a) Startup makes money = Success
b) Startup doesn’t make money = Failure

But I’ve come to focus a lot on a third option, a value that most people don’t think about, which is what I would call “Prestige”, and the concept is rather simple.

Create something with the goal of increasing your visibility in a particular group or scene. With hopes that by increasing your personal brand recognition, your prestige, you will have better opportunities in the future. This is where I feel I am lacking right now, in my community, or as Seth Godin would say my “Tribe”.

I need to increase my own personal visibility to generate the one thing that I desire right now more than anything else, opportunity. If I were more connected, with people that want to get stuff done, I could indeed make powerful things happen. But so far, Bend Oregon is not the bustling hub of entrepreneurial activity that one would hope, and is in fact far from it.

So lets put this into a real world scenario.

I’ve built a mobile app and I have to set the goal. Do I want to focus on Prestige or Profit? Well with profit I could specify a target sale amount of my app, say $.99 cents. And then just get an idea of the volume it would sell over the course of the next two-three years and grind away trying to create the value to sell the specified volume.

After the research I’ve done on the number of units one could potentially sell, it seems that it is a shot in the dark. But I think I could probably move about 250k thousand units based on current trends, then again I could just as easily move only 10k units.

My other option in trying to build out my community. Give the app away for free, and promote myself by saying something like

“Hey, connect with me on linkedin,twitter, or facebook. I’m looking to meet people who want to make amazing things happen!”

How many units could I move then? Well again, from some of the research I’ve done it looks like there is the potential for a 1000:1 ratio of free vs sold applications. That is, for every one app you sell, you could have given away 1000 applications for free.

What gave me this idea? It was when I was researching in-application advertising. I could give away my app away for free, but implement ads, hoping that enough traffic would be generated as to monetize the traffic from my app. But then I thought;

“Why couldn’t I buy out ads, to build out my community, in my own application?”

This goal totally seemS resonable, because I’ve been studying some of my rich friends. And even though they have a ton of cash, they never cash out, they still continue to work. You can even see this with people like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others. So knowing that I still have about 35 years worth of work left to accomplish, I would rather be working with people and on projects that actually change things. That make both an impact but also a profit.

And currently, that is what my brain is chewing on.

Prestige or Profit? Prestige or Profit indeed…

“How much have homes appreciated in value where you live?” I asked.

“Well, I sold a home in early 2000 for about $180k” he started. “Now that same home, with maybe $300k worth of upgrades would go for $700k-$800k”

Uh oh, I thought strike one

I proceeded to tell him about Bend and how at our height, the median was around $400k.

“What is it now?” he asked.

“Well, I think last month the median was around $180k”

The businessman sat there, mouth agape, stunned.

“Glad that isn’t happening up north, I’d be in trouble.  I think homes in Canada are going to just level off in large YoY appreciataion because they were so cheap before”

strike two I thought.

“Well why couldn’t it happen with Canada also?” I asked directly.

He looked at me, and with conviction, said “Well, Canada is different…” and proceeded to tell me how.

Strike three I thought this thing is toast

And then today I read this article from mish

…

Imagine, 68% of your disposable income being spent on housing costs with the remaining disposable income likely being spent on their favorite Top Ramen and KD dinners. This is insane as well as unsustainable. It’s funny that many Canadians seems to think that the 49th parallel has magically created immunity from a housing bust that in their minds is exclusive to the United States. I can’t tell you how many times friends and acquaintances say that Canada’s banks are sound and there was no sub-prime lending and it just can’t happen here. I’m quick to remind them that the loss of one income from a two income family will in essence convert a low credit risk to a poor credit risk akin to that of a sub-prime borrower real fast. Now, multiply this my hundreds of thousands if not millions of borrows and we too have a major problem in Canada no different from that of the US. Wishful thinking really. The proof’s in the pudding and this puddings going to bring a dose of reality to those that are living in fantasy land, way beyond their means and who apparently have missed the global financial crisis that’s been gaining traction and intensity since August 2007.

We’re not only “Hosers” in Canada but we’re royally Hosed as well!!

Robert Clegg, JD, LL.M
Ombudsman, University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta

Now if only I could figure out how to short the housing mess that we all know is coming to Canada, I’d be insanely rich.

-peace

Here is the truth of the matter.

“The hopes were that this IMF/German bailout would be the rescue for Greece and the euro currency. But if you look at credit spreads, that’s clearly not the case,” said Michael Pento, senior market strategist at Delta Global Advisors. “I think this reminds me too much of the summer of 2007 when we first saw the Bear Stearns hedge funds collapse. I think this is the first salvo of a metastasizing sovereign debt crisis that will spread,” also saying the contagion could go beyond Europe and into Asia and the U.S.

“It’s a very real crisis,” he said. “I’m afraid over the next few years here it’s going to come to America. And I guarantee you this — there is no IMF bailout coming to the U.S.”

Overseas, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1% while Japan’s Nikkei shed 3.3%. The FTSE in London fell 1.5% and the DAX in Frankfurt was lost 0.8%.

LINK

DOW FALLS ALMOST 1,000, THEN REBOUNDS

LINK

So as the world starts its rapid plunge into the reality that does exist, all I can say is “Good luck!”

Keep in mind, no one is saying you have to actually use the advice. So ask yourself “what can it hurt?”

LINK