Have you ever had your own company or been part of the management? And have you, if not with money, with your idealism gone all in?
I have had such an experience.
Dear reader,
Today I tell something from the "sewing box", in other words: my own world of experience. No desire to search for references or to browse prickly through the papers and documents. Today I choose the freestyle.
I was part of a media company. Who the founders were, does not play a role here and remains in the dark. Just this much: I had personal relationships with the management and shared the responsibilities of leadership and customer acquisition. We were always looking for new ideas and orders. How to make even more sales, but also with what we enjoyed.
The internet had its first blow behind it
and was recovering to a certain extent, Facebook was just as up-coming as "Second life" - an interactive virtual world in which you would be able to move and interact just as you would in real life (no idea what happened to the thing).
Advertising and placement of brands and services: this is where we helped our customers. One day, my management friend and I sat in his office, he asked me: "Tell me, what do you think of the following idea: We are building a global platform on the Internet where all companies can buy a claim that will become their central advertising space."
First I didn't understand what he meant. But he explained it to me.
We would "sell" the whole world with all registered streets, towns, cities, countries and continents.
Imagine this: if someone wanted to offer you Broadway in New York as advertising space, an address that everyone knows, for only ten Dollars. Would you make the purchase?
Make a movie!
With the Graphics and Web Development Department, we immediately set about the visual realisation of our idea. I did the script writing and brainstorming with the designers. Everyone was quickly struck by the thought that people would tear our claims out of our hands. We were convinced that we would realize the business idea of the century. Before, we made sure that no one else had ever had the same thought. A company actually had a similar concept, but it seemed to us not so attractive compared to ours and differed from the visual implementation. What was completely missing from the project: Our gold digger instinct!
For quite a long and intensive time we worked on a small promotional film, which should be the most important part of our acquisition activities. Therefore it had to be highly professional, visually appealing and funny. We had friends in a sound studio close by, who were excellent speakers and so we engaged the guys around the corner for the sound recording.
With our film on the laptop we then went to sell the idea. In the meantime, we had infected so many people with our idea that we had gathered together an army of volunteers who would cover all areas of the business model, including the quite important legal aspects. The programmer programmed himself wounded fingers.
Wild West feelings
Every single one of them had either the obvious or secret dollar view. Due to a very good contact in the Hamburg business world, we made appointments- among others - to those in the companies that made the marketing decisions. They were medium-sized companies up to globally active brands. My friend and I went to these conversations with our laptop under my arm. Our most important sales hit: Deep penetration of a contagious enthusiasm and merciless conviction that we had found THE thing!
And we were right. The film took away all the theoretical explanations and conveyed the concept briefly and succinctly. Everyone understood it within minutes.
What do you think people were asking us?
That's right, the most common questions turned out to be like this:
"Is Germany still available?" If yes, we'll buy it!"
Every famous place and historic site in the world was immediately classified as highly attractive. We dreamt of the Taj Mahal in India, the Statue of Liberty in front of New York, the Ku-Damm in Berlin, we had France and Australia in our minds.
We pondered over such problems whether one could actually put mountains, like Mount Everest for sale and what price would be appropriate. In my head grew palm trees and beautiful beaches, I smelled the scents of a thousand and one nights, I searched the world for unusual and beautiful places. Meanwhile, the people bought. We got real money transferred. For small buyers we had built a landing page. A lot money. Germany, of course, was sold quickly just like other cream objects.
But the whole project took up a lot of money and resources, even though we had so many volunteers. But we did not do our actual bread-work adequately. We were aware that we urgently needed a large investor in addition to the purchases we had made and a lot of time and energy went into drawing up a business plan. Crowd-funding wasn't born then.
We managed to schedule two appointments with potential investors.
Then it was terribly serious and we realized that we really had something on the hook. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm was overshadowed by the tension and the right timing, so we became aware that this had almost slipped out of our hands. What was stupid (at least in retrospect) was that we immediately reinvested the money raised by the claim sales and paid the employees and the infrastructure of it. Full risk.
Where were we standing? We had already collected money for a project that previously existed only as a film. The programming was far more demanding and the whole thing was much more complex than we had hoped for. It would have been possible in any case, if we could have paid even more people and removed the pressure a little bit.
But of course we didn't foresee what would happen next:
The financial crash occurred.
Exactly one week after the investors' talks, the financial market collapsed and the big money bubble burst. People didn't even bother to call us back.
We had to stamp the whole thing. The worst thing was the subsequent discussions with the buyers. I will never forget the embarrassment and how ashamed we were to admit our failure. It was therefore one of the most difficult moments in my professional life to look into the eyes of those who were infected by our enthusiasm.
We met in a cafe near our agency at that time to bring the biggest buyer up to date: that his money was gone and he would not receive the promised service.
Honestly, I have a few gaps in my memory.
I really no longer know the exact reaction of the buyer. I think I was so upset and embarrassed, I was caught up in some kind of deafness. Well, we didn't encounter any warmth, that should be obvious.
The company went completely down the drain and everything had to be shut down. Also telling the employees, "you're fired" was pretty tough. Not that everything came at once, but things happened in turn. Eventually the place was closed and the interior was auctioned off.
That was a long time ago, but it is one of the most valuable experiences in my life. I have learned a lot and I know that every disaster has an end.
In any case, I can well imagine how the founders of Steemit felt. But even without having had the own experience, I could imagine how J. K. Rowling had the fantastic idea for Harry Potter and what she had been caught up with. As far as I can tell, she had the idea on a train ride. Oh, what a great train ride it must have been!
And in the Steemit founders case, it went fine; also in Rowlings. At least with regard to the financial aspect. I can't judge everything else, though.
I entered realms early in my life that promised fast money.
I was never so much attracted by money as I was by a kind of pioneering spirit and the longing to escape from a boring life. Getting to know other people than the usual. I've also seen the ugly side and the grimace of money. People who had previously come from very unwealthy backgrounds, who were acting pretty crazy. As everyone knows, money means also power and if you do not know how to deal with power and haven't thought about it in advance, things can get quite out of hand. It's like in the movie "Stork", when "Junior" is questioned by "Tulip" why he wants to be a "boss". He couldn't answer in the beginning.
So I am finishing with two questions: Of what would you like to be a boss? And why would you like to be one?
Thank you for reading.
Picture sources:
Photo by AJ Colores on Unsplash
Photo by Eniko Polgar on Unsplash