday.com (a personal assistant but only for the States, this can be replicated by our team of 60 countries); the new wikiscanner (to know who keeps on deleting our stuff about PajamaNation on wikipedia ☺; www.pikipimp.com (to pimp photographs); www.webresizer.com(to adapt our pictures on the web before we send them to a social network); www.peopletrusted.com (these guys are specializing on trust, which we might need) and www.emurse.com (a resume maker). For my own pleasure I also downloaded http://www.ted.nu (TV series downloader) and www.vconvert.net (easy converter of youtube to any format).
I promised you today to tell you how we are going to make money by being totally FREE. Suppose we reach millions of free visitors, (that is the idea), in that case, we are going to make money by dealmaking. We are going to select the best services in the world for our visitors to improve the quality of their life and to professionalize their home services. We will partner up with these new services and slipstream them in our package for free as tryvertising. They will try it out and when they like it, they will buy it and we will get a commission (CPA). At this moment we are finalizing contracts with five of these partners: www.lulu.com, www.bitwine.com, www.worldlawdirect.com, www.globalpaynet.com and www.spongecell.com. In our contracts it is stated that we want cross-fertilization of our contacts, so that we get new streams of visitors to our site and vice versa. I invite Yosi to write a blog about this, since he is our dealmaker.
But how on earth are we going to get millions of visitors in the first place? That is the subject of tomorrow's blog.
I would like to thank Andy for his great invited blog. And as in a mysterious web of correspondences, Chanterria send me the following link today (how to make money while blogging) http://erevenueselect.com/freestepstepprofitablebloggingcourse
So, tomorrow, the big answer. Stay tuned.
August 15, 2007
Joining the conversation
Thanks for the invitation to guest write on your blog Walter. Isn't it great that Pajamanation now has a real blogging CEO! In time this will build an enormous amount of good will because the community of pajamaworkers and microjobs posters will be able to see the real human thinking behind the struggle to grow our global network, and not just some faceless machine.
You probably know me, Andy Roberts from the UK. So I'm going to be working with country managers to help spread the blogging habit, and linking in the local country sites to the new microjobs exchange 2. We're going to work together to find a way that can suit everyone, but not necessarily exactly the same one. To those that have registered with blogger in order to accept Walter's invitation here, I would urge you to experiment with creating a blog of your own right away. A personal blog, for the story about yourself. You already have the account setup - take it for a test drive, create, write in your own language, invite readers. That's how we'll learn. See if you can figure out how to receive all the blog feeds in a reader such as bloglines or google reader. But don't worry, I'll be organising a course about all this next month so we can really push forward as a growing network.
I've been working with blogs, wikis, screencasts etc for a few years and I write about PajamaNation mainly on DARnet. I've been experimenting with enhancements to WordPress recently and I'm very confident that we'll be able to get the simplicity and flexibility we are going to need from this popular and mature open source platform. If you'd like to be one of the early adopters then just let me know. But building the PajamaNation is not really a technical task, it's a social one. I'd like to get the idea across that we are not so much involved in the old attitude of publishing content here, but taking part in a conversation. A public conversation involving managers, customers, CEO, the general public and bloggers on the internet. We're going to need to learn how to listen and learn as much as how to write and respond. And it's going to be fun!
You probably know me, Andy Roberts from the UK. So I'm going to be working with country managers to help spread the blogging habit, and linking in the local country sites to the new microjobs exchange 2. We're going to work together to find a way that can suit everyone, but not necessarily exactly the same one. To those that have registered with blogger in order to accept Walter's invitation here, I would urge you to experiment with creating a blog of your own right away. A personal blog, for the story about yourself. You already have the account setup - take it for a test drive, create, write in your own language, invite readers. That's how we'll learn. See if you can figure out how to receive all the blog feeds in a reader such as bloglines or google reader. But don't worry, I'll be organising a course about all this next month so we can really push forward as a growing network.
I've been working with blogs, wikis, screencasts etc for a few years and I write about PajamaNation mainly on DARnet. I've been experimenting with enhancements to WordPress recently and I'm very confident that we'll be able to get the simplicity and flexibility we are going to need from this popular and mature open source platform. If you'd like to be one of the early adopters then just let me know. But building the PajamaNation is not really a technical task, it's a social one. I'd like to get the idea across that we are not so much involved in the old attitude of publishing content here, but taking part in a conversation. A public conversation involving managers, customers, CEO, the general public and bloggers on the internet. We're going to need to learn how to listen and learn as much as how to write and respond. And it's going to be fun!
