This guest post was written by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
partners John Doerr
and Ellen Pao
. We covered KP’s increase in the size of the iFund last week, and additional insights from KP’s Matt Murphy on the iPad. This post goes into a lot more detail on KP’s investments in the first iFund, and what opportunities they see for the iPad.
It’s hard to imagine that once there was no Internet. Just 15 years ago there was no browser, no web point-and-click. It was 1994, and Steve Jobs had left Apple. Steve was making Toy Story, and object-oriented software for Next.
Then one day Bill Joy showed me a beta version of Mosaic, the FIRST web browser. It was magic. Bill said “John, I have NO idea where this is going. You just better dive in.”
The rest of the 90’s were a ONCE-in-a-lifetime experience. Entrepreneurs created the Web, and great ventures – Netscape, Amazon, Ebay, Google, and others. And they changed our lives. Silicon Valley became the Florence of the New, Networked Economy.
The advent of the iPad feels like deja-vu, like it’s happening all over again. Not once, but TWICE-in-a-lifetime.
Inventing The Future
Newsweek put it best… “Steve has the uncanny ability to cook up gadgets we didn’t know we needed… but suddenly can’t live without.” Steve showed us what computer legend Alan Kay told us… namely, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
At Kleiner Perkins we say “If you can’t INVENT the future, the next best thing… is to FUND it.”
The iFund
So two years ago Apple and Kleiner Perkins announced an unexpected collaboration: the $100 million iFund. The best venture fund for mobile entrepreneurs.
Think back to March 6, 2008. The iFund idea was risky – some thought crazy. There was no 3G iPhone. No apps. No appstore. And no iFund.
Today the iFund is 14 ventures. 3 are stealth. We are proud to have backed great entrepreneurs in communications, gaming, publishing, media, mobile advertising, and mobile commerce. The iFund companies include:
- Booyah
– Creating new forms of entertainment to the masses by bringing together elements of the real world and the digital world. Booyah’s MyTown is the largest social check-in platform today, with over 1.6 million users checking in 4 million times per day.
- Cooliris
– A 3D interface for browsing vast amounts of rich media content on the iPhone and web.
- GOGII – Leading free texting (textPlus), communication, and group social interaction product for mobile, serving over 5 million users who have exchanged over 2 billion messages on textPlus.
- iControl
– Stay connected in real-time to what matters most – family, property, home, and business-from anywhere in the world, anytime, day or night.
- InMobi
– The largest independent mobile ad network, reaching mobile users in 37 countries.
- ngmoco
– The first iPhone/iPad-only games publisher with 20+ titles and the Plus Network for 3rd party developers. ngmoco’s games are installed on over one-third of all iPhone / iPod users and played over 20 million minutes per day.
- Pelago (Whrrl)
– Mobile social network and discovery app that allows you to find people, places, events, and trends through the eyes of your friends and other people on the Whrrl platform.
- Pinger
– A publisher of great utility and entertainment apps for iPhone, with 13 hit titles on iPhone including Doodle Buddy, Photo Chop and TextFree.
- Shazam
– The world’s leading mobile music discovery and socialization application – enabling consumers to experience and share music with others.
- shopkick
– Focused on the intersection of mobile and the physical retail world, shopkick’s goal is to dramatically improve the experience of consumers’ shopping experience.
- Zynga mobile
– The world’s largest social gaming network, bringing social games to iPhone and iPod Touch.
Each of these companies has received capital from the iFund and participated in bi-annual iFund Summits with other founders, CEOs and industry leaders. Through this network, we’ve seen phenomenal collaboration between iFund companies and tremendous learning in a space that evolves rapidly and changes daily.
iFund ventures have had well over 100 million downloads. And we expect more than $100 million in revenue from these companies this year. We’ve already committed $100 million, and raised another $330 million from others. That’s almost ½ billion dollars.
Good News – Bad News
That’s the good news. Truly good news. But the bad news – is that at the worst possible time, on eve of the iPad, the iFund is out of money.
The first rule of venture capital is (to quote my friend Coach Campbell) is…“you gotta have the friggin’ money.” It’s hard to be a venture capitalist if you don’t have the money.
Doubling Down
So we’re doubling down on the iFund, increasing its size to $200 million dollars. Here’s the real reason why…
The original PCs in the early 80’s were pretty crummy, that is, until 1984 when Apple introduced the mouse and the Mac… Back then Alan Kay, inventor of the Dynabook tablet, said “The Mac is the first PC worth criticizing.”
Fast forward to 2007. When Steve introduced the iPhone, Alan Kay told him “Steve, make the screen size 5 by 8 inches and you’ll rule the world.”
Welcome, iPad
On Saturday (April 3) the iPad arrived. We believe it will rule the world.
I’ve touched it, held it, and caressed it. It feels gorgeous. It feels like touching the future.
It is not a big iPod. But it IS a very big deal.
The New World
We’re going from the Old World to a brave New World.
- From the Old World of the traditional, tired window interfaces… to the wonderful new world of TOUCH.
- From the Old World of Point and Click to the new SWOOSH of Fluidity.
- Instead of old, artificial, indirect interfaces, the iPad is direct and NATURAL.
- Instead of WYSIWyg – what you see is what you get – it is WYTIWis. What You Touch… IS what IS.
- Instead of holding a MOUSE, you’re holding MAGIC.
The iPad is the beginning of the New World, the post-PC era.
One More Thing… The Future
April’s iPad shipment is just the beginning. It is truly, just a beginning.
Twice in the last 15 years we’ve witnessed 100,000 flowers blooming. Flowers of applications for the Web, and then for the iPhone. Both were paradigm shifts in how we interact.
Here comes the third shift: interacting fluidly on full and fast screens with vast information stored locally. And that will start a third renaissance of software.
Beyond Browsers
It’s time to move beyond spreadsheets and word processors, beyond web sites limited by browsers… to interactive, connected applications with incredible simplicity, speed, and fluidity.
To a future that transforms games and entertainment, education and publishing, healthcare, communications and commerce.
And almost everything else.
The tablet, the iPad is where these new dreams will blossom. And where the revolution is happening.
Much More Performance
Bill Joy says the key to more performance is lower power. Over the next decade he sees 3 times better batteries, and 10 times lower power chips. So we should be able to run, for the same price, 30 times as much application.
