Story of Stardoll.com - a co-founder's story, Part Two

Our family got it's first PC computer in 1998. Me and my brother Matti had had Commodore 64, Amiga 500, MSX and Atari ST for gaming, and my mother never paid much interest in them. And at first actually she was very little interested in the new PC that we got. I almost had to force her to pay attention to the new thing called internet. Little by little she sat down and learned to use the computer. She would always ask my a lot of questions and my answer was always "you won't learn it you won't learn it yourself". And she learned it. She also found programs for drawing. Microsoft Paint and whatever, those early horrible programs. She did a few things with them but found them really incabable of doing stuff that she enjoyed. At some point however she found Flash. And it was a revelation. She started to draw with it day and night. In fact she still does. The good thing about drawing with computer is that there is never a shortage of paper :)

Second lesson: You have to be willing to work work work. No other way around it.

At some point she found the drag'n'drop function in Flash, and instantly thought of paperdolls. She did a few tests and they worked like a charm. At the same time she had been reading about girls having to play boys' computer games, like sports, cars and violence. Girls clearly wanted to play too, technology was there, but no one was providing it to them on the internet.

Third lesson: Your company has to solve some kind of problem for which there are real needs. I don't believe in creating needs or creating markets. They are already there, it's just that in some cases the problems aren't addressed yet, or they are addressed poorly. It's all about channelling those real needs efficiently.

My mother went on to create more dolls with Flash, and created an english speaking (this proved to be important decision) home page to Geocities where she would then upload the paperdolls. At first there was only one doll. Somehow someone found the doll, and liked it. That someone told some other person what she had just found, and there was a second user. Those two told someone else and the word started to spread. Soon they would send email asking for more dolls and more clothes. And my mother did more. This pattern kept on going, and soon there were a few thousand girls on that site every day, asking for more dolls.

Fourth lesson: On the internet, websites get picked up by audience by word-of-mouth, not advertising. There are exceptions, but this is how I really see it. And I'll go even further: word of mouth is way more efficient if it happens offline, even if it is about online services. We learned early on that schools were really the place where the word spread. For example teachers let us know that our site was interfering with their work :) The best and only way to ensure word-of-mouth is to build a great product or service. And make your service available in all countries by having it in english. It's the same amount of effort to make it in finnish, than it is to make it in english.

Part Three

Straitjacket economy

This is a followup on my blog entry Straitjacket of consuming. 

I have started to think that we (Northern Atlantic economies) indeed might have allowed ourself to be subject to a grande economic system, which can function only by perpetually expanding credit. And to do that, people have to bury themselves more and more in work, government spending has to grow, and companies have to create products and services for which there are less and less any fundamental need. Because we cannot create real wealth fast enough, and because our economic system will create great pain if we fail at doing this, we are forced to create asset growth artificially. We have to create air. Increasing stock market speculation and derivatives are a symptom of this disease.

When the housing assets started to lose value in 2006, the economy could have survived the hit if people had bigger savings rate, and companies would have had more financial cushion at their disposal. The economic downturn is so much worse, because everyone has so little slack. If there is even a minor disruption, the shit hits the fan big time.

So what is the reason for the underlying reason that creates credit expansion? Credit comes from banks. Banks create money in the form of credit. When someone opens a new bank account and makes a deposit, that money is loaned out many times it's size. Banks create money out of money. They don't have to create any real value, like produce or manufacture something, they can just make up the money. Banks get money as loans from central banks. Where do central banks get their money? They create it out of thin air and loan it to banks and governments with interest. Now is it then so hard to understand why the money supply is growing so much faster than everything the whole world produces? Is it really hard to understand why money loses so much value? Why we work so much? Why both men and women have to work in order to provide food to the table? Why we have had so many economic crisis in the last 100 years?

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." -- Henry Ford

Adbusters and new young radicals

In the year 2006 I took part in finnish adbusters competition called "Mainoskupla". At that point I had been in advertising about a year or so, and I had no relevant education. Actually I drew this one by myself. I´m truly sorry about comic sans, but that was a part of joke. Guess what? I didn't win. But this year with similar idea somebody won price in amateur serie of Mainoskupla: Bitch. Oh yeah. I was good as an amateur...or maybe I'm a rolemodel. :D

In that same year 2006 I figured that I need more knowledge and education. So I took part in first class of copywriters in Institute of Marketing. From that same class has become many new talented and ambitious junior copywriters. I'm always happy to see them getting in the industry, or success in competitions. They work now in all the best agencies in Finland.

Nowadays I have more experience, but I think I'm still green. I feel that is a good thing, I will learn and my point of view is fresh. I don't know if there is a kind of cap between generations, but if you read finnish advertising magazines and blogs, you find the cap, and from the conversation behind them, you find lack of respect in attitudes, both sides.

