After spending an entire week reading 6-8 hours a day, reviewing numerous CDN and media player options, I’m burnt out.  I feel like I deserve a treat, so tonight I’ll be going to Muchos (over in Manhattan Beach).

Now this might sound crazy, especially to people of California, but Muchos hands down has the best Mexican food I’ve ever had.  It’s “premium” Latin cuisine. I’m not even sure i’ve ever seen the same concept anywhere else.  Now for some people it’s hit or miss.  I’ve heard of a couple people getting food not so hot or whatever, but I’m a man of routine and thus my food is always great.  If you get the fajitas meal with southern mac/cheese and cream corn (YES, cream corn, even if you don’t think you’ll like it),  I guarantee you’ll be in heaven.
Read the rest of this entry »

As the trip to New York get closer, there is a lot of planning needed to ensure that everything goes to plan.  We have meetings, events and much more to juggle so its a good thing I got my “get organized” wake up call. This week I was reminded of how key organization is to progress.

Monday we had a conference call with Entitled Entertainment regarding an upcoming show with Krazy Bone.  The plan was to connect Entitled with the management of Mitsue and Boola (artists our production group works with).  Then we’d plan out their trip, video opportunities and support the party/performance.  I had everything scheduled, a conference call number setup through instant conference.com and the time/agency for the the call.  When the call came, I was no where to be found.  Moreover, my NY counterparts also weren’t on the call because I didn’t put a specific date in my invitation e-mail, I simply said “tomorrow”.  As we all know, the word tomorrow is subject to interpretation, especially when someone gets the e-mail the day after it’s written haha.

Now this wasn’t a major slip, we pulled the call together 20mins late and got everything accomplishment in a concise timeframe.  However, it was a little bit of a wake up call, because as things continue to ramp up, the schedules will only become more complicated and time contingent.  So this weeks lesson?  Might be time for a blackberry or some sort of desktop based scheduling system that can txt my phone.  If I am able to find such a program for the team, I’ll let you guys know.

Over the weekend, I sat down with a friend of mine who had been following the Initiative since its inception.   As an extremely experienced and web-networking savvy character, he of course has a lot on his plate all of the time, but it has been my goal to pull him over to the Motown side.

For the first time, we sat down and I willingly “opened the books” per say, and gave him a glimpse at the future of our broadband website.  He was instantly intrigued, and on the spot  began to analyze the code of competitor websites.  In just one hour, I gained a new understanding of how to succesfully deliver an immersive video experience, and more importantly monetize it. For example, we found that some websites we thought were competitors actually lack a sufficient revenue model, since they are simply embedding content from other sites and serving it up to their site viewers.  No video website can be successful with just banner ads and pre-roll in-video ads.  In anycase, point of this entry is… we offically have a Chief of Technology (CTO).

Read the rest of this entry »

After receiving e-mails and comments from my peers regarding the purpose of this site, I realized it might be time for a quick refresher on what exactly is going on, and why this blog exists.

In short, a young group of entrepreneurs and philanthropists from the Michigan area decided that they wanted to make a difference in Detroit, and help rebuild the economy. This led to a number of business ideas and the one that was found most opportune was a broadband video venture. This venture is code-named Motown Initiative to not only reflect our social mission but also to communicate that the project is entertainment related. Furthermore, it is our hope that this new business will bring Detroit the success it had back in the Motown days.

Read the rest of this entry »

May 13th 2009….I’ve been pretty busy since one of my team members pointed out that we could submit our business plan to Stanford for funding. We have a couple team members finishing up their masters at Stanford which makes us eligible for their funding cycle.  They’re not offering up much, maybe $20k or so, but that’s enough to jump start the pre-launch campaign and get a digital product demonstration together.

I’m feeling kinda apprehensive about submitting the plan, since it won’t be completely clean, but its always better to try than to pass up opportunity (unless of course you have not completely developed your vision).

I’ll keep it short today because tomorrow I have plans to hit up some Karaoke in K-Town with some broadband industry folk. So I’m gonna organize my thoughts, always want to be on my toes when I meet other people in the industry.

This isn’t a retro post…this is my first current post haha

We were down in Manhattan Beach,CA last night BBQ’n and the whole Motown thing came up in conversation, as a couple of our friends wanted an update on MI’s progress. One of them pointed out something very interesting.  Apparently, without even having capital on hand, I can obtain a valuation for Motown Initiative.

One of our other friends actually got valuation for his start-up by presenting his business plan alongside some basic webpage examples.   I think if I take the time to refine my webpage wireframes as well as the appearance of the business plan Motown should be able to seek out valuation. This is exactly what we need to further pique the interest of some investors.  Without a fully functional product, market traction (aka your support) and valuation are key.   (follow jump for more)
Read the rest of this entry »

May 5th, 2009… Keep an open mind about this, but I think that I have come up with my first reasonable concept phrase….