And as for storage, there’s no reason that can’t be 30x also. Or, about a terabyte of local, faster, solid state storage. (A terabyte is several hundred movies)
Interpersonal Surfaces
What’s important is the new ways tablet computers will be used. They won’t just be reactive, responding to commands. They’ll also be proactive.
They will be much more than personal computers. They’ll be interpersonal surfaces and services. Working seamlessly, unobtrusively, and comfortably in the spaces between us, between you and me and others.
To iPADdicts and Entrepreneurs…
I like to define entrepreneurs this way: Entrepreneurs do MORE than anyone thinks possible. With LESS than anyone thinks possible.
At Kleiner we’re awed by entrepreneurs. They surprise us with the improbable – they don’t know what’s impossible.
So to Steve, Supreme Commander of the Rebel Forces, and to the entrepreneurs at Apple, congratulations!
To iPADdicts and entrepreneurs everywhere: there’s never been a better time than now to start or join a new venture, and launch a new application or service.
Whether you’re seeking $50K or a few million or a great job… contact us.
John Doerr, jdoerr@kpcb.com
Matt Murphy, mmurphy@kpcb.com
Chi-Hua Chien, cchien@kpcb.com
Bing Gordon, bgordon@kpcb.comAileen Lee, alee@kpcb.com
Ellen Pao, epao@kpcb.com
Ted Schlein, tschlein@kpcb.com+1 650 233-2750
Company: Apple Website: apple.com/ipad Launch Date: January 27, 2010 The Apple iPad, formerly referred to as the Apple Tablet, is a touch-pad tablet computer announced in January 2010, to be shipped on… Learn More
Website: kpcb.com Location: Menlo Park, California, United States Founded: 1972 Investments: Breathe Technologies, CardioDx, Booyah, EdeniQ, Amonix, Juvaris BioTherapeutics, TransMedics, DHgate, and more Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) is a well known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, due in large part to their past success. They were early investors in many significant companies, including… Learn More
Companies: Amazon, Google, Zazzle, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, Move John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Together with KPCB’s partners, John has backed many of America’s best entrepreneurial leaders,… Learn More
Companies: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Bing was Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts from 1998 to 2008.
He joined EA in 1982 and helped write the founding business plan that attracted Kleiner Perkins as an initial… Learn More
Companies: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Chi-Hua Chien joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2007. At KPCB he focuses on investments in the iFund (mobile applications),… Learn More
Companies: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Ellen Pao joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2005.
Prior to KPCB, Ellen held various operating roles at BEA, including head of business development for products, site manager for new mobile products, and lead for new engineering efforts in… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBase
Monday, May 24, 2010
“If you can’t INVENT the future, the next best thing… is to FUND it.” Wow. 'Nuff said.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Seems Social Media's really about the 5W's+1H / BBW: Social Media's New Mantra: Location, Location, Location
Social Media's New Mantra: Location, Location, Location
Fast-growing network Foursquare is luring potential buyers
By Diane Brady
Here's Dennis Crowley's ideal way to end the day: At 6 p.m., his iPhone alerts him to the evening's plans. It has already checked his friends' calendars and knows who's free tonight, so it suggests a restaurant they've all wanted to try. It notes when a table is available and informs him that three other friends are planning to hang out across the street so they can meet up later. And it all will happen—soon, he says—through Foursquare, the location-based mobile application and Web site Crowley co-founded with Naveen Selvadurai last year. "Every day, we tick off another couple of things that get us closer to being able to do that," says Crowley, 33.
Harnessing GPS-enabled mobile technology to let users broadcast their location is not a new idea. A service called Loopt has been offering friend-locating apps, and Google's (GOOG) Latitude feature on its maps can. Foursquare, a 20-person company that operates out of a crowded loft in New York's East Village, adds a game-like twist. Its 1 million-plus users earn badges by "checking in" at certain bars, restaurants, and other venues by pressing a button on the app upon arrival. A user can earn a "mayor" icon from a bar if he or she has checked in more than anyone else during the previous 60 days. The business model is simple: Generate as big a user base as possible and sell national brands and local merchants on the possibilities of marketing to people as they congregate—ready to eat, shop, or spend.
The service has certainly gotten buzz. On Apr. 16 (that's four times four—four squared), fans held "Foursquare" parties in more than 150 cities worldwide. The British soccer team Manchester City asked supporters to check-in en masse during the May 5 match at home against Tottenham Hotspur. More than 3,000 restaurants, bars, and other venues use Foursquare to attract customers with promotions.
Crowley says Foursquare is drawing interest from potential buyers in Silicon Valley, though he won't say who he's been talking to. Placing valuations on startups like Foursquare is famously difficult; their revenues are nascent, and the lasting impact of their technology is difficult to gauge. Tristan Walker, a Stanford MBA student moonlighting as Foursquare's head of business development, says the company brings in money from paid partnerships. PepsiCo (PEP), Zagat, and more than a dozen other brands have signed deals with Foursquare. Walker won't disclose terms or comment on whether Foursquare is profitable.
The key question is whether Foursquare's check-in twist is enough to build a sustainable business. Gowalla and Brightkite have built rival networks complete with their own check-in features, while established names like Twitter and Yelp also boast location-based tools.
At least some partners think Foursquare is unique among competitors. The cable television network Bravo (GE) launched its partnership with Foursquare in February. The more than 10,000 viewers who have been participating in Bravo's Foursquare promotion can "unlock" badges by checking in at locations linked to Bravo shows. (The venues range from restaurants favored by some of the celebrities on Top Chef to retailers popular with the women on Real Housewives.) Participants also get tips on what to do or buy at the locations and, in some cases, earn prizes for getting there first. "It's such a unique way to talk to our audience at a local level," says Ellen Stone, Bravo's senior vice-president for marketing.
Given the growing number of players now jumping into geo-location services, Crowley has heard the arguments that he should get out while he's ahead. "I view Foursquare as more of a feature that gets integrated into a larger service," says Michael Gartenberg, a partner with the research firm Altimeter Group in New York. "It's just a matter of time before the Facebooks and Twitters of the world start to offer check-in as a service." Gartenberg adds that he has stopped using Foursquare. "It was like a demanding girlfriend who wasn't giving me a whole lot in return," he says. "All I got to be was the mayor of the bagel shop."