Day 3: Free-dom
Day 3: Free-dom
Today two more members joined the party, found their way to Facebook Pajamanation Group and thanks to Andy and Ricardo we have flash-player enabled videos embedded. The Sony video is pretty funny for homeworkers by the way ☺
Some of you have emailed me and I will respond in this blog, but it is better to leave comments on the blog itself, that is what it is there for so that everyone can see what is being discussed.
You asked me what I meant by "Pajamanation must be free". You are right; I needed to be clearer on this. I mean no subscription fee, nothing, zero, nada, not now and not ever. I have thought about this a long time. What is the universal currency for the world which is still divided in old political regions as first, second, third and fourth world? I have tried the Big Mac index ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index) , but it was no good. There is only one price that is fair for the world at large and that is zero $. Zero$ is the same in Nicaragua as in Denmark as in Congo. So that is what we should charge to become a member of this network.
But this is not all. I also frown on transaction fees. Most of the freelance sites charge something like 15% fees if a job is taken and the freelancer has to pay this (elance.com, rentacoder.com, guru.com, trabajofreelance.com, freelance.com). We will not do this. We will be free all the way. No subscriptions, no transaction fees, no boundaries, no limits to how many jobs you can post, no credits, nothing. This is perhaps hard to digest, but think of the opportunity. Think of a service all over the world that make this happen. How will this change the world? How will change the economy?
I know what you are thinking now: but how are we going to make money? That is for tomorrow, suffice to say, that if we succeed, the world will beat a path to our door and we will be swamped by people who offer us money. How about that for a nocturnal thought?
Today two more members joined the party, found their way to Facebook Pajamanation Group and thanks to Andy and Ricardo we have flash-player enabled videos embedded. The Sony video is pretty funny for homeworkers by the way ☺
Some of you have emailed me and I will respond in this blog, but it is better to leave comments on the blog itself, that is what it is there for so that everyone can see what is being discussed.
You asked me what I meant by "Pajamanation must be free". You are right; I needed to be clearer on this. I mean no subscription fee, nothing, zero, nada, not now and not ever. I have thought about this a long time. What is the universal currency for the world which is still divided in old political regions as first, second, third and fourth world? I have tried the Big Mac index ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index) , but it was no good. There is only one price that is fair for the world at large and that is zero $. Zero$ is the same in Nicaragua as in Denmark as in Congo. So that is what we should charge to become a member of this network.
But this is not all. I also frown on transaction fees. Most of the freelance sites charge something like 15% fees if a job is taken and the freelancer has to pay this (elance.com, rentacoder.com, guru.com, trabajofreelance.com, freelance.com). We will not do this. We will be free all the way. No subscriptions, no transaction fees, no boundaries, no limits to how many jobs you can post, no credits, nothing. This is perhaps hard to digest, but think of the opportunity. Think of a service all over the world that make this happen. How will this change the world? How will change the economy?
I know what you are thinking now: but how are we going to make money? That is for tomorrow, suffice to say, that if we succeed, the world will beat a path to our door and we will be swamped by people who offer us money. How about that for a nocturnal thought?
August 14, 2007
Day 2: WayBack Machines
The Internet Archive was set up by Brewster Kahle (the internet entrepreneur behind Alexa, sold to Amazon). The term "Wayback Machine" has been enthusiastically adopted by popular culture as mechanism to suggest transporting one's thoughts back to a historical time and place. There is a reason why I mention Brewster Kahle (in day 5 I will talk more about him) and the Wayback machine, bear with me.
Let's go back in time in our own wayback machine (our brain). Let' go back where we started from when we launched in January 2007 (actually 27 December 2006).
Pajamanation was a web 1.0 system where people had to sign in and put jobs on the network. We were going to sell subscriptions to our portal and get money partly from banner advertising. Our engine was based on a taxonomy we built ourselves around microjobs to give people an idea of what microjobs were. These microjobs would be awarded via auctions in a free-market model and every country manager would have his/her own site in native language programmed in Joomla. We thought the assets of our company would be the profiles which we gathered and which we would convert to paying members.
This is 8 months ago and I gradually changed this belief system because I am convinced that it is wrong. Not because I am capricious (which I certainly am).