So here are my thoughts:

Youngsters: It's not your fault to be young and fierce. You'll grow up. Someday you might be even BIG. Just respect older designers and co-workers and try to learn from them. I was lucky to get good mentors in the beginning of my career, and I'm eternally grateful of that. (Some name dropping: Micke Silén, Markku Rönkkö, Hannu Konttinen)

Professionals: Guess what, those young bastards did not came to steal your clients, they are more like worshipping you and your knowledge. Share it, listen, ask from them, so you get also something back. Insight of next generation. So you know even more. Knowledge is power. Keep your heart open to youngsters, if you are not young at heart, you suddenly start to fear change. It´s not easy to find new solutions in a fear of change.

Bailout costs more than anything else ever

TechCrunch Brunch in Helsinki

I attended the TechCrunch Brunch in Helsinki, day after Slush. It's good to have these sort of events in Finland, so that the small startup groups can become more like a real community. As for me, I'm really crappy at networking, so every now and then I try to force myself to show my face.

Discussion was of course centered around current economic crisis and how it effects startups. I'm surprised how so many startups still seem to think that venture capital money is needed in order to run a small company. I think that VC funding is most needed at a point when you already have a proven success and you need help to turn the small company into a big company. There is a chasm when you are crossing over, and during that time there are a lot of new hiring to be done, product development, business strategy, partnerships, and many other little things that suck up a lot of capital. This is easier if there is financial cushion. This is the prime reason. There are other reasons as well, like getting valuable contacts and wisdom from investors.

One company that was quite interesting to me, was Hammerkit. It develops a:

"...true component-based architecture that allows web applications to be created very quickly using fully reusable components through a web-based, collaborative application assembly line environment"

It has a real early adopter approach, and is basically a tool that makes coders' life easier. It tries to solve a problem that I myself have been thinking about. I believe that in the future, people like me who don't know how to code, but have ideas for internet businesses, could somehow use a easy-to-use graphical user interface to create web services with LAMP. Like DreamWeaver with database functionalities. I use Max/MSP sometimes in my music projects, and something like that could be great. Drag'n'drop boxes with functions connected together. I know that something like this is possible to make. But which coder would want to create a software that makes coders lose their jobs? The managing director of Hammerkit, Mark Sorsa-Leslie seem to be a very smart guy also. Hopefully they make it, and at some point move from early adopter market to mainstream market so that a dummy like me can use their product as well.

I talked briefly with Teemu Kurppa (Jaiku co-founder, just left Google), and Heikki Mäkijärvi from Accel Partners. They both had interesting thoughts about the industry.

Must have: a cat and ROOMBA

Too bad that I´m allergic to cats, I see tons of fun in this combination.

Story of Stardoll.com - a co-founder's story, Part One

My experience as a co-founder and the first CEO of Stardoll.com (previously Paperdollheaven.com) was a quite unusual one, and us such it might be of interest to people in the internet industry, and especially to startups. Maybe other people as well. I learned a great deal during the time that we transformed a tiny little Geocities home page to the largest online destination for tween girls in the world, now entertaining over 23 million of it's registered users. And "I will dispense this information. Now."

The beginning of Stardoll has nothing to do with me. What later turned into Stardoll.com was originally created by my mother Liisa. As a little girl from finnish forests, she used to make her own paperdolls by drawing and cutting paper. After the war, there was shortage of everything and often if you wanted to play with toys, you had to make them yourself. And so she did. But as she is an artist at heart, she really loved the process and made a lot these paperdolls and clothes and have them to her two sisters and neighbour's girls. And so they would all dress those dolls up and play with them endlessly.

First lesson to entrepreneurs: do something that you really love, something that gets you inspired. Sometimes it's hard to see what is your real essence, what drives you. But everyone has one. You have to be honest to yourself. It might be some silly old thing like making paperdolls.

The little girl grew up and went on to live a normal life, having children and so on. She had multiple jobs, but she always kept drawing and painting. And reading. A lot. Her drawings and paintings were always very full of details. She paid incredibly amount of time to draw stuff like individual hairs and stuff like that. Very meticulate. This is actually something very important to our company's early success. I don't know anyone who draws with Flash with as much details as her. Flash of course, not having pixels in the same way that Photoshop, allows to produce very meticulate stuff.

Part Two

I have an idea! Let´s think inside the box.

This is a new one, and totally out of my line of business. This is about housing and architecture. It's absolutely stupid but so simple and clean. I think no one has done manufactured quite this solution for this need. At least I don't know where to buy it. And millions of people could find it useful. I know I would. That's a start.

Actually, about 12 years ago I made a decision not to accept admission to Tallinn Art University Department of Interior Architecture. Instead I studied Fashion Design less than a year in Kuopio. And then move in the Helsinki. Advertising and Internet are good fields for me, because I love to get new challenges and learn new things every day. But there is still a little designer in me, and my AD partners have definitely noticed it, in good and in bad. (sorry guys!)

