This thought came to me in at the gym. How can RIM become relevant again?
Sometimes, I like to root for the underdog. I have been rooting for Yahoo for years (short story is, I think a stronger Yahoo = stronger tech ecosystem). And now I’ve reached the point where making fun and beating up on RIM and Blackberry is no longer funny. So as I was resting between sets, thinking about how RIM could make a comeback. How could they get its devices in the hands of more everyday consumers? (BTW: RIM is probably going to lose its government customers)
RIM needs to become cool again. They need a way for people to walk down the street and say, “Oh, that person has a Blackberry.” Headphones. That’s how RIM could do it. Just like Apple did in the mid-2000s with its white ear buds, RIM could do the same with headphones. I was in Chicago the other week and it seemed like everyone had huge headphones on, very similar to the Beats by Dre. I couldn’t name any of the brands on people’s heads other than the Beats by Dre.
Beats by Dre is a cool brand. Dr. Dre, the namesake of the brand, automatically makes them cool. The high quality audio just reinforces the brand. In the most recent Summer Olympics, Beats by Dre dominated the ears of athletes preparing for competition. When you walk around, you can see someone with big headphones on, you can tell if they are Beats by Dre from the distinct “b” on the ears. Beats by Dre is definitely a cool brand and offers status to those who wear them. This is exactly why RIM needs to acquire Beats by Dre.
Being cool isn’t RIM’s only problem. They are woefully behind in the app marketplace. They have a terrible operating system, no developers want to create on the Blackberry OS. Users want apps. Apps are why people use their phones. Actual phone calls are not the main reason why we have mobile phones. It’s the apps. Apps can be useful, they can be sexy, and they can be fun. It gives people something to talk about. Without a strong app ecosystem, RIM has nothing. RIM has poor consumer sales, no cool factor, and a lackluster app ecosystem. So how does Beats by Dre fix all this?
Beats by Dre obviously makes RIM cooler, but the consumer sales are the key. By packaging a set of Beats by Dre headphones with a Blackberry mobile phone, it incentivizes consumers to buy Blackberry phones. Yes, it will cost RIM a lot of money, but Amazon does the same thing with its Kindle Fire. Why? Because hardware is the key to software. By owning the hardware, and getting more users to use your software, you can make more money through transactions. Apple made $1.6 billion from app sales in Q1 2013 and $2.4 billion in iTunes sales. And the app developers will make apps where there are users.
Will this actually happen? Highly unlikely. But RIM doesn’t have many moves left before it goes Pan Am. If I was in charge of RIM today, I would try and make this hail mary of a move. It’s the only way RIM will survive.
Being the founder of a tech startup has become cool again. We’ve fully recovered from the dot com crash and revived a healthy tech ecosystem. And this time it’s expanded beyond Silicon Valley. Now cities like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and Austin are getting in the action. Even globally, cities like Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Singapore are building strong tech ecosystems. All this growth is great, I fully support it. The thing I don’t like is the lack of passion.
Because people are starting companies because they think it’s cool and will lead to riches, I see lots of apathetic founders. That’s because they believe in the “pivot” methodology, which is to fail fast and change the direction of your company, which has led to companies completely changing what type of business they’re in. Maybe your initial hyptothesis wasn’t correct, but don’t you want to try and figure out a better way to solve that problem? Those that have good ideas and are passionate about them will. Those in it for other reason or have solutions for non-existent problems will pivot. Pivoting is considered smart. Sure it can be. But I see it more as a crutch for people who want to build anything.
Sean Parker once said that ccompanies like Facebook have a hard time recruiting because so many of the talented engineers leave to start their two person companies that never get anywhere. When instead they could be a part of a greater machine, actually changing the world. To many, it just seemed like a whiny billionaire talking, who wanted to prevent engineers making their own fortunes. But I find truth to the statement.
My final thought on passionless startups is aimed at hackathons. For those that don’t know, hackathons are 24 or 48 hour competitions where people put together a product to present in that time frame. Again, the focus in on execution, not the idea. So people jump on board with any idea, build it, maybe try and build it out, but often just abandon it. Building a company is more than just creating a product. Creating the product is just the first step. Building a product and raising a Series A round of funding doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful either. That’s because building a company is far more complex and takes passion to get through the difficult parts. And there will be difficult parts.
I consider myself to be a generalist. I’m an expert at nothing. I often say that I have coffee shop knowledge on everything, but I don’t everything about anything. I’ve been like this my entire life. I’ve never excelled at anything. My standardized test scores were even across all subjects. There were no polarizing scores that averaged out. Even. Same with my athletic skills. It’s only natural that this transitioned into my adult life.
I am still a generalist. I bring more to the table than my social media knowledge and I feel that’s not acknowledged by pigeon holing me as social media expert. If you were to label me, I prefer entrepreneur. I believe that describes me far more accurately than a social media expert. An entrepreneur is someone who takes action, solves problems, and will figure it out. An entrepreneur wears many hats, specializing in nothing, but effective at everything.
I like my skill set and prefer being an entrepreneur. This is why I hate being boxed a social media expert. In 2009 when I planned out my 10 year career path, I started with social media. At the time it was the path of least resistance and a logical start to my future goals. I already had experience in the field, my age wasn’t a deterrent, and starting a social media agency had a low barrier to entry. I do not regret choosing this path. But it was never my intention to specialize in this field forever. It’s not a coincidence that I’m working on my first software company.
The impostor syndrome, sometimes called impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome, is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. - Wikipedia