• Pajamanation should be Free, everything is free in the Gift Economy (subscriptions and banners are web 1.0). We need to have a product we are proud of and we need millions of people that come to that product and enjoy a better life because of it. For this reason it has to be free. How we are going to make money is the subject of the next blog. And I assure you once you have millions of visitors, making money is not so much of a problem.
• Pajamanation should be Miscellaneous: no more categories, we will sort on the way out with datamining analysis and not on the way in (that again is web 1.0). As Weinberger said in his new book (Everything is miscellaneous): Information just does not want to be free, it wants to be miscellaneous. Instead of everything having its place, it is better if things can get assigned multiple places simultaneously. In other words, everything has its places. Computers store information in different ways than it is presented to us : everything must be metadata.
• Pajamanation needs to have a higher purpose. I have called it the Nash-equilibrium: in short it means, no more auctions. Auctions are crapitalism. People do not like auctions, let's top copying Ebay, skills are not flower pots. That is why Yosi, Chris and I have slowly repositioned our brand as Entrepreneurship 2.0. I feel very good about this. Like so many people, I love to help others and entertain (perhaps) the illusion that what I do matters. See youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=j05EpSQzNy8 (English) or http://youtube.com/watch?v=XKV4yqB_Ep4 (Spanish)
• Pajamanation should not focus on profiles. Every one else does that, Facebook, Plaxo, Linkedin, etc.. This is the side of web 2.0 that specializes in relationships. We should be the other side, that specializes in transactions (job engine). Then we can work with all social networks and offer them something that they hunger for: transactions. All these people connected to each other needs something to do.
• Pajamanation is too inflexible. We need simpler country sites that encourage creativeness in the country manager and not confront him with a learning curve that discourages him/her. We need a community-building champion (and I am sure he will object to me using this metaphor), and I have found Andy Roberts (Pajamanation manger of UK) ready to take that task upon his shoulders. Let everyone decide on this process and come up with the ideal country site, simple and adaptable without learning curve. I will ask Andy to write the next blog about this.
Yesterday I tried out two new applications: www.Spock.com and http://Me.dium.com After initial fascination, I was so annoyed that I threw them off my system, they are a nuisance. At first they seemed fantastic because they are interested in all your identities on the web, but then Spock gets confused and you find yourself in an existential phase (which identity am I). Me.dium is even worse, it piggybacks on your browsers and projects you in a universe with kindred spirits which you do not want to meet.
Chris showed me something which is a lot better: frictionless. Pajamanation is going to be an OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID "identity provider", sometimes called an i-broker. Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can employ OpenID software as a way for users to sign in; OpenID solves the problem without relying on any centralized website to confirm digital identity. OpenID is increasingly gaining adoption among large sites, with organizations like AOL acting as a provider. In addition, integrated OpenID support has been made a high priority in Firefox and Microsoft is working on implementing OpenID 2.0 in Windows Vista.
We will set up our own OpenID server site and you will all be able to try it out soon. Talk to you tomorrow.
Walter De Brouwer
Let's go back in time in our own wayback machine (our brain). Let' go back where we started from when we launched in January 2007 (actually 27 December 2006).
Pajamanation was a web 1.0 system where people had to sign in and put jobs on the network. We were going to sell subscriptions to our portal and get money partly from banner advertising. Our engine was based on a taxonomy we built ourselves around microjobs to give people an idea of what microjobs were. These microjobs would be awarded via auctions in a free-market model and every country manager would have his/her own site in native language programmed in Joomla. We thought the assets of our company would be the profiles which we gathered and which we would convert to paying members.
This is 8 months ago and I gradually changed this belief system because I am convinced that it is wrong. Not because I am capricious (which I certainly am).
• Pajamanation should be Free, everything is free in the Gift Economy (subscriptions and banners are web 1.0). We need to have a product we are proud of and we need millions of people that come to that product and enjoy a better life because of it. For this reason it has to be free. How we are going to make money is the subject of the next blog. And I assure you once you have millions of visitors, making money is not so much of a problem.
• Pajamanation should be Miscellaneous: no more categories, we will sort on the way out with datamining analysis and not on the way in (that again is web 1.0). As Weinberger said in his new book (Everything is miscellaneous): Information just does not want to be free, it wants to be miscellaneous. Instead of everything having its place, it is better if things can get assigned multiple places simultaneously. In other words, everything has its places. Computers store information in different ways than it is presented to us : everything must be metadata.