Bonin Bough, PepsiCo's global director of digital and social media, says his company has been experimenting with Foursquare. Pepsi teamed up with the social network last December for a charity drive in New York. Every time someone checked in within the city limits, Pepsi donated 4 cents to a nonprofit called CampInteractive—to a maximum of $10,000. Bough says he was impressed with the user response on that campaign, and is intrigued with the way Foursquare's game aspect motivates people to go to events. Still, he's trying out other location-based services, including the company's own "Pepsi Loot" initiative that gives customers points for buying drinks in more than 200,000 restaurants. "It's a huge opportunity," he says. "But I don't think we'll know the winners for a while."
Crowley says he's too busy building his company to dwell on an exit strategy. "All this talk about valuations and exits is a distraction. We're doing interesting things. Users seem to love it." He's been down the startup road before: As a graduate student at New York University, Crowley developed a location-based text-messaging service called Dodgeball with Alex Rainert (now a Foursquare employee) that he sold to Google in 2005 for undisclosed terms. "We were there for two years, trying to make it bigger and get people excited about it," says Crowley. "We were like, 'Man, if they turn it off, we have to build another one.'"
The bottom line: Foursquare's location-based marketing is a "huge opportunity" that is sure to attract more competition.
Brady is senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek in New York.
The music biz is getting more personal. / Reuters: Concert promoters embrace new media for fan services
Concert promoters embrace new media for fan services
Antony BrunoFri May 7, 2010 10:48pm EDT
DENVER (Billboard) - Talk about good timing.
Technology | Music | Media
After graduating last year with a degree in computer science from Sacramento (California) State University, 24-year-old Alex Rude decided to try his hand at iPhone application development by creating a scheduling app for that summer's Vans Warped tour, which he was planning to attend for the fifth year.
The idea stemmed from Warped's practice of announcing each day's lineup the morning of the event, which can be a hassle for fans trying to keep track of which act is playing when and where. So Rude bought a Mac and taught himself how to code for the iPhone. A couple of weeks later, he finished the app and, to his surprise, Apple approved it.
"That actually shocked me, because I thought there would be some kind of copyright restriction," he says.
In fact, there was. Warped new-media manager Paul Kersh discovered Rude's app a week after it went live and had to make a quick decision.
"We could either sue him for using the Warped trademark or we could hire him," Kersh says. "Of course we ended up hiring him."
Since then, Rude's app has gone from an unofficial fan scheduler with only a few thousand downloads to the official Warped tour mobile app that's been downloaded more than 30,000 times and typically ranks among the top 100 music apps in the iTunes store. Rude is now creating similar apps for the Mayhem Festival and Country Throwdown tours.
'THE PLACE WHERE IT'S ALL AT'
The story illustrates how important mobile apps are to organizers of summer music festivals. In addition to Warped, such events as Bonnaroo, Coachella and Lollapalooza are using mobile apps to enhance the concert experience for attendees as part of a broader new-media push that also includes social media and Internet initiatives.
"It's a continuation of what we're seeing with mobile technology becoming the place where it's all at," Kersh says. "It's really changed how we interact with fans at the show itself."
The Warped app, for example, goes far beyond the scheduler that started it all. It also features such items as information about each band (complete with links to buy their music at iTunes), news, tour date info and integrated Twitter feeds. Future updates will include automatic notification messages telling fans when the bands they've entered into their scheduler are about to play and a promotional code to download 10 free songs from iTunes.
The Coachella app featured an interactive map, a friend finder, photo uploading tools and the ability to mark on a map the location of a car or campsite. And Bonnaroo organizers say they're in the final stages of selecting a developer to create a "much more robust and functional" app than what it offered last year, including maps and integration with Twitter and Facebook.
But there are downsides, as organizers at Coachella discovered this year. Spotty coverage and mobile network congestion rendered many of the app's features useless. Also, only a fraction of attendees have smart phones, which is why many are also creating simpler mobile Web versions.
BUILDING A LIFESTYLE BRAND
This push into mobile is indicative of a broader effort to bring more new-media capabilities to live music fans, essentially blending a real-life experience with a virtual one. While mobile apps are designed primarily for onsite use, other digital efforts are intended to drive ticket sales and establish a year-round connection with a festival brand to keep fans engaged and to profit from additional sponsorship opportunities.
"One of the things we've realized about our events is that there's a community built around them that is much larger than the people attending," says Rick Farman, co-founder of Superfly Productions, which organizes the Bonnaroo and Outside Lands festivals, among others. "Yes, it does push people to attend. But where we think it can go is to build a much bigger lifestyle brand that is monetizable in some way."
Both Warped and Bonnaroo have amassed more than 100,000 friends on their respective Facebook pages, and both are establishing their own dedicated social networks as well.
The Warped website, created four years ago, has more than 350,000 registered members who can post photos and comments and connect with friends. Kersh credits the site for driving preorder sales up 20 percent above last year's previous record-setting number of preorders.
Superfly, meanwhile, created the Bonnaroo 365 site, which features streaming video of a handful of performances from the 2009 festival as its first experiment in establishing the event as a year-round brand. Farman declined to provide specifics but said the reaction to the site was good enough that he's stopped adding content to it in order to formulate a more lasting business model based on advertising and, possibly, subscriptions.
Looking ahead, festival organizers are contemplating how to incorporate such buzzworthy technologies as location-based services (such as Foursquare) and perhaps even mobile ticketing and payment systems.
"If you're in the business of promoting music or events," Farman says, "and you don't have a presence on those platforms or understand how they're different from one another, you're not doing your job."
(please visit our entertainment blog via www.reuters.com or on blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)
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Tuesday, May 04, 2010
A coupon coup! Mobile Marketer: KFC campaign sees 13 percent in-store mobile coupon redemption
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KFC campaign sees 13 percent in-store mobile coupon redemption
May 4, 2010
KFC added 6,000 subscribers to its mobile loyalty program and saw a 13 percent redemption rate for coupons sent to the list over a one-month period.
The database and coupons were part of the fast-food giant’s “Relief Plan” campaign, which was comprised of four distinct weekly offers. KFC saw a significant bump in participation when traditional media outlets were engaged to get the message out – including an email blast to a group of existing subscribers.