“Iphone for broadband video”

Why?  Well not for any obvious high level attributes.  Of course we believe our product will be stylish, user friendly and revolutionary.  The more important aspect to take a deeper look at though is why the product is so successful.  Can you take a guess (its funny I find that most people don’t know why iPhone is successful beyond the branding aspect)

Iphone is a mobile device that effortlessly delivers a unique experience to every user.  No other cell phone has ever done this.  You’ve always had smart phones that were essentially pocket PCs, that had customizable capability, but the fact is the approach other cell phones took to the user interface as well as product expansion was incorrect.  So the first thing we have in common is  “unique experience for every user”.

Iphone’s application store allows for the world to bring new solutions to common platform, further enhancing each user’s experience.  In the same way, our website will have original content and accept content proposals from users, thus expanding our content selection.

There are some other details that draw similiarities between our website design and iPhone but I think I’ll uncover those once we’ve done a little more development work.

Any thoughts on this concept?

One of the latest books I read is “Pitching Hacks”, and it helped to confirm a few things for me. Let me just start with a quote :

“Business plans. Nobody reads them and nobody executes them. Investors who want a long plan look bad – so do companies that generate them”

So first thing to note is,
Apparently a business plan is of no real importance to investors…
Now that just sucks don’t it? Ive been writing this damn thing for 2 months now and it turns out I don’t need it to get funding haha. I mean in all honesty, whether an investor cares or not, I know that building a business plan is key to understanding this project as a whole. It’s given me the insight to continuously evolve my vision; furthermore, it has helped us develop an appropriate strategy to market. Not needing a formal business plan is actually a relief, because I think was worried the most about the presentation of the document. Now, I can just focus on the documents substance rather than its visual. Function over form.

Second,
No one does NDAs. I kinda already knew this, but my readings helped confirm it. Not only does this appear to hold true for VCs but even some potential partners or employees. I’ve come to terms with this, and Im coming up with new ways to pitch the idea with out “letting the cat out of the bag” per say.

With all this said, expect tomorrow entry to be about my first shot at a high concept pitch.

March 26th, 2009….Today was by far the craziest day in my corporate work life.  It was layoff day, and when I say that I mean the entire day was spent laying people off.   No one knew who would be taken out.  Also I know is, I made it through the day, and just as I was walking out of the building….they came for me.  I sat down with the lead VPs and the talk began…

VP : “I have the unfortunate duty of telling you that your position has been eliminated”

Me : “Does that mean I get free money?”  (Severance package was looking good hehe)

VP : “No no, not so fast, you’re not leaving quite yet, we value your qualities and thus we have created a new position for you”.

:-o….Having mixed feelings about it, my reaction was simply
Me: “oookkk, thanks”

So what is my new position?  Just take a guess?  Guiding their brand online

Now, how in the world is it that I finally found a business to develop completely unrelated to my job and within 3 weeks they create a position for me that will almost certainly place me in contact with interactive companies.  I never saw this coming.  Without hesitating I exposed my latest business to the VPs.  Their mouths dropped. Well I shouldn’t say “their”, one of the VPs has always known of my business ventures, but the subject has always been the “don’t ask don’t tell” realm of things. However, after deliberation, they didn’t see any immediate conflict of interest.  Soooo looks like I’ll continue on in the corporate world for now, spending my nights on the Motown Initiative and my days at …. a company haha (I’ll keep my office private as I may bash on them sometimes haha).

I’d like to give shout-outs to

-    God for letting me get a sorta-promotion on lay-off day
-    The VPs for keeping me on despite the Motown Initiative

March 22nd, 2009…I spent the better part of my Saturday sitting in my living room with a white board and a marker, drawing a user interface for this so called broadband video idea I’ve been pondering.  As I continued to review the competitive battleground and our notes from the conference on Tuesday, I began to question the business model that I’ve had in mind.

Now there is nothing particularly wrong with the model; in fact I personally still think its great, but there is a fundamental problem with the direction my business seems to be going.  It looks as if I’m trying to replace cable TV.  Now some of you are saying “that’s a great idea, I wish I didn’t need cable”, but the fact is there is quite the business model attached to traditional TV.  I can tell you right now, major networks and cable providers are not about to part with their billions in ad revenue.

I decided to just start typing down all the potential components of the business model and how they may actually fair in the eyes of major networks and investors.  The list got pretty long, and my mind went pretty numb, so I had to call it day.   To compliment a day’s work, I decided to go visit my friend’s house and they just got a PS3 and Wii….sillyness…

Side note:  I did enjoy my gaming night but it was somewhat discouraging.  Remember the 8^th grade, in your parent’s basement? Yea you do…playing video games until they’d force you to go to bed.  Well I sure can’t do it anymore.  After 3 hours of Street Fighter IV, I not only felt like I just took a 5 mile run but my thumbs were sore too.  In fact, forget past tense, my thumbs ARE STILL sore.  I hope when I wake up my thumbs are back in commission :-/