I don't regret anything what I've done in my life, they make me who I am. I regret only things I didn't do. Now I don't know how to design interior or work in furnishing product development. So when I get Idea for interior design, I have no skills to make it.

So here in one idea for free; Room Cube.

Make a room inside a room! Prefabricated room in IKEA style, build-it-yourself product: ROOM.

In Japan they have some paper rooms, and of course prefabricated steam room or cabinet is a old thing, but how about a just a room? No room divider or other thin curtains between space. A room.

Of course there should be few size variations and you can paint cube coat, or use really nice, modified coats with trendy graphics. So this little room cube inside the another room is also kind of piece of art. On top of cubicle you could make a loft and storage.

Who could use this room cube? People who rent or buy quite big 1 room apartment, or loft, but like to have rooms. People who have suddenly kids, but don't wan't to search new apartment and move, so they can easily build a room for a child. Design lovers, who consider old fashioned kids play houses ugly, could use this in they garden as a play house for kids. In big office space you could have more privacy in room cube than in open cubicles.

Go on, grab this idea and run. I wan't to buy a room cube.

Originality

Is it possible to be truly original? And especially in ad business? We had a little conversation about it in Deceptive Cadence.

It's easier to be original if you make art and express yourself through it. But advertising is not art and ad people should not act like artists. This is more like a craft, customer service and insight of people. Usually we try to reach masses, and sell something. Advertising becomes art when it's great.

Sometimes I feel we go so extreme that true originality is something so mainstream, that we don't even see it. This polarization is clear in all fields of life, not just in advertising. This zeitgeist is feeding our need to be unique individuals, but the next wave in economy, culture and set of values may bring back some other needs. Some principles of life don't change, even if all the means and reasons would.

Don't get me wrong, I think individualism is a good thing, and it's always refreshing if someone seems to have created something new. But sometimes I feel that ideas I find BIG, are the most obvious solutions. They make me feel so small, it was right there front of my nose, and I didn't see that until now.

What is originality? An original idea is not received from others nor one copied based on the work of others. An original idea is one not thought up by another person beforehand... Ok, what about the teamwork? How about our subliminal mind? And influences of the culture and lifestyle? Have you seen this Derren Brown clip about 2 ad guys and de-brief? It explains quite well how the creative mind works, and how easy it is manipulate human mind. (Don´t get any ideas from this, you sneaky ad people ;) )



I have to quote myself, "It's not easy to be original in advertising. The whole nature of advertising is more like manipulated echoes from life, culture and common situations for stereotypical people. But when advertising is echo from another ad, we ad people get annoyed. Consumers don't care, unless it's a really really really bad rip-off. "

Sometimes many people can come up with the same idea independently. Sometimes they borrow idea and make it better.. you may say, it's not stealing, it's inventing it again. To be original is one goal, but relevant timing, surprising but memorable story and the best execution is the winner of all the similar ideas. You don't lose your credibility if the message is credible for your product.

And here is something we should not forget. Windo gives you good lesson:
It´s just advertising, get over it!

Taxing the rich and poor

Warren Buffett says the he has lower tax rate now - as the richest human being in the world - than he did when he delivered newspapers as a boy. He has to pay 15% by law. His tax rate is also smaller than the woman who comes every day to clean his office. Makes you kind of think.

Deflation or not

The greatest negative effect during the Great Depression was deflation - contraction in the money supply. Deflation occured when people drew their deposits out of their banks. Against every 100$ deposit the bank could (and still can because of the fractional reserve banking) lend out 1000$, so when people went to the bank and took all their money out, the money supply contracted ten-fold. This caused the purchasing power of money to rise dramatically. If you have a company and pay 100$ in wages, and then there is massive deflation, you are forced to pay more and more to workers (unlike today's inflation where workers must ask a raise every now and then). This led to massive unemployment, which in turn led to other big problems.

Why the Fed never pumped enough money to the system during the early 30's is still a bit of a mystery. It didn't do what it is designed to do: to be a lender of last resort. Because the biggest winners during that time were the original founders and private owners of the Fed: Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Morgans, I am left to believe that private interests were served here.

Bloomberg wrote about a deflation risk today. J.P. Morgan's analyst Michael Feroli predicts that the Federal Reserve will lower it's interests rates to 0% during the following two months. The banks will be able to loan money for free. Isn't that great business?

Why does Feroli expect that there will be deflation? Because:

"...companies cut jobs and banks reduce lending, stifling spending"

But companies cut jobs because of deflation, not the other way around. Banks reducing lending will create deflation, I'll give him that. But the effect of stifling spending in itself doesn't create deflation. The only thing that can create deflation is that people, companies and governments pay back their loans, because it contracts the banks reserves, the basis on which to loan money. This is what banks are afraid of. People are not taking their money out, because times are different than in 1930's, the biggest fear is that people do the right thing during crisis: repay their loans.