“J&A was looking for a way to make KFC’s message more integrated with consumers and increase traffic via exceptional coupon offers,” said Jarrett Klein, national sales manager at Cellit Marketing, Phoenix. “The mobile platform accomplished just that, and brought more dimension to KFC’s overall media mix.”
J&A Integrated Thinking is a full-service agency that has worked with KFC for more than 40 years, providing local marketing services and media planning and buying for 50 markets and approximately 1,500 retail units.
During the campaign, the average store redemption was 13 percent. A whopping 14,000 coupons were sent during the one-month promotion.
A follow-up survey identified which offers consumers preferred over others, enabling J&A and KFC to better hone content going forward. Forty-five percent of the database participated in the survey.
Here are some screen grabs of traditional media promotiong the mobile program:
Method for success
Upon J&A's creation of the Relief Plan, KFC used Cellit’s technology to collect information from participants that would allow segmentation and targeting of users in future mobile campaigns.Each week, the KFC team at J&A sent out a different mobile offer to the database, rotating through a buy-one-get-one free offer, a percentage-off discount offer and an offer of a completely free lower-value item such as a small drink.
The mobile club was promoted in-store, online and in other traditional media.
KFC stores could track the popularity of the individual offers, as well as specific traffic patterns by store throughout the promotion.
To understand consumer preferences, Cellit designed a post-promotion mobile survey that was sent to all mobile members who participated in the KFC Relief Plan program.
Why mobile?
J&A sought an opportunity to introduce mobile to its KFC clients and test the effectiveness of the medium on KFC’s target audience.Due to a highly competitive fast-food landscape where the customer is faced with nearly unlimited choices, it was critical that KFC present compelling and competitive offers that break through the quick-service-restaurant clutter and motivate the consumer to action.
Mobile is really changing the fast-food business, according to Neil Strother, practice director at ABI Reseach, Oyster Bay, NY.
"Fast-food restaurants have been leveraging mobile in several ways: for discovery of nearby locations, coupons and for enabling mobile ordering and purchase," Mr. Strother said.
"Mobile is a good fit for these chains, especially the forward-thinking ones that seek to gain an advantage in a highly-competitive market by providing new tools for on-the-go customers," he said.
Senior Editor Giselle Tsirulnik covers advertising, messaging, legal/privacy and database/CRM. Reach her at giselle@mobilemarketer.com.
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Thursday, April 29, 2010
Media: from aggregation to distribution? That Coke Can You're Holding Could Be Your New Media Channel
That Coke Can You're Holding Could Be Your New Media ChannelStickyBits App Lets Users 'Check In' to Objects Via Barcodes
by Kunur Patel
Published: April 28, 2010
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A new check-in app for objects is turning soda cans into media channels.
--> StickyBits, which launched during South by Southwest Interactive in March, is an app that lets users affix video, photos, text or audio to real-world objects, as long as those objects have barcodes. This is an example of what some call physical URLs, and while StickyBits is in its early days, consumers are already turning their iPhone and Android apps to consumer package goods, meaning user-generated clouds are starting to form around real cans of Coke and Red Bull.A StickyBits sticker affixed to a laptop.
How does it work? After downloading the free StickyBits app, users scan a barcode -- either unique codes on stickers purchased from StickyBits or printed out, or those on products already in the world -- and then upload a piece of content or view what others have already uploaded. That uploaded video or message is geo-tagged and attributed back to the user's social-media profile and becomes part of that object's content stream.
StickyBits co-founder Seth Goldstein created the concept with developer Billy Chasen and equates the phenomenon of "threaded conversations around objects" to checking into places, a behavior apps such as Foursquare or Loopt have pioneered for real-world locations.
--> "When you scan a product, you're tuning into it," Mr. Goldstein said. For package-goods companies, that could mean creating content for products that can only be unlocked by scanning barcodes with smartphones. "Imagine you're a beverage company, and you have content that people can only see when people check into your can," he added. That also means amassing communities around purchased goods.The StickyBits app allows users to scan barcodes and attach messages, which become part of that object's content stream.
Brands such as Ben & Jerry's, Campbell Soup and Doritos already have content forming around their products. After scanning the barcode of a Coke can from a New York deli, Ad Age viewed 16 bits of content, including amateur product photos, a video of a pizza box and one user asking: "What happens when people start attaching porn to brands?"
In June, StickyBits plans to introduce tools for brands, including means to manage the conversations popping up on its products and an analytics dashboard. Brands will be able to track where and when people scan its products, publish official content, or talk to users that have checked in previously. While StickyBits is already in talks with consumer-package-goods marketers, there are no big brand programs to date, Mr. Goldstein said.
While the App Store is already crowded with location check-in apps, real-object scans up until now happen primarily in stores to compare prices or get further product information. But StickyBits is not the first product check-in app not tied to information gathering. In March, developer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers-backed ShopKick launched a product check-in program for its app CauseWorld. With CauseWorld, users earn money for charity by scanning products of marketing partners P&G and Kraft in retail locations.
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Will the producer-consumer turn retailer-consumer? Cellphone Payments Offer Alternative to Cash
Several of the companies have developed small credit card scanners that plug into a cellphone and for small fee enable any individual or small business to turn a phone into a credit card processing terminal. PayPal’s cellphone app calls for only a simple bump of two cellphones to transfer money. Apple has submitted a patent application for a cellphone payment system.
Brian Kusler, 40, a software engineer, is already helping dollar bills join Susan B. Anthony coins as collector’s items. After he polished off grilled lamb and zinfandel at a San Francisco restaurant recently, his dining companion paid the bill and asked him for his share. Instead of hunting down an A.T.M., the two bumped their iPhones together, and Mr. Kusler wirelessly transferred his part of the bill, about $100.
“I don’t carry a lot of cash — I don’t think anyone does these days,” Mr. Kusler said. “We go out, and I oftentimes have to remember to pay my friends back when we get home, and I want to be able to just do it right there.”
There is evidence that paper money is being used less often, according to the Federal Reserve. Though cash payments are difficult to track, the number of noncash transactions in the United States grew from fewer than 250 a person in 1995 to more than 300 in 2006. Data on the stock of small-denomination bills and destroyed bills indicates that the use of cash peaked in the mid-1990s and has been declining since, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found.
