As one of the first entrepreneurs to establish a business on the
Internet, Handlo Music (months before Amazon), I would agree with
Chris Anderson. (In fact, I was provoked into starting the business
after one Futureworker said that it would not be possible to start a
business on the Internet.) Mind you, it's not so easy as simply
having an idea. Most of us have a good idea at least once a month,
I'd guess. In the case of my idea (delivering sheet music PDFs to
choirs all over the world) I had to learn a quite complex computer
annotation system (Finale) to try out the idea because I couldn't
afford to employ a professional. Even then I had to borrow two nerdy
friends in designing a usable Website and other techie sundries, and
also simplify my original concept. (This was to produce four versions
of each piece -- with the Soprano, Contralto, Tenor and Bass lines
picked out in red for easy reading by each. But I then realized that
most choirs would only have access to B&W printers for sizeable runs.)
Even so I had other unforeseeable problems (which Amazon and other
large outfits didn't meet, I guess). My bank, Barclays, refused to
give me credit card number clearance facilities. Even though my
architectural business already had thousands in a Barclays account, I
was presumably judged not to be reliable or honest (or important)
enough to have receipt of people's credit card numbers on the
Internet. Try as I might over several months, I didn't succeed. I
then learned that Martin Taylor had become the CEO of Barclays Bank.
And, strangely enough, I'd had (amicable) correspondence with him
some years previously when he was the author of the highly reputable
daily LEX column of the Financial Times. So I wrote to him, making it
plain in my first sentence that I knew the guy in order to get it
past his secretary (a previous attempt had no doubt been binned). To
my astonishment, he remembered me (and to my further astonishment he
replied with a hand-written letter!). Two days later a senior
Barclays lady, all sweetness and light, arrived on my doorstep with
all the kit.
So I'll modify what Chris Anderson wrote. One not only has to have a
good idea (venture capital funds also require you to have a
management team in place also) but also who-you-know. In short, you
need luck with friends. Although my friendship with Martin Taylor was
of the slenderest, it happened to be sufficient. (I later learned
that at least two [of the other five] major banks in the UK also had
a policy of point-blank refusal to help new businesses on the
Internet at that time. Months later than my affair with Barclays I
read in the FT that the financial director of Barclays had "resigned"
as also senior executives in two other banks. I wonder why! By then,
hundreds of new small Internet businesses were appearing on the web.)
Keith
At 02:02 20/09/2012, you wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Dewayne Hendricks
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2012 11:46 PM
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The internet has created a new industrial revolution
The internet has created a new industrial revolution Anyone with a good
digital idea can create a successful online business. So are the 'Makers',
who are harnessing these new technologies, helping to reboot the
manufacturing industry?
By Chris Anderson, The Guardian
Tuesday 18 September 2012
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/18/chris-anderson-internet-in
dustrial-revolution>
Back in the early 1940s my grandfather had a great idea. Noting the
obsession Californians have with perfectly green front lawns, he decided
that what they needed was an automatic sprinkler system. He lavished time
and love on it, inventing this and fine-tuning that, and eventually came up
with what was essentially an electric clock that could be timed to turn
water valves on or off at given times of the day and night. Patent number
2311108 was duly filed in 1943, at which point my grandfather started
knocking on manufacturers' doors. It was a long, arduous process. Finally,
in 1950, after endless discussions, the Moody Rainmaster hit the stores. It
earned my grandfather a modest income.
Recently, I decided to follow in his footsteps, but apply a little
21st-century know-how to the mix. Online I found a few like-minded souls
interested in producing an improved water sprinkler. We used open-source
software to help us create a sprinkler system not only capable of being
operated remotely via an app by worried gardeners on holiday, but also
sophisticated enough to factor in the latest local weather forecasts before
deciding whether to switch the system on or off. We then sent our designs to
an assembly house who duly came up with a smart-looking finished product. It
has proved quite popular. It took my grandfather a decade and a small
fortune to perfect his device and market it. It took us a few months and
$5,000.
And that in a nutshell is the Maker movement - harnessing the internet and
the latest manufacturing technologies to make things. The past 10 years have
been about discovering new ways to work together and offer services on the
web. The next 10 years will, I believe, be about applying those lessons to
the real world. It means that the future doesn't just belong to internet
businesses founded on virtual principles. but to ones that are firmly rooted
in the physical world.
This has massive implications not just for would-be entrepreneurs but for
national economies. The fact is that any country, if it wants to remain
strong, must have a manufacturing base. Even today, about a quarter of the
US economy rests on the creation of physical goods. A service economy is all
well and good, but eliminate manufacturing and you're a nation of bankers,
burger flippers and tour guides. As for software and information industries,
they may get all the press, but they employ just a small percentage of the
population.
[snip]
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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