Governments are being scared to death by banks to let deflation occur, so they do whatever they can to prevent it. For some reason, Wall Street seems to believe that contraction in the stock market is same as deflation. It is not. When you go out and buy stuff, and its cheaper every month, that's deflation. Have you noticed such things lately? But because people are up their ears in debt already, it makes it really hard for them to pay back the money they borrowed. Therefore I see no risk in major deflation. So when the Fed pumps massive amounts of money, and the system is flushed with dollars, and no one absorbing it, it will create massive inflation. 

The Wall Street propaganda machine will also tell us that dollar is strenghtening and commodities have gone way down, thus reducing the inflation. But this will be temporary, as everything is being forced to sell. And thus people are in effect buying dollars. This will create the illusion that dollar is stronger and commodities (all dollar-denominated) will continue to go down. When the force-selling eventually runs it course, the fundamentals are back in game, the fundamentals for the dollar are terrible, and for commodities the supply-demand hasn't changed, dollar will go down dramatically and commodities will go back up. This will make the inflation a lot worse. 

I project that deflation is the least of our worries at this point. Au contraire. There will be massive inflation because we are fighting the non-existing deflation.

One more thing: Monty Python Channel !!!!

Wow, high quality Pythons in youtube!

And this is WHY:



Monty Python Channel

Ministry of silly walks, killer rabbit, witch village and black knights... all the goodies. But they want something in return:

"None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years."

Page 56 Meme

Despite its technical character and forbidding complexity, the subject of international monetary arrangements is one that a liberal cannot afford to neglect.

What´s on page 56?
Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.


(Lasse´s book was closer... damn!)

Happy birthday, Dear finnish Internet!

Internet has been in Finland now 20 years!
In November 1988 Nordic collaboration Nordunet, had a first connect to to the worldwide network. I guess I´ve been using Internet now about 15 years.
And last 10 years has changed my life.

I have found my best friends, new skills, jobs and hobbies trough web. I fall in love with knowledge which was free, and out there. No other school has ever get me so excited, I could educate myself to be almost what ever I wanted to be. So I wanted to be a writer and everything is my paper.

I keep in touch with my family trough Internet. My mom and dad (now 70 years old) have their own webpages and they skype me sometimes with webcam. Most of my relatives are in Facebook or use messenger. I even met Lasse first in web, maybe in year 2002, but in that moment we were just acquitance to each other. But Internet was sure the reason we met again at work.


So thank you finnish Internet and happy birthday to you!

The beauty of internet is to believe in change. Everything is possible and "blessings are deserved by the trust that always could."

Theme and variations

This is something I composed as a study for myself. A simple theme with four variations tied to different film directors' styles: 1. Stanley Kubrick, 2. Sergio Leone, 3. Tim Burton and 4. all these together. It is interesting to see how the exact same musical material can be used to portray different world by changing the orchestration. Anyways, it turned out quite fun and I thought I'd share this piece for which I have no other use.

You can listen it here:

I.O.U.S.A.

A great and informing film about United States national debt and its effect on US citizens and their future. Also gives a really good picture of the whole western economy and its viability. Anyone making investments decisions should watch this film:

The internet entrepreneur

This is a subject that I will probably tackle more in the future, but I might as well start writing a little bit about it already.

I have never worked "in the industry" so to speak. I don't know about processes. I don't know what's it like to work in a real office with schedules. I have always felt that I'm an outsider in the Finnish startup scene. I know more internet people outside Finland. My path co-founding what is now Stardoll.com and Kuvake.net is probably a bit uncommon. I don't know how to code, I have no history in doing any business, no legal background, nothing. But somehow I've learned to manage quite well doing internet business. And my approach to the whole thing is just common sense.

There's nothing inherently special about internet. It's the same as any other business, especially the media companies. Somehow because it is still relatively fresh new industry, it is surrounded with a lot of bullshit. It's probably the same with all the new Gold Rush-equivalent industries in the history, where there is a lot of money to be made whoever finds something valuable first. This is something I dislike about the IT the most.

I think that creating new internet services should be a craft like glass blowing or stone carving. Something to be done with a humble approach. Slow process, always trying out what works in practice and what doesn't. It should resemble an artists process of starting with a simple but identifyable idea and building something bigger with it. On running internet business, there shouldn't be any unnecessary expenditures like fancy hip offices or arcade games. There shouldn't be people surfing the net instead of working. No endless meetings that don't lead anywhere. All this just doesn't make any sense to me. Why should internet be any different than selling hotdogs?

The successful internet entrepreneur must have two characteristics: 1. he/she must be stupid enough to start a new business in the first place and 2. he/she must be intelligent to succeed with it. They also have to be somehow egoistic enough to think that they can do things better than others, while at the same time humble enough to listen what other people have to say and learn from everything they read. This is why there aren't that many success stories, I think.