“When debit cards were introduced in the early ’90s, that was the beginning of the slow and gradual decline of paper checks and cash,” said Red Gillen, a senior analyst at Celent, a research and consulting firm on technology and financial services, based in Boston.
Still, cash has remained essential in certain instances, like paying back a colleague for lunch, buying fruit at a farmers’ market or buying a beer at a cash-only bar. These new mobile payment technologies could finally change that.
“The problem with cash is that it is tangible, it’s inconvenient, you have to carry around a bunch of bills and you have to continually go to the A.T.M.,” said Jack Dorsey, a Twitter co-founder who is now the co-founder and chief executive of Square, which makes a dime-size device that anyone can plug into the earplug jack of an iPhone or iPad to instantly accept credit card payments. “If we can make cards more convenient and faster, it can replace a lot of the experiences around cash.”
Light wallets are not a problem for Joe Mangrum, a sidewalk sand painter in New York, who has been using Square to take donations from passers-by and sell copies of his book. Sales have increased sharply since he started accepting credit cards on his iPhone, he said. “I’ve made the sale as opposed to twiddling my thumbs because they don’t have the cash.”
The new services could have the biggest impact on the smallest businesses, like farm stands or house cleaners, that accept only cash and checks because they do not have stores to house credit card terminals and do not want to enter into complicated, long-term relationships with credit card companies.
Rachel Ancliffe, a clothing designer in Portland, Ore., sells her dresses and blouses at sample sales and from her home, and uses Intuit GoPayment to process credit card payments.
“You can’t accept checks because then you’re just kissing your product goodbye” because of fraud and bounced checks, Ms. Ancliffe said. “I sell 10 times more because I take credit cards.”
Fraud protection offered by the credit card companies is the same as when the card is used at a cash register. Some of the new companies say security against fraud might even be improved because they provide e-mail receipts, and those from Square include photos and a map of where the transactions were made.
The death of cash has been predicted since the 1970s, when electronic transactions like direct deposit of checks were introduced. But most digital payment experiments, like one in 2006 by Visa, have focused on swiping cellphones, as is popular in countries like Japan, instead of credit cards. Mobile payments have not taken off in the United States because Americans are just as happy to reach into their pockets for a plastic card as for a cellphone.
Instead of replacing credit cards, new technologies like Square and GoPayment rely on them. The credit card companies stay squarely in the middle, extracting a fee with each swipe or bump.
GoPayment costs $12.95 a month on top of a per-transaction fee of 30 cents plus 1.7 percent to 3.7 percent of the payment, depending on the credit card companies’ rates. Square is free and users pay 15 cents plus 2.75 percent to 3.5 percent of each transaction. It will be available for iPhones and iPod Touches in May and for other phones and laptops later.
Exchanging money with friends using PayPal’s iPhone app is free if payers use a bank or PayPal account, and costs 30 cents plus 2.9 percent of the transaction for credit cards.
Though people will use cash less and less, it is not on the verge of extinction just yet, said Wayne Abernathy, executive vice president for financial institutions policy at the American Bankers Association. “Historically, we have seen more failed innovations in payments than we’ve seen successful ones, because you have to convince people that it’s secure, more efficient and reliable,” Mr. Abernathy said.
But a cashless society could become more of a reality as the younger generation, accustomed to buying music on iTunes and virtual gifts on Facebook, grows up.
“Older people still tend to like to use cash or checks,” Mr. Abernathy said. “Younger people don’t want to touch a piece of paper. They want to do it all electronically.”
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
This guy's an American Idol - and a poster child for You, Inc. From FT: A mogul on the air everywhere
It is a rare moment when Ryan Seacrest is not in front of a television camera or radio microphone. One of the busiest presenters in broadcasting, the 35-year-old with the blinding white teeth has become an indelible presence on America's airwaves. His jobs include hosting a daily radio show that attracts more than 20m listeners, presenting the American Top 40 chart countdown, hosting a daily entertainment news show for the E! cable channel and, for more than three years, presenting American Idol , the biggest ratings winner of the past decade.
Yet today there are no cameras or microphones to be seen. The patio doors in his office are flung open to the afternoon sun and an impressive view of the Los Angeles skyline. He jumps up to shake hands, his BlackBerry is placed out of reach on a coffee table and he begins outlining his grand plan for media moguldom. "You have to master compartmentalisation," he says.
Mr Seacrest's relentless presenting activities mean he is already a household name in the US. But it is his work as a producer and the commercial deals he has negotiated for his company, Ryan Seacrest Productions, which suggest his talents extend beyond being good on TV. His latest series, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution , is the English chef's first programme in the US and comes to an end this Friday. Loosely based on Mr Oliver's UK programmes which took aim, among other things, at school dinners, the US show aims to shake up American attitudes to food and health: one recent scene showed a classroom of young children failing to identify common vegetables, like tomatoes. "It was just staggering," says Mr Seacrest.
The programme scored the best Friday night ratings in three years for Walt Disney's ABC network when it launched last month.
The Jamie Oliver show has little in common with other programmes RSP has produced, such as the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians , which turned three sisters from the Los Angeles suburbs into pin-up stars. But Mr Seacrest says the idea is to tackle a range of genres. "I want to produce content that's socially conscious as well as pop candy entertainment," he explains. "We don't target one type of show . . . we try to come up with things that are popular."
He is not alone in making the move from in front to behind the camera. Other stars, from model and chatshow host Tyra Banks to his American Idol colleague Simon Cowell, have produced shows in which they do not appear. But Mr Seacrest has carved a lucrative niche thanks to a willingness to embed marketing campaigns with his programming and presenting.
"I try to forge more creative relationships with advertisers," he says, reeling off a list of partners that includes Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, which struck a deal with Mr Seacrest through its Crest toothpaste brand - fitting, given his shiny white gnashers. He says advertisers need ways to cut through "all the noise" in the overcrowded media marketplace. "Big companies and advertisers are looking for ways to get their messages through to their audiences and to make those messages stick," he adds.
His relationship with Microsoft's Bing search engine is one example. When Bing launched last year, he featured it heavily on his radio show and regularly points out new features to his listeners, such as the Bing BlackBerry application. He also promotes the search engine on his Twitter feed, where he has more than 3m followers.
