Up and Running Blog

June 2010

Copyright, Copy Right, Protection or Not

by Tim Berry on June 8, 2010


I just listened to Johanna Blakley’s Lessons from fashion’s free culture on TED.com, talking about how the fashion industry survives without copyright protection. Fashion designers have trademark protection, but not copyright. The courts decided clothes are utilitarian, so there’s no copyright.

Lots of industries don’t have copyright. Food dishes, recipes, auto body sculpture, tattoos, and many other so-called utilitarian things don’t get copyright. Not even comedians get copyright. They can steal each others jokes.

But wait a minute: books, movies, television shows. They copy each other all the time, don’t they? Detective shows, reality shows, sports movies, buddy cop movies. How many times have you seen the one where the misfit kids get together and win the league right at the end, stealing the championship from the snobby kids? And yet films are copyrighted.

And software? Software code and even look and feel can be copyrighted, but it gets copied all the time anyway. Not just copied as in pirate copies, but copied as in how much one publisher’s version looks like another publisher’s. I’ve followed spreadsheets for years, and what started as Visicalc became Lotus 1-2-3 and then Microsoft Excel. The same thing, basically, but better.

In writing, I copy people I like to read. In athletics, I’ve seen for years how the younger kids copy the older kids, and get better. It’s what we humans do. Copying is the sincerest form of flattery.

In her talk (the link above) Johanna Blakely suggests that the way the fashion designers live without copyright might give us a hint for other industries. She tells the story of a prestigious fashion designer asked about the cheap knock-offs. The answer: their buyers aren’t in our market.

I can deal with all of this copying as part of innovation and creativity. Software I’ve done has been copied a lot, and I can live with that. Mine has to be better to survive, and if it isn’t, well, tough. What I hate though, is:

  • Copying in marketing and sales: copying packaging, tag lines, slogans, pitches, and so on. It’s legal, but I hate it. The courts really don’t protect packaging look and feel very well at all.
  • Straight lie-through-the-teeth copying. People who take my blog post, word for word, and put it on their blog under their byline. People who claim somebody else’s work as their own.

So there. Most copying is legal. Stand on your competitor’s shoulders, do something better, and it’s called fashion or creativity or style or something like that, maybe even progress. But don’t say somebody else’s work is your own. And don’t say that copying packaging or tag lines or slogans or pitches is anything but just copying. That’s bad karma, if nothing else.

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Thinking About Strategy: Raise Prices

by Tim Berry on June 7, 2010

Forget your economics 101 where they say low price means high volume. That’s for coal in the 1900s. In today’s world, low price means high volume only if you’re a capital-intensive location-intensive big business like McDonald’s, Costco, or Walmart.

For the rest of us, especially the startups and the real-world small business, the high-value high-price strategy is far more likely to work.

Good restaurants, expensive design, professional services, hotels . Do you always buy by price? Or rarely? When was the last time you stayed at Motel 6? How about a better three- or four-star brand-name hotel? When was the last time you ate at the cheapest restaurant in your town?

Sadly, too many business plans focus on generating new products or services at lower prices than the existing ones they’ll theoretically replace. That’s really tough. Very rarely works as well as the small, focused, higher-priced value offering.

By the way, thanks to Bill Brelsford for posting On Raising Prices, a good reminder, which links to To Raise Prices: Performance Pricing Strategy on WSJ.com

(Image: istockphoto.com)

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Choose an Investor Like You Would a Spouse

by Tim Berry on June 3, 2010

I know I’ve said this before, but I just had a long talk with a brilliant young entrepreneur in a bad situation, and I want to say it again:

Getting your new business financed is not necessarily a good thing. It’s not the obvious goal. Getting investment, by itself, is not a win.

No. Investment is a good thing for a startup only if it’s the right investment, with the right partners. Investors are not just money, they’re the people that own the money. They become your partners. Yes, like spouses.

This is important: You’re much better off with no investment than with incompatible investment. Incompatible investors is as bad a situation as incompatible spouses. Bootstrap if you have to. Cut your plan down, if that’s what it takes; make it smaller, focus more.  The wrong investors have killed companies more painfully than no investors at all.

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What Are You Afraid Of?

by Guest Author on June 2, 2010

arrowWe’re in an economic downturn; a slump in the economy; bad economic times and the list goes on.

Did you ever stop to think how this REALLY affects your business? I mean REALLY; not just believing all the naysayers but day to day what it means to your bottom line. My guess is nothing.  It doesn’t mean a thing. Let’s face it; we’re not Donald Trump wheeling and dealing with billions. We’re the local business next door servicing a few good clients and some so-so clients.