And one last thing that they have to have bipolar about: they have to be nice no strings attached people with good self-esteem, while still being able to be a ruthless businessman.

Quite a mixed monster this dude, right?

I know who the fu*k is Jenny Woo!

(Picture from Deceptive Cadence)

We saw this car middle of Helsinki.

"Do you know what it was?" asked my AD partner.
"I dunno." I said.
"I don´t know is that good..." he said.
"guerilla in Finland is always somehow so sad." I said.
"But this reminds me... that campaign about movie-channel...do you remember it?" I asked from him.
"Oh yes, it was pretty good!".
And then we talk about THAT campaign, and forget about Jenny Woo and all this finnish guerilla marketing sadness.

Then I heard that there were a similar sign in Idols show at Sunday.

At the sunday newspaper "Jenny Woo" was searching roommates in rental classifieds. You can also find her roommate ad from web: Oikotie

And today I saw those in this blog: Deceptive Cadence

Ok. You get me. I´m interested. So I googled it.
Not just Jenny Woo, but phrase "who the fuck is Jenny Woo?"

I found finnish magazine article about Riku Stenroos.

He´s facebook status was: "Who the fuck is Jenny Woo?".
He is building a new bar middle of Helsinki. Simonkatu 6.
Bar name is still "a secret."

You do the math.

Useful guy

...well, he had his moments, at least in ads and jokes.


Via: http://adsoftheworld.com/

With great power comes great responsibility

Free markets work beautifully. I believe in this. But markets aren't really free if they aren't being self-regulated via natural discipline created by risk and responsibility. If these two factors are removed from the equation, it is no longer free market capitalism, it resembles central planning of some socialist countries in the past.

When banks are able to borrow money from central banks with lower rates than there is inflation, it distorts markets greatly. If central banks couldn't print money out of thin air, there would be no bank which would find it good business to loan out money with rates below inflation. It is an artificial system that creates artificial economic environments. When this is combined with fractional reserve banking system, which enables banks to lend out money that it doesn't have, our system of credit is basically without boundaries. The only boundary that it does have people's and institutions' willingness to borrow money. This is not freedom in my eyes. This is distortion of freedom. It is for freedom what Kentucky Fried Chicken is for chickens.

Some day we must realize as one, that we don't have a free market economy. Our economy is controlled by central banks, and the only thing it can create is money, inflation. This can lead to no other result than booms and busts. Banks are the biggest winners during booms, and ordinary people are the biggest losers during busts.

I dream about a world which would have natural free market capitalism. A world without central banks. A system in which risk couldn't be transferred, and responsibility was effecting the decision making. This system should work with same rules as an ordinary household. No stupid risks, trying to save money, not taking too much credit and not spending on consumption. This kind of system is possible. It has existed many times during our history and it has brought great wealth upon all citizens, while bringing bankers down the level of ordinary entrepreneurs with common problems.

I have a wordle for you...

Cute little application for generating word clouds. Go on and make your own: Wordle

Here is some nonSENSE:

Found via: If it´s hip, it´here -blog

Could the next bubble be green?

The greatest bull market in stocks lasted from 1982 to 2000, when the dot.com bubble burst. To ease the pain, Federal Reserve lowered it's interest rate to 1% for a whole year. Many economists say - such as Ross Healy in this great interview - that this was one the prime reasons for the housing boom and it's eventual bust, for which we are now facing the consequences.

If there hadn't been a housing boom created by US government creatures, the fall in the stock market could have been more severe after the IT bubble, and led to a real recession. What the Fed has been trying to do after 2000 is to prevent recessions from taking place. Housing boom was the thing that bounced the economy back up. But the growth wasn't real. It was a bubble. Just like the IT bubble. 

The consensus by politics in the western world, is that money has to be pumped to the system, in other words by printing it. We are yet again trying to fight against the natural waves of free market economy, by expanding the money supply even more - trying to keep the fever elevated. If we are to escape the next Great Depression, another bubble has to be created. Now the question rises: what could create the next bubble? What could be universally accepted as great growth opportunity? What could lead the people trust to put their money into stock market again? It can't be IT or housing. Those have been tried and found non-functional.

I have a wild theory: If we will bounce again by creating another bubble, the color of the bubble could be green.

Everyone shares the worry about climate change. Everyone in the whole world knows about it. Everyone wants to live in a clean planet. We have a huge industry forming called "green tech". New York Times has good article about it. The legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins launched a new Green Growth Fund last May, totalling 500 million US dollars. According KPCB, the fund is:

"...intended to help speed mass market adoption of solutions to the world’s climate crisis."

Many VC's are following. President-elect Barack Obama is the sort of New Deal guy, who could put a lot of government money to support this industry.