Eric Hadley, who runs marketing for the search engine in the US, says Microsoft was looking for new ways to connect with consumers. "We wanted to make Bing culturally relevant and part of the dialogue . . . Ryan has broad appeal. He has social currency and social influence," he says.
One reason is that he is on air so much. The presenter cites Merv Griffin and Dick Clark as his inspirations: both men presented numerous programmes but also owned intellectual property - Griffin created the Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune game shows, for example. "I don't get up every morning and say, 'How can I get on TV today?' " says Mr Seacrest. "I'm building something here that runs without me having to stand in front of or beside a camera."
And yet he says his role as a presenter means he can strike commercial deals that are more effective - mainly because he takes on so many roles on and off camera. "If I'm producing a series with an integrated [marketing] message in it I'm the one meeting advertisers," he says. "I talk to the big guys [at these companies] on a regular basis about what's working. And I'm on the front lines hosting the show or producing the show."
Mr Seacrest started RSP in 2006 with help from Comcast, which rents him space for his offices and has a "first look" production deal for his shows, meaning the right to broadcast them before anyone else. He owns the company, which employs 30 people, outright.
He generated headlines two years ago when he struck a three-year deal worth an estimated $35m with Clear Channel for his radio shows. The agreement broke new ground because it gave Mr Seacrest control of some of the airtime on the shows, allowing him to sell his own advertising and embed his marketing partners into the programming.
They certainly help drive his earnings: in addition to the Clear Channel deal, his three-year contract for American Idol is worth $45m and he has a $35m agreement with Comcast, owner of the E! channel. He declines to give earnings figures for RSP, but given the value of his personal deals are his employers concerned that he has too much on his mind? "I'd be lying if I said it made me happy," says Ted Harbert, chief executive of Comcast's entertainment group. "But I feel fortunate that we got him . . . I know how hard he works for us. I never feel that when he's in our building that he's thinking about American Idol . He can get a lot done - more than just about anyone I've ever seen."
Mr Oliver, who has become a friend since the two started working together, adds Mr Seacrest has "laser focus . . . he loves what he does, whether it's presenting his radio show, hosting Idol or having a production meeting at RSP".
Mr Seacrest admits he would like to own his own distribution platform and says he has considered potential purchases. "I would be interested at some point in owning a cable channel or a similar kind of pipe [for our content]," he says. But until then he is content to work multiple jobs, knowing that the more ubiquitous he becomes the more opportunities he can offer advertisers. "The mission is to create pop culture content," he says. "Where it's distributed I will leave to someone else to figure out."
A Ryan Seacrest day
4:30am: Wake up. 5:00am-10:00am: KIIS FM morning show. 10:15am: E! News show meeting. 10:30am: E! News voice-overs. 10:45am: Get camera ready. 11:15am: E! News recording. 12:30pm: Lunch. 1:00pm: Ryan Seacrest Productions staff meeting. 3:00pm: Meetings with RSP colleagues. 4:00pm: American Idol production meeting. 6:00pm: Gym. 7:00pm: Return phone calls and eat dinner. 8:00pm: Sleep.
Monday, April 19, 2010
The game is changing. From GigaOm: The State of the Internet: Now Bigger, Faster & Mobile
The Internet as we know it is not only getting bigger and faster, but it is also becoming more mobile with more and more people accessing Internet-based services from their smartphones. These are some of the key findings of Akamai’s The State of the Internet report for the fourth quarter of 2009. The report uses data collected from Akamai’s global content delivery network to draw conclusions that are good representation of the Internet.
A Bigger Internet
Upon looking through the report, I saw that during the last three months of 2009, nearly 4.7 percent more unique IP addresses were connecting to Akamai’s network. At the end of 2009, there were about 465 million IP addresses from 234 countries vs 401 million at the end of 2008 and 312 million at the end of 2007. US and China account for nearly 40 percent of the total 465 million unique IP addresses. What that tells us is that more people around the world are using the Internet.
Planet Mobile
The rapid growth in the number of unique IP addresses is going to decline mostly because of the law of large numbers. In addition, many service providers, including mobile carriers, are using network address translation (NAT) and proxy/gateway technology to cope with the exhaustion of the IPv4 address space. I will bet that as we start to see more and more “connected” devices, there will be a burst in the number of unique IP addresses. Ericsson recently forecasted 50 billion connected devices by 2020.
Akamai studied 109 mobile providers and found that over 40 had average measured connection speeds of over 1 Mbps in the fourth quarter, while 11 had broadband-level connectivity, which Akamai defines at speeds of 2 Mbps or greater. Austria currently is home to the fastest mobile broadband provider — 3.2 Mbps — while the Russian Federation is fractionally lower, followed by Italy and Poland.
Interestingly, in the US it seems Clearwire (Sprint) is doing a great job of holding the mantle of wireless broadband leader. According to Akamai, “data for a leading WIMAX network provider in the United States – at an average measured connection speed of approximately 1.8 Mbps, they place within the top 20 mobile providers globally. This provider showed a quarterly speed gain of 11.5%, and a yearly gain of 5%.”
More on Mobile Apps
Faster Faster Broadband
Ironically, the growing popularity of mobile phones is bringing down global average connection speeds, despite substantial network and speed upgrades in many countries. A good case in point is South Korea, where a launch of Apple’s iPhone in November 2009 was so successful that it brought down the average connectivity speed by 24 percent. Now remember, this is South Korea — home to some of the fastest broadband connections anywhere in the planet.
“As the average observed connection speed for this mobile provider was a fraction of that observed from wireline connections in South Korea, we believe that this launch was likely responsible for the significant drop in South Korea’s average observed connection speed in the fourth quarter,” the Akamai report notes.
That said, the Internet got a lot faster. Even though the total broadband connections to Akamai’s network grew only 1.6 percent, now nearly one-fifth of the connections to the network had speeds of 5 Mbps or more, up 6 percent from the Q3 3009. In the US, nearly 25 percent of connections now are 5 Mbps. For further details, check out the chart, which breaks down the top markets and speed shares.