• Pajamanation needs to have a higher purpose. I have called it the Nash-equilibrium: in short it means, no more auctions. Auctions are crapitalism. People do not like auctions, let's top copying Ebay, skills are not flower pots. That is why Yosi, Chris and I have slowly repositioned our brand as Entrepreneurship 2.0. I feel very good about this. Like so many people, I love to help others and entertain (perhaps) the illusion that what I do matters. See youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=j05EpSQzNy8 (English) or http://youtube.com/watch?v=XKV4yqB_Ep4 (Spanish)
• Pajamanation should not focus on profiles. Every one else does that, Facebook, Plaxo, Linkedin, etc.. This is the side of web 2.0 that specializes in relationships. We should be the other side, that specializes in transactions (job engine). Then we can work with all social networks and offer them something that they hunger for: transactions. All these people connected to each other needs something to do.
• Pajamanation is too inflexible. We need simpler country sites that encourage creativeness in the country manager and not confront him with a learning curve that discourages him/her. We need a community-building champion (and I am sure he will object to me using this metaphor), and I have found Andy Roberts (Pajamanation manger of UK) ready to take that task upon his shoulders. Let everyone decide on this process and come up with the ideal country site, simple and adaptable without learning curve. I will ask Andy to write the next blog about this.
Yesterday I tried out two new applications: www.Spock.com and http://Me.dium.com After initial fascination, I was so annoyed that I threw them off my system, they are a nuisance. At first they seemed fantastic because they are interested in all your identities on the web, but then Spock gets confused and you find yourself in an existential phase (which identity am I). Me.dium is even worse, it piggybacks on your browsers and projects you in a universe with kindred spirits which you do not want to meet.
Chris showed me something which is a lot better: frictionless. Pajamanation is going to be an OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID "identity provider", sometimes called an i-broker. Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can employ OpenID software as a way for users to sign in; OpenID solves the problem without relying on any centralized website to confirm digital identity. OpenID is increasingly gaining adoption among large sites, with organizations like AOL acting as a provider. In addition, integrated OpenID support has been made a high priority in Firefox and Microsoft is working on implementing OpenID 2.0 in Windows Vista.
We will set up our own OpenID server site and you will all be able to try it out soon. Talk to you tomorrow.
Walter De Brouwer
August 13, 2007
Invitation to the party
I think we have been exceptionally good at thinking ahead in our business and changing strategies when it made sense. We have also been good at getting a team of avid country managers all over the world. But I have not been able to keep any deadline in development, in fact, my development team was consistent only in the breach of deadlines. I regret that, but the web is a fast-moving medium and sometimes it was faster than we were.
But this is not a time to whine but to rejoice. We will all have a product we can be proud of because we are going to finish this together. At this very moment Chris is doing the final programming and tries to get all the pieces of the puzzle into a coherent system online. When this is done, our collective innovation starts: we have to tackle the user interface, debug the system, do the design and make the country sites around it. All of this, I want to make a collaborative effort.
At the end of each blog I want to give you something to do. Step by step, it will only take 3 minutes. Here is the first task: make a party on Facebook. I invite everyone to go to these coordinates: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2411675966&pwstdfy=4257079ecfd4daee6218901e2f68d125
Become a member of the Pajamanation team on FACEBOOK, add your pictures, your videos, your quotes, your questions, your music and what have you. Have fun and see you on the other sight of my night. La Vida es un carnaval
Walter De Brouwer
But this is not a time to whine but to rejoice. We will all have a product we can be proud of because we are going to finish this together. At this very moment Chris is doing the final programming and tries to get all the pieces of the puzzle into a coherent system online. When this is done, our collective innovation starts: we have to tackle the user interface, debug the system, do the design and make the country sites around it. All of this, I want to make a collaborative effort.
At the end of each blog I want to give you something to do. Step by step, it will only take 3 minutes. Here is the first task: make a party on Facebook. I invite everyone to go to these coordinates: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2411675966&pwstdfy=4257079ecfd4daee6218901e2f68d125
Become a member of the Pajamanation team on FACEBOOK, add your pictures, your videos, your quotes, your questions, your music and what have you. Have fun and see you on the other sight of my night. La Vida es un carnaval
Walter De Brouwer
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