All this is great for the planet. It has to happen, because we are quickly turning our world into a dump. Putting together an effort to clean the planet is a noble cause. But we have to remember that Internet also was a noble cause. We are connecting people on this planet. Housing is also a noble cause. "Every citizen must have the opportunity to have their own home". But these two things created a hype that let to a bust. This could happen to the green tech as well. Robert Bell has written a book about this.

We have to be careful this time. We should put the sought-after regulation working in central banks, having governments have oversight, and see that they are not creating yet another artificially beneficial environment for credit expansion. And no industry should be granted government backing. Free market works, if you let it. That way we can make the most out of these noble causes.

EDIT: Steve Randy Waldman pointed out a great article about this on Harper's

Fruugo launches... nothing

According to sources (in finnish), Fruugo didn't launch it's service yesterday at SIME, as it was supposed to. Kauppalehti (also in finnish) writes that the CEO Reijo Syrjäläinen has left the company, and the new CEO is Juha Usva. They are now in talks with VC:s about new funding. Their biggest investor so far is Queensway Developments LLC. Taneli Tikka has a good blog entry about Fruugo's mystery. 

This is from Fruugo.com:

"We want to make it easy for consumers to buy the stuff they want, in their own language and using the payment method they prefer – without the hassle of exchange rates, complex shipping costs, taxes, or staying up all night worrying “am I actually going to get my stuff?” We want to help with all that."

These problems have been addressed by many different e-commerce services, such as Amazon. Where is the beef? What is their unique value proposal? On ArcticStartup, Fruugo's Janne Waltonen commented that:

"Fruugo doesn’t have direct competitors as such, and most of the players concerned with Fruugo entering their space could actually rather be quite interesting partners (like Kelkoo and other product comparison sites for example)"

Every single company has direct competitors. At least that has to be the mindset. I mean if you don't have the competitors, you don't have a market either. If the problems that Fruugo's service is trying to solve are as described above, it doesn't sound like a disruptive innovation. It sounds like a mainstream service in an sustaining market. If it were truly disruptive, I could understand the "no competitors" comment a little better. But as it sounds more like late adopter service, you should create the competition, as competition is the fundamental condition for purchase. You just can't do early adopter marketing with late adopter product.

Also it has been reported that they have about 100-150 people working in Fruugo right now. I think that amount of people in a startup is pure madness. Even Google didn't need that many to get the service running online.

All in all, this all sounds very peculiar. I would absolutely love to see new big things coming out of Finland, but it just seems that either 1. The idea is too small and the effort too big, or 2. The idea is great and effort too small.

Yes I´m pregnant.

I´m having very intense idea labor with few campaigns, so less blogging, more pushing... aaaarrrrrrrrrhhhhhh! 

I hope to avoid this kind a baby blues:

Two pieces from Wojciech Kilar

Wojciech Kilar is one of my absolute favorite film composers of all time. He has been active mostly in his native Polish cinema, but he has done a few bigger budget movies as well, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Truman Show, The Ninth Gate and The Pianist. 

What is intriguing in his style is his use of extremely simple and to-the-point motifs. In that respect, it resembles Hitchcock's "court composer" Bernard Herrmann. They both invent little ideas upon which they expand. And repeate.

This is Kilar going a bit Debussy and Ravel, the very beautiful and melancholic "Walc" from the film The Promised Land (1974):

My favorite Kilar is from one of my favorite movies The Ninth Gate (1999). He really is a master of dark colors, and suits Polanski's style extremely fittingly. Together they create pure, original and masterful cinematic expression. While the superb Corso's Theme takes us through the story with different orchestrational variations, the opening title music always gives me goose bumps with it's chromaticism and minor chords:

OMG, WE ARE DOOOMED!

(and omg, and SHE is blogging about economy, and she does not know anything about it!)

Advertising is dying! We are going to be unemployed! That means poor! We need money! Security! Our nice apartments, huge TV:s and fast cars! Good food!

The world economy is weakening fast and advertisers are cutting their budgets because they suspect that consumers are not able to buy things... or what ever their biggest fear is. Few days ago I had to read from the magazine that the advertising agency I am working in, is in financial troubles. Well, that is not the absolute truth even if some scared marmots hyperventilates after seeing some numbers about last year which was tough. This year and new business is looking good. It´s business baby. Up´s and downs. Investing and making profit after that. Ok, you may laugh at my optimism if I lose my job next year. Promised.