I think it is most interesting to see the share in the ultra-broadband: 25 Mbps or more. The rollout of FTTx/DOCSIS 3.0 technology-based networks is only going to increase, and that will have a long term implication on all types of web services and service providers. Tiny countries like Switzerland, Monaco, Slovakia and Croatia are seeing massive broadband adoption.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Continuing Coverage of Coupons. From The NYT: Web Coupons Tell Stores More Than You Realize
A new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, is packed with information about the customer who uses it. While the coupons look standard, their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place.
And all that information follows that customer into the mall. For example, if a man walks into a Filene’s Basement to buy a suit for his wedding and shows a coupon he retrieved online, the company’s marketing agency can figure out whether he used the search terms “Hugo Boss suit” or “discount wedding clothes” to research his purchase (just don’t tell his fiancée).
Coupons from the Internet are the fastest-growing part of the coupon world — their redemption increased 263 percent to about 50 million coupons in 2009, according to the coupon-processing company Inmar. Using coupons to link Internet behavior with in-store shopping lets retailers figure out which ad slogans or online product promotions work best, how long someone waits between searching and shopping, even what offers a shopper will respond to or ignore.
The coupons can, in some cases, be tracked not just to an anonymous shopper but to an identifiable person: a retailer could know that Amy Smith printed a 15 percent-off coupon after searching for appliance discounts at Ebates.com on Friday at 1:30 p.m. and redeemed it later that afternoon at the store.
“You can really key into who they are,” said Don Batsford Jr., who works on online advertising for the tax preparation company Jackson Hewitt, whose coupons include search information. “It’s almost like being able to read their mind, because they’re confessing to the search engine what they’re looking for.”
While companies once had a slim dossier on each consumer, they now have databases packed with information. And every time a person goes shopping, visits a Web site or buys something, the database gets another entry.
“There is a feeling that anonymity in this space is kind of dead,” said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology’s information privacy programs.
None of the tracking is visible to consumers. The coupons, for companies as diverse as Ruby Tuesday and Lord & Taylor, are handled by a company called RevTrax, which displays them on the retailers’ sites or on coupon Web sites, not its own site.
Even if consumers could figure out that RevTrax was creating the coupons, it does not have a privacy policy on its site — RevTrax says that is because it handles data for the retailers and does not directly interact with consumers. RevTrax can also include retailers’ own client identification numbers (Amy Smith might be client No. 2458230), then the retailer can connect that with the actual person if it wants to, for example, to send a follow-up offer or a thank-you note.
Using coupons also lets the retailers get around Google hurdles. Google allows its search advertisers to see reports on which keywords are working well as a whole but not on how each person is responding to each slogan.
“We’ve built privacy protections into all Google services and report Web site trends only in aggregate, without identifying individual users,” Sandra Heikkinen, a spokeswoman for Google, said in an e-mail message.
The retailers, however, can get to an individual level by sending different keyword searches to different Web addresses. The distinct Web addresses are invisible to the consumer, who usually sees just a Web page with a simple address at the top of it.
So clicking on an ad for Jackson Hewitt after searching for “new 2010 deductions” would send someone to a different behind-the-scenes URL than after searching for “Jackson Hewitt 2010,” though the Web pages and addresses might look identical. This data could be coded onto a coupon.
RevTrax works as closely with image-rich display ads, with coupons also signaling what ad a person saw and on what site.
“Wherever we provide a link, whether it’s on search or banner, that thing you click can include actual keywords,” said Rob O’Neil, director of online marketing at Tag New Media, which works with Filene’s. “There’s some trickery.”
The companies argue that the coupon strategy gives them direct feedback on how well their marketing is working.
Once the shopper prints an online coupon or sends it to his cellphone and then goes to a store, the clerk scans it. The bar code information is sent to RevTrax, which, with the ad agency, analyzes it.
“We break people up into teeny little cross sections of who we think they are, and we test that out against how they respond,” said Mr. Batsford, who is a partner at 31 Media, an online marketing company.
RevTrax can identify online shoppers when they are signed in to a coupon site like Ebates or FatWallet or the retailer’s own site. It says it avoids connecting that number with real people to steer clear of privacy issues, but clients can make that match.
The retailer can also make that connection when it is offering coupons to its Facebook fans, like Filene’s Basement is doing.
“When someone joins a fan club, the user’s Facebook ID becomes visible to the merchandiser,” Jonathan Treiber, RevTrax’s co-founder, said. “We take that and embed it in a bar code or promotion code.”
“When the consumer redeems the offer in store, we can track it back, in this case, not to the Google search term but to the actual Facebook user ID that was signing up,” he said. Although Facebook does not signal that Amy Smith responded to a given ad, Filene’s could look up the user ID connected to the coupon and “do some more manual-type research — you could easily see your sex, your location and what you’re interested in,” Mr. Treiber said. (Mr. O’Neil said Filene’s did not do this at the moment.)
The coupon efforts are nascent, but coupon companies say that when they get more data about how people are responding, they can make different offers to different consumers.
“Over time,” Mr. Treiber said, “we’ll be able to do much better profiling around certain I.P. addresses, to say, hey, this I.P. address is showing a proclivity for printing clothing apparel coupons and is really only responding to coupons greater than 20 percent off.”
That alarms some privacy advocates.
Companies can “offer you, perhaps, less desirable products than they offer me, or offer you the same product as they offer me but at a higher price,” said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the United States Public Interest Research Group, which has asked the Federal Trade Commission for tighter rules on online advertising. “There really have been no rules set up for this ecosystem.”
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Great piece on #32's Second Act. Magic Johnson Proves He Has the Acumen for More than Hoops
Knowledge@Wharton Leadership and Change Research Article
View Article on Knowledge@Wharton Mobile
'We Don't Eat Scones': Magic Johnson Proves He Has the Acumen for More than Hoops
Published: April 14, 2010 in Knowledge@Wharton
Earvin "Magic" Johnson's basketball career included five national championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and a gold medal with the "Dream Team" at the 1992 Olympics. But domination on the court meant little when Johnson began approaching investors to launch his first business venture. "Everybody wanted the autograph, but nobody wanted to invest with me. At the beginning, I got turned down 10 times before someone said 'yes'. You know what they said? They said I was a dumb jock," Johnson noted during a recent presentation at Wharton.
