Employees
Suck

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will start shortly.
(I promise it won’t suck)

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I can be reached at:
john@magnatune.com

This speech is entitled:

Employees
Suck

managing is no fun

Coordinating
talented & motivated
people.

Now that’s fun.

firing is no fun

permanent
employees are mostly
unneeded

changing circumstances
demand
new skills

instead of retraining
employees,
get new contractors
for your current
projects.

but note:
virtual cooperation is
very difficult

Hollywood does fine
without employees

Bosses suck
even more

Nobody can work
8h straight

Talented people are
10x more productive

but paid, at most,
3x as much

and normally they’re
paid only 20% more

you’re usually paid less
than your boss.

why!!?!?!

employee
=
mostly dumb-work

employee
=
very few satisfying tasks

why be clever?

why do your
best work?

paid by the hour

rather than paid for
your contribution

solution:
quit & make
intellectual “goods”

solution:
and sell them for their
true value.

“good enough”
is rewarded
when you’re an
employee

“great work”
is rewarded
when you’re
selling the product itself

Do you enjoy your life?

Do you enjoy your work?

Do you want kids?

Do you like learning?

Do you want to get paid
for what your work is
actually worth?

Steps to self-employment

Think of lots of ideas.
Write them down.

Do nothing.

For a while.

3 months later,
are they still good ideas?

Explain your best idea to a
friend in a noisy place,
while they’re drinking.

Do they have an instant
positive reaction?

Next, think about your
product.

Make an elevator pitch

Write the first line of your
press release

Write the first paragraph
of your home page

Make the
home page

Hunt for unique names

Figure out how to do the
idea really, really cheaply.

So cheaply that you don’t
need anybody else’s money.

Show a mockup, then a
demo, to people who might
buy it.

Launch before you’re ready.

Pitch bloggers.

If nobody cares, maybe
your idea
sucked.

Start again.

If your idea was good, all
other problems are
solvable.

Don’t quit your day job.

If your idea starts to take
off, slowly lower your day
job commitment

don’t quit until your idea is
paying more than your day
job.

when you run your
own company, you will
discover:

Salespeople
are a bad idea

Fallacy:
“our product is great,
it’s just not selling
because we don’t have
any salespeople”

Good products build
word of mouth, and sell
themselves.

Fallacy:
“our product is great,
we just need PR and
marketing to get the
word out”

If the product were
great, your early users
would blog that fact,
and you’d be on your
way already.

The secret to getting
massive press:

(1)
Be really interesting

(II)
Convince two
influential bloggers that
you’re interesting.

P.R. secret
for
traditional print media

Focus on the
freelancers, not staff
writers.

Be a cause a freelance
writer would
personally like.

Staff writers get
assignments from their
editors.

Freelancers have to
pitch stories to an
editor to get paid.

A press blitz example.

Magnatune:
Creative Commons & Boing Boing ->
The Inquirer ->
Fark ->
Slashdot ->
USA today / NPR ->
New York Times ->
BBC / Le Monde /
Die Zeit / Nikkei Times

Magnatune story angles:
Fair use & Creative Commons
Label embraces Sharing
Biz model in Peer to Peer reality
Piracy used as a promotion tool
Indie musicians abandoning labels
Not suing our customers
Musicians actually getting paid
The big money is in music licensing
Major labels are Evil
iTunes has it wrong
Successful entrepreneur tries again
Linux vs Microsoft == Magnatune vs Major Labels

the
“elevator pitch”

they say:
“download, sample
cut-up, share”

I say:
“remixing makes
better music”

They say:
“On Jamendo artists
allow anyone to
download and share
their music. It's free,
legal and unlimited.”

I say:
“Download tons of
music from artists who
don’t want to make
money”

Magnatune says:
“We are not evil”
“We work directly with independent musicians world-
wide to give you downloads of MP3s and perfect-quality
WAV files. We never work with major labels, and our
musicians always get 50%.You can listen to every album in
its entirety before buying or becoming a member. “

Magnatune says:
“We are not evil”
blah, blah, blah... blah, blah, blah... blah, blah, blah... blah,
blah, blah... blah, blah, blah... blah, blah,
blah... blah, blah, blah... blah, blah,
blah... blah, blah, blah...
blah, blah, blah... blah, blah,
blah... blah, blah, blah...

Whoops.

They say:
“Give books away,
get books you want”

I say:
“Give a book away for
free, and you can ask
someone to send you a
book for free”

A good test:

“Will people pay more for
this than it costs to create
it?”

Some final tips:

Dedibox.com is
psycho-cheap hosting.
for French people only. Ha! Ha!

Use Open Source

Use PHP initially for
everything.

Find €3000
for a good independent
graphic designer.
Make your home page
pretty.

Do everything yourself.

If you’re not technical.

Learn to be technical.

PHP is not difficult.

Read tons of books.

Learn:
sales, marketing,
programming,
tech support.

You can’t lead people
if you don’t know how to
do their job.

Don’t hire.
Until you are getting less
than 6 hours’ sleep per
night.

Only hire
for well understood
tasks.

Don’t borrow money.

Without debt,
your idea can fail and you
can try again next week.

Take small steps.

Give yourself 3 years
to figure this out.

It will take at least 7 years
to get decent at this and to
make any real money.

You can do it.

This presentation can be downloaded
from:
http://slideshare.net/johnbuckman
Contact me at:
john@magnatune.com
This presentation licensed under
Creative Commons by-sa 3.0