It´s absolutely hysterical how financial worries drive people crazy. It is just money. MONEY. In Scandinavia we have so strong social security, that it´s not the end of the world if you lose your job. I always keep that option open and have a plan B. Good job is a privilege. Of course it´s uncomfortable to give up of all the benefits you´ve collected, but it´s not the end of the world. Be patient for a few years and try again to reach your dreams. It´s your problem if your lifestyle demands more money. If being poor is something you haven´t experienced before, it will be a valuable life lesson for you. And you are not alone. About half of the human population suffers from poverty. Be down to earth but keep your spirit high. Of course you want to tell me now, how money makes the world go around, but let me tell you, people don´t need just money, people need to believe. People need people. Only together people can create new solutions. And the money comes along with creativity. If you sat down your ass and wait for things to get better, they´re not going to do that. It´s same with normal people and advertisers. You don´t have to spend more money than you have, but why be so black and white? There is nothing between the big spender and Uncle Scrooge? Ok, there is a cutting on consumer spending, but if your product or service is still relevant to consumers, do you think hiding is the solution for keeping YOUR business up? No. Wrong answer.

Advertiser that continues to advertise regardless of economic times have a competence and advantage over businesses. There is also another ways to make advertising than multimillion TV campaigns. Think different. Creative people, creative advertisers and creative ad agencies always survive. If so called BULK advertising dies and unnecessary products drop down from market, it´s really not lost for me.

"Creativity doesn’t care about economic downturns, In the middle of the 1970s, when we were having a big economic downturn, both Apple and Microsoft were founded. Creative people don’t care about the time or the season or the state of the economy; they just go out and do their thing.”

(HOWARD LIEBERMAN, serial entrepreneur and founder of the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute)

Straitjacket of consuming

How many times during the last year have you heard the term "stimulate consumer spending"? It is universally accepted in most business (not economy) media as the absolute cure for current economic crisis. It states that we the people have to consume as much as possible to keep this system working, and that is somehow our obligation as citizens. As if we were in this mess because people didn't spend enough money.

Cutting on consumer spending is not the cause for this crisis we're in. It is an effect. A very reasonable effect, I might add. 

The real reason for this mess is housing bubble, and beyond that, a what George Soros calls, a super-bubble created by enormous credit expansion during the last 25 years. In other words we spent and borrowed too much money. This is common knowledge, but still somehow escapes the reason when media starts speculating what should be done.

When you consider what has happened to people's mental health during this 25-year period, how busy we have become, how separated from each other, how driven by buying more stuff we don't need, it is somehow perverse to think that we should do more of the same in order to keep up the banks that ultimately are the cause for all of this.

Edit: Just found a great video where DuckTales explains exactly what central banks do and what harm they produce:

My Report 2008

Gunn Report has listed the world most awarded ads in 2008. And the winner is.... Cadbury´s Gorilla!

Ok, it´s clear that we all just LOVE Gorilla, even if I had first some heretical thoughts that it´s really not that good as a ad, because it could be ad for about any product or advertiser... but that also is the beauty of it. It´s not an ad for any product, it´s ad what Cadbury did. That makes it so great and different. Come on Lads, It´s a fuc*ing gorilla playing Phil Collins! I would tell about it to my friends, and you bet I would buy THAT dairy milk chocolate!

But here is my personal TOP5 listed:

1. The"Power of Wind"-spot. I´ve seen it now like 30 times, and I still feel childish joy every time I watch it. It just touched me, or my black little heart. I would love to write a script where weird guy throws sand in kids eyes! Sand in kids eyes! Awesome!

2. Halo 3 campaign. Simply breath taking.

3. BURGER KING - Whopper Freakout Is there life without whopper? No.

4. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL - signatures


5. SONY BRAVIA "Play-Doh" 


One winning campaign I just don´t get it, is the AXE DARK TEMPTATION - Chocolate Man.
For me it´s just creepy... the guy looks like a huge shitman, and it´s gross to eat peoples bodyparts. And chocolate smelling deodorant is propably not wanted imago either. But like I said it, I just don´t get it, but if consumers does, that´s good commercial.

Investing - AIG or small children?

US treasury is firmly propping up zombie banks like AIG, and by such actions they are making sure they end up where Japan was during it's lost decade of the 1990's.

Federal Reserve says that people shouldn't think of these bailouts as just waste of money, because they are really "an investment", as the government could end up making profit later on.

If we are talking investing, let's talk investing. Would you rather invest in AIG's nuclear-waste-equivalent shares, or something that makes 16% real return on investment: Early Childhood Development? Oh and did I tell you that it also reduces crime? Nice spotting from Steve Randy Waldman.

I WANT THINGS TOO!

It was about a month ago, when I had the kind of idea flow, when you just knew you found something so stupid it might actually work. I was planning to build a plain website with simple text: 

I WANT THINGS.

Send me some money. 

Then there would be the list of all things I already got, and my wish-list about things I still need. 

The reason I didn´t continue to develop this idea further was simple: I wouldn´t want to be that greedy girl in the web, it´s not my nature. But if you discover what somebody gets from giving you things, it´s not greedy at all, it´s genius!

Meanwhile I was still pondering what I could and would give to deserve things, they did it. They really did it. And they solved my dilemma. They also give what they wants. Unbelievable simple. Respect!