The media has made all the excuses we need to not succeed. If someone asks how things are going, you can say it could be better but you know how the economy is. It’s taking its toll on everyone. I call bull poop. It’s affecting large manufacturers; it’s affecting the stock market and it’s affecting my retirement fund but it is not negatively affecting my business or yours.

What is negatively affecting your business is getting caught up in all the negativity. How do you know this? The leads start to dry up. Is it because of the economy? No! It is because you stopped doing lead generation in your day to day routine.

So what are you afraid of?   don’t believe that you’re afraid there is not enough customers or enough business to go around. Think about it. How many customers do you really need to succeed this year? You don’t know! Well, that is the first thing you need to do. Figure it out. Not knowing is what is scaring the heck out of you. How can you possibly succeed if you don’t know what success looks like. Most small businesses only need a few customers; not thousands.  Some may need 10 good ones and others 100 or so. Either way, it’s not a huge number.

I think you’re afraid of making a commitment; of being accountable; of saying it out loud; maybe even afraid of success. You’ll find by knowing how many customers you need to succeed, you’ll know how many leads you need to generate and you’ll realize that it’s not that big a task and a lot less scary than the unknown.

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Brenda Mahoney is a successful marketing coach with a passion for helping others succeed, personally and professionally. Working in the corporate world as well as being a business owner and marketing consultant for many years, Brenda has a strong track record for success. She’s worked with businesses in many different industries and loves what she does.
http://www.criticaledgemarketing.com/

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Are Angel Groups Hiding Foxes in Henhouses?

by Tim Berry on June 2, 2010

If you read this blog regularly, then you know I’m a member of an angel investor group (Willamette Angel Conference) and a fan of angelsoft.net, which our group, and hundreds of others, uses to manage the process.

Still, I was quite concerned the other day to read the fox-in-henhouse problem posted in a very well-written and thoughtful post called 11 Lessons I Learned Raising Venture Capital:

“Be wary of angel networks. We presented to two angel networks in Seattle. Both were a waste of time and in fact caused us more anxiety than anything. At one presentation, the ‘CFO for hire’ of one of our competitors was sitting in the front row as we went through our detailed plans and exposed our secret sauce. He was madly taking notes. At the other presentation, the lead attorney for our biggest competitor was in the room. In my humble opinion, this is complete bullshit. Angel networks should do a much better job of ensuring that the sensitive details that they force startups to share don’t get in the hands of direct competitors. Know that when you apply to these networks, not only will you stand a chance of presenting to your competition, the docs you submit to the angel network or upload to AngelSoft can be accessed by hundreds of people that you can’t screen.”

Our group made its investment just a few days ago, May 13, as I posted here on this blog. I don’t think we had this problem; as I look back on the 37 companies who started the process, and especially the six finalists, they were all in different industries and I don’t think any one of our investors was linked to any of their competitors. I hope. Still, I do know one company chose not to put its full information onto the website, choosing instead to email its business plan as a PDF to investor members who asked for it. I can see how it could be a problem.

I just sent an email to all the members of our group, suggesting that we put up some provisions, for next year, to deal with this possibility.

Ironically, that 11 Lessons post also recommends “cast a broad net” when looking for investors, which would seem to contradict the caution about angel groups. I liked the rest of the post, but I disagree about casting a broad net. I think you need to carefully research investors before approaching them, and then approach only well-suited investors and approach them correctly and carefully.

(Image: istockphoto.com)

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Entrepreneur, Innerpreneur, or Both?

by Tim Berry on June 1, 2010


… and does it matter?

Over the Memorial Day weekend a Twitter friend pointed me to Are You An Innerpreneur? on a blog called Rise of the Innerpreneur. I think this is an intriguing play of words:

An innerpreneur is an entrepreneur who uses his or her business to find personal fulfillment (creatively, spiritually, emotionally) and create social change.

The post cites the original use in the book Karma Queens, Geek Gods, & Innerpreneurs, by Ron Rentel. I haven’t read it, but I love the title, and I liked the write-up on that blog, so it’s on my list to read. It’s about nine consumer types. It could be good input for marketing plans.

My first thought was “oh, cool, that’s me.” It appeals to my ex-hippy child-of-the-sixties sensitivities, for sure. Sounds very Zen and all.

But then I thought: “No, wait a minute. Doesn’t that personal fulfillment criterion fit just about every entrepreneur I’ve ever known?”

I can’t imagine being able to do all that it takes, all that work, without the driving force of believing it’s going to matter, or creating something, or something else related to personal fulfillment.

Still, an interesting play on words. Y’wan’na be an innerpreneur? Start a business.

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