I recently watched the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop from well-known artist Banksy. I got a kick out of this film for multiple reasons having liked Banksy's artwork for years now.
What most amused me though is how well it goes about making you question what celebrity is and how much you can achieve by becoming famous. The key point for me is questioning whether you really need to be creative and innovative above and beyond being famous.
Then Mike Butcher over at Techcrunch went and posted something this morning about startup teams trumping celebrity tech entrepreneurs. In summary, he too is making the point that execution far outweighs celebrity.
Basically, what I'm getting at, is all the parallels you're starting to see between the startup world and the movie business. I am definitely not an expert on the movie business and can only imagine what it's truly like from afar. Yet, we've all seen enough of it to realize a bit how things work in Hollywood. You basically have a couple large companies or studios as they're usually called. There you have management at the top who are the power-brokers in the industry. They back films which are used as vehicles to market actors who either succeed or not. If they do succeed, they are cast in further films and a ton of marketing is thrown at these films, regardless of whether these actors have talent or not.
Ultimately, the goal is to make as much money as possible and if you're the one making all this money, keep other people out so you can continue to make as much money as possible. Sure, there are some stand-out actors, managers and studios who go against the grain but basically it's an industry optimized to make money. Simplified by me immensely but I believe you understand what I am saying.
Now let's switch over to the startup world. It's no longer Hollywood and we're now a bit north in Silicon Valley. You have a couple firms who call all the shots and are known as Tier 1 VC's (with some major players like Google, Apple, and Facebook thrown in for good measure).
These VC's fund firms instead of films run by entrepreneurs instead of actors. Some of these entrepreneurs are successful and some are not. Those who are get funded further by these Tier 1 firms. Lots of companies are started and sold since these power brokers in the Valley sit on each other's boards and pass deals back and forth. The power brokers continue to make money and those entrepreneurs who don't lead to successful exits get weeded out (where's the reality TV version of "out to pasture" for entrepreneurs?)
Ultimately, as in the movie business, you make as much money as possible and keep out the riff-raff who would keep you from making tons of money as long as possible.
Now don't get me wrong. I am in no way arguing about whether the movie or startup business is right or wrong or skewed in someone's favor or not. I'm also probably simplifying it too much as well. But the point I am making is that we are in a world where it's about making money. Sure, you can get your touchy-feely on and say you're changing the world but ultimately you wouldn't "work" if it wasn't about making some money.
Hence, my advice to any entrepreneur is to take advantage of whatever you have if you ultimately want to be successful. If you are naturally good looking, get your face out there. Be on TV and in the press. If it helps you make money, go for it.
At the same time, if media attention doesn't help you make more money, don't focus on it. Get your pretty head down to business and execute like hell to innovate, optimize and sell your product. Or have the best of both worlds. Be a CEO focussed on getting your brand or product out there and have a number two (great blog post by Ben Horowitz) who takes care of business. What you need to focus on is making money and being the scrappy entrepreneur that you are, you'll optimize wherever you can to achieve your goal.
In the end it's never about who was most popular that determines success. Just think back to all those football players and cheerleaders in high school. (I've seen some of them from my high school....thank you Facebook.....and had a good laugh!) So often there are people you never hear about making tons of cash since they don't need to focus on media.
On the other hand, if Twitter/Foursquare/Zynga/Groupon hadn't received so much media attention, you think they'd be where they are now? I highly doubt it and I guarantee you that they had a clear strategy in place to use media (and position their founders) from the start. Hence, don't waste time focussed on the wrong things. If you're a celebrity entrepreneur who's counting his millions hats off to you. If you've become a media darling and are broke, well tough luck kid. Try something new.
By the way, here's what Exit Through the Gift Shop is about cut and pasted from Wikipedia. Think what you will about whether it's a real story or not but reast assured the dollars earned by "Mr Brainwash" were real!!
Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film is a Gonzo Documentary which tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art. It is presented as a documentary, but reviewers have questioned its factuality. The film charts Guetta's constant documenting of his every moment on film, to his chance contact with his cousin, the artist Invader, and his documenting of a host of street artists with focus on Shepard Fairey, and also Banksy though the latter's face is never shown, and his voice is distorted to preserve his anonymity
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Meet the new global elite. They're pretty much the same as the old global elite, only richer and more smug.
Laura Flanders of GritTV interviews business reporter Chrystia Freeland about her cover story in the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly on the new ruling class. She says that today's ultra-rich are more likely to have earned their fortunes in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street than previous generations of plutocrats, who were more likely to have inherited money or established companies.
As a result, she argues, today's global aristocracy believes itself to be the product of a meritocracy. The old sense of noblesse oblige among the ultra-rich is giving way to the attitude that if the ultra-rich could do it, everyone else should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Ironically, Freeland points out that many of the new elite got rich from government bailouts of their failed banks. It's unclear why this counts as earning one's fortune, or what kind of meritocracy reserves its most lavish rewards for its most spectacular failures.
Class warfare on public sector pensions
In The Nation, Eric Alterman assails the Republican-controlled Congress's decision to scrap the popular and effective Build America Bonds program as an act of little-noticed class warfare:
These bonds, which make up roughly 20 percent of all new debt sold by states and local governments because of a federal subsidy equivalent to some 35 percent of interest costs, ended on December 31, as Republicans proved unwilling even to consider renewing them. The death of the program could prove devastating to states' future borrowing.
Alterman notes that the states could face up to $130 billion shortfall next year. States can't deficit spend like the federal government, which made the Build America Bonds program a lifeline to the states.
According to Alterman, Republicans want the states to run out of money so that they will be unable to pay the pensions of public sector workers. He notes that Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) are also co-sponsoring a bill to force state and local governments to "recalculate" their pension obligations to public sector workers.
Divide and conquer
Kari Lydersen of Working In These Times explains how conservatives use misleading statistics to pit private sector workers against their brothers and sisters in the public sector. If the public believes that teachers, firefighters, meter readers and snowplow drivers are parasites, they'll feel more comfortable yanking their pensions out from under them.
Hence the misleading statistic that public sector workers earn $11.90 more per hour than "comparable" private sector workers. However, when you take education and work experience into account, employees of state and local governments typically earn 11% to 12% less than private sector workers with comparable qualifications.
Public sector workers have better benefits plans, but only for as long as governments can afford to keep their contractual obligations.
Who's screwing whom?
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is calling for a sense of perspective on public sector wages and benefits. In AlterNet he argues that the people who are really making a killing in this economy are the ultra-rich, not school teachers and garbage collectors:
Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers. They don't want stories about Wall Street bonuses, now higher than before taxpayers bailed out the Street. And they'd like to avoid a spotlight on the billions raked in by hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose income is treated as capital gains and subject to only a 15 percent tax, due to a loophole in the tax laws designed specifically for them.
Signs of hope?
The economic future looks pretty bleak these days. Yes, the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4% from 9.8% in December, but the economy added only 103,000, a far cry from the 300,000 jobs economists say the economy really needs to add to pull the country out its economic doldrums.
Andy Kroll points out in Mother Jones that it will take 20 years to replace the jobs lost in this recession, if current trends continue.
Worse yet, what looks like job growth could actually be chronic unemployment in disguise. The unemployment rate is calculated based on the number of people who are actively looking for work. Kroll worries that the apparent drop in the unemployment rate could simply reflect more people giving up their job searches.
For an counterweight to the doom and gloom, check out Tim Fernholtz's new piece in The American Prospect. He argues that the new unemployment numbers are among several hopeful signs for economic recovery in 2011. However, he stresses that his self-proclaimed rosy forecast is contingent upon avoiding several huge pitfalls, including drastic cuts in public spending.
With the GOP in Congress seemingly determined to starve the states for cash, the future might not be so rosy after all.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/
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