Hey guys, want something for me too...like: 

"Better ideas for envious Adele". 

Economic stimulus and how it's really done

There has been a lot of stimulus packages dumped on the economy in the United States and now here in the EU region as well. And very possibly there are more on the way. The idea is to jump start the economy, to have people regain trust in it, and have them spending and taking credit again. The way they do it is by giving people tax cuts, tax rebates or pump money into the whole system via banks.

When the problem lies in the fact that people in the western economies spent too much on consumption and took way too much credit, because credit (money) was cheap due to Fed's artificially low interest rates, how are we to think that by doing the exact thing that got us into this mess is going to save us? It's like trying to cure lactose intolerance by drinking more milk. 

We don't need to regain trust in an economy which sucks. When the stock prices go down, it is a clear sign that something is wrong. It isn't just blind mass hysteria. There are real fundamental problems in our economy and this crisis will not go away until they are fixed.

There isn't an economist in the world who wouldn't recognize Federal Reserve's and Alan Greenspan's responsibility in this crisis. And yet, neither John McCain or president-elect Barack Obama never ever said anything regarding them. If they do not understand the problem, how are they to fix it? I like Obama quite a lot, and especially after Bush, he is a breath of fresh air. But I am worried that he will use his intelligence and charisma to get a lot of stuff through that will hurt the economy, not save it. There is a big possibility that he will make things worse, if he doesn't understand the disease.

Quite out of the blue, China just announced an economic stimulus package. And it is huge, totalling 586 billion dollars. At first I was surprised, and thought that it somehow represents the same economic philosophy that we have here: "printing" the economy. But no. Chinese are using this money mainly to build infrastructure. This means airports, railways, subways and villages. This is also called subventing, something very familiar to USA, but further down the decades. There are two key elements that separate the chinese idea from what the western world is trying to do:

1. They have the money. They don't have to borrow one cent, or to print it in their central bank. Therefore it will not create any additional inflation.

2. They use the money in infrastructure, not to encourage people's bad habit of spending on consumption. Infrastructure is a real investment, because it will help create wealth in the future. Investing in consumption doesn't create wealth.

While I am not usually a fan of government directing money straight to domestic companies, China is doing something very clever here. And we should take notice.

And... Go.

I will now start writing here together with Adele. Here goes.

I feel strongly about the economy. I started to study it in 2007 after I noticed the Ron Paul phenomena on YouTube. First I was struck by the way he spoke about USA and it's foreign policy. I loved the fact that he is a republican and a strict follower of the US constitution, and deriving his anti-war mindset from those principles. After reading more what he had to say about economy, I started to study how economy works. I read wikipedia articles, watched YouTube videos, some news, and tried to be open to a broad spectrum of economic opinions and theories. I found out that I believe in free market, capitalism, small government, libertarian values and Austrian economics. I also started to really feel that there is something very wrong with fractional reserve banking, fiat money and central banking. I will probably write a lot about those things later on. 

I am big fan of investors Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers, and I read and watch practically everything they say. I am a  BusinessWeek and The Economist subscriber. I follow Interfluidity. I'd say I read and study economics about 1-2 hours every day. It is a great hobby. It gives an interesting view to the world. Economy affects us all a great deal and I think we should all know at least the basics, but preferrably lot more.

Here is something recent from my man Mr. Schiff about how the current ideology in the midst of economic crisis is just to save it by "printing it":

The truth in Advertising

Old but so good:

Change. True. True.

Change. There is a true change. 

Maybe in politics too, but i´m talking about marketing. 

The Obama campaign finally did it. Viral marketing and creative use of social media is the carrot, and traditional advertising just a butter on top of it. Plane butter makes you through up, and turn out to be a FAT mistake, like McCain´s TV commercials. This is what you get with it.  

If you believe only in traditional advertising and communication, in a modern world, you lose your control over product totally. Ads are not the absolute truth from the know-it-all brand managers & creative gods. I don´t know if it´s ever been that. Especially good advertising.

I´ve been in advertising industry less than 4 years, and I think I represent the next generation. Idea is everything and media comes after that. People don´t believe in ads if they talk from above, they believe in other people, conversation, personal conclusions, social networks in IRL and in web. This change is good. Maybe after this Obama campaign, we can convince advertisers to think little bit out of the box. The truth is out there. 

2 great things in Obama Campaign: 

Genious "Wassuup 2008"

Original Cast of Budweiser Ads has made Obama commercial in youtube. Extra points: Budweiser is owned by Anheuser-Busch, which is owned by Cindy McCain. Touché!

"Obama Lost!"

Customised CNNBC videos

Your friend sent you the following video from CNNBC:
"Obama's Loss Traced To YOU!
 Watch it here: http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/

(not responding right now, maybe the server is down?)