Magic the businessman wasn't the proposal's only tough sell. Investors also doubted that there was any money to be made building high-quality movie theaters and restaurants in inner city neighborhoods. Over the past 20 years, however, Johnson has proven he has the acumen for more than hoops. Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Magic Johnson Enterprises now owns or operates gyms, Starbucks coffee shops, Burger Kings, movie theaters and other businesses in 85 cities across 21 states. His Canyon-Johnson Investment Fund has been behind nearly $4 billion in urban revitalization projects that resulted in the creation of 4.5 million square feet of retail and commercial space.
Johnson credits his success to having a concrete business plan that he felt passionately about -- and an ability to help partners see the potential in urban, predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods. "You've got to knock on the doors of corporations who have the same mindset as yours, who have the same heart as yours," Johnson noted. "If I'm in New York, I can take [investors] to Harlem, I can take them to the Bronx, I can take them to Los Angeles, and I can take them to the South Side of Chicago. You're going to have to find a way to touch their heart and spirit."
Pound Cake and Sweet Potato Pie
When Johnson was trying to broker a partnership with Starbucks in the 1990s, he told CEO Howard Schultz that "the growth of his business would be in urban America. He already had [coffee shops] on every street and across the street from each other." But a boardroom pitch wasn't enough to close the deal. Johnson invited Schultz to spend a Friday night at one of the 6-foot-9 former point guard's movie theaters. The visit coincided with the opening night of the Whitney Houston vehicle Waiting to Exhale, and the theater's lobby and screening rooms were packed. "Our biggest screen had 500 women inside. All of a sudden every woman thought she knew Whitney Houston personally and started talking to the screen," Johnson recalled. "So Howard grabs me about 20 minutes in and says, 'Earvin, I never had a movie-going experience quite like this.' Guess what happened? That got me the deal."
Frappuccinos, lattes and Pike Place Roast are on the menu at a Magic Johnson-owned Starbucks, but there are subtle differences between the former basketball star's coffee shops and the chain's other locations. Instead of jazz standards and easy listening, R&B music plays on the stereo. There is extra space for meetings of community and church groups, and bulletin boards where local residents can post neighborhood news and events. "People said there's no way Latinos and African-Americans will pay $3 for a cup of coffee. Yes, we will pay $3, but we don't eat scones," Johnson stated. "I had to take scones out of my Starbucks and put in pound cake, Sock It to Me cake and sweet potato pie -- things that resonate with the urban consumer. You have to know your customer and you have to speak to that customer every day."
The strategy to focus on inner city communities was developed by Johnson when he was still playing basketball. Riding high after winning back-to-back championships as a stand-out college, and then NBA, player in 1979 and 1980, Johnson recalled returning home to neighborhoods of crumbling storefronts, where residents had to travel long distances to shop or eat at chains that were plentiful in the suburbs. "Most of the people who own the businesses in urban America don't live in urban America, so they take the money to their communities and spend disposable income in their communities. We have trouble in our communities because we do not own the businesses," Johnson noted. "Now that we put Starbucks there, those same people that live in the community, they spend money there and Mom and Pop stores have more traffic. Now they don't have to close their doors because people have money to spend at those stores."
In addition to the Starbucks partnership launched in 1998, Magic Johnson Enterprises has also entered into agreements to develop T.G.I Friday's restaurants and 24 Hour Fitness locations in targeted markets. The company in 2008 entered into an alliance with Best Buy to help the electronics chain expand into urban areas and strengthen its appeal with multicultural customers. A deal with food service giant Sodexo includes contracts to feed employees of Toyota, John Deere and Disneyland, meaning "Mickey Mouse and all of them eat my food," Johnson said with a chuckle.
Johnson's investments are run through a partnership with Bobby Turner, managing partner of Los Angeles-based asset management company Canyon Capital. Over two years beginning in 1998, the Canyon-Johnson Investment fund raised an initial $300 million. But Johnson noted that he achieved a 30% return on the initial fund and that it took a shorter period to raise $600 million for a subsequent endeavor. "The returns are everything, and when we returned them 30% on money spent on urban America, when they did not want to invest it initially, it raised a lot of eyebrows," Johnson stated. "We just closed about a year ago on a billion in cash. It [required] a year because the economy is so bad.... There's a lot of deal flow out there, but a lot of bad deals."
Earning His Nickname
Johnson retired from the NBA in 1991 after announcing that he had HIV. His company's interests also include a partnership with Abbott Labs to hold educational events and offer free testing in cities with high HIV infection rates. The business's nonprofit arm, the Magic Johnson Foundation, organizes job fairs, operates community "empowerment" centers and offers college scholarships to minority high school students. "There have already been people who have made millions, so you're not doing anything that anyone else hasn't done before," stated Johnson, whose net worth was estimated at nearly $500 million in a 2008 Los Angeles Times story. "But can you save and touch somebody's life? Can you help a community get back on its feet? That hasn't been done before. You can set yourself apart from everybody else if you can do something like that. That's why I love what I do."
As one of 10 children who "grew up poor" in Lansing, Mich., Johnson often arrived home from late basketball practices to find that his siblings had eaten all the food his mother had prepared for dinner. A high school standout, the athlete was given his nickname by a local newspaper columnist and went on to lead Michigan State to victory in the 1979 NCAA championship. As point guard for the Lakers, Johnson earned three Most Valuable Player awards, made nine appearances in the NBA finals, played in 12 All-Star games and still holds the league record for highest average assists per game. Johnson is the only basketball player to win championships at the high school, college, professional and Olympic levels. Those successes come with a responsibility to give back, Johnson said.
"Going down the street growing up, I knew if I turned left that trouble was there. Every time I would come to that street, everybody would say, 'You've got to go that way, young man. You've got to go right.' So I kept going right," Johnson noted. "Just think of all the ballplayers and entertainers of color -- somebody told them to go right, too. So why don't you come back?... You've got to go back and you've got to help out. If you can touch and bring 10 people with you, then they bring 10 and then they bring 10 and now the community changes."
Additional Reading
Very interesting. Would like to know how much involvement those inner city neighborhoods have in these high-quality movie theaters and restaurants. Are they just consumers and minimum wage labor? Is it the rich coming to plunder easy pickings and "Giving Back" by donating a small fraction of their profits to make up for the economic rape? Or do they have any equity and/or managerial power? How much of the dollars made by those ventures remain in their local economy?Comments by IntenseDebate
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