by cameron | Oct 4, 2006 | Melbourne, Podcast, Uncategorized
Jon and Beti were raving about "Look Around You" at the last TPN dinner and I finally watched some of it tonight on YouTube. What a gem. Thank god for YouTube. This alone justified their $3 quadrillion valuation. If I had the funds, I’d buy three of ’em. Hey – the sun is up. It’s 5.40am. I’ve just pulled an all-nighter. Now I’m off to produce a video podcast for Tourism Victoria. By the way, listen to my interview with Melbourne businessman Geoff Lord if you haven’t already. Lots of good stuff in there. I especially liked his analogy of water-skiing and taking risks. Your goal for today is to take a risk you wouldn’t normally take with a view to pushing your horizons. This is the only life you’re going to get. Are you going to spend the rest of it doing what you’re doing right now?
by cameron | Oct 3, 2006 | Podcast, Uncategorized
Dave Gray aka Rooster aka the host of TPN’s Global Geek podcast, has taken the initiative and written a nice letter to Steve Jobs offering him a cheque for $1 for the use of the word "podcast". Legally I think he’s probably setting what they call a "precedent", but as long as the precedent is only for $1, I can live with that. Read Dave’s letter to Steve Jobs.
by cameron | Oct 3, 2006 | Podcast, Uncategorized
Podshow’s recent 2nd round of $15m financing raises the question again as to what The Podcast Network (TPN) is worth. I have no real metrics to measure TPN v Podshow other than Alexa. I know it isn’t very reliable, but it’s all I have.
So far Podshow have raised $24 million and TPN has been funded 100% out of Banco de Cameroni (that’s me, in case you are wondering).
Here’s the Alexa graph for TPN (in blue) vs Podshow (in red) for the last three months.
That puts Podshow, on average, about 2.0 – 3.0 times our reach? So, let’s say Calacanis is right and "To raise this money they must have had a $35-60M pre-money valuation.". Does that mean TPN is valued at a third of that? Let’s say at the low end it’s $10m?
John Furrier and Robert Scoble at Podtech.net have been doing great over the last few months as well. The Podshow investment (or was it the Podcast Expo?) spiked them big time last week. Here’s the graph comparing TPN to Podtech:
Last March John raised $5.5m which would place Podtech’s pre-money valuation back then at about $7 – 12m. TPN was tracking neck and neck with Alexa until last week’s spike. Again, on the low end (and we’ll wait to see when they announce their series B), that puts TPN at about $7m.
Where’s Ben Barren when I need him? He’s the guru at this kind of stuff. Ben, set me straight before I go buy a C-21 on spec.
by cameron | Oct 3, 2006 | Uncategorized
I got an email this morning advising me that the 13th Annual AIMIA Awards was now open to entries and suggesting I should enter TPN. A quick read of the terms and conditions of entry brings up this: "You must be an AIMIA Business, Corporate, Associate or Student member to enter the awards." The price to become a small business member? $660 + GST. The awards claim to be "Celebrating the very best in digital content innovation across all genres and interactive media platforms, the AIMIA Awards showcase the industry’s finest" but I’m not sure this is legitimate. I can’t afford to spend $660 on being a member. So TPN can’t even apply. I’m sure there are other Aussie internet start-ups which would find better ways to spend their $660 as well. If I’d raised Podshow-style $24 million, then perhaps I could afford it. Sounds to me like the "awards" are a thinly-disguised membership recruiting and funding drive.
by cameron | Oct 2, 2006 | Podcast, Uncategorized
Kevin and Jason have uploaded another episode (finally!) of the "Treading Lightly" podcast which is pretty good timing considering my recent rant about wanting TPN to do more to promote "An Inconvenient Truth". In this episode the boys talk in some detail about Integral Energy’s green power options and purchasing other peoples green options. I learned a lot. Maybe they could get someone from Integral onto a future episode to talk about the take up of green energy in Australia?
by cameron | Oct 1, 2006 | free will, Podcast, Uncategorized
Two lifehacks I’ve found useful to share with you today.
1. THE BOX.
Have you ever had something that you are obsessing over and it takes up all of your mental and emotional energy? It might be a problem you are facing, a mistake you made, someone you’ve lost, hunger pains or even a pain in your back. I’m a pretty obsessive personality. I *like* being obsessed. Being obsessive has certain negative associations in our society but, as I always say, the difference between a considered fanatic and an eccentric is just how much money you have. After spending the first ten years of my adult life fighting my genetics, I finally decided to accept them and build on top of them, use them to my advantage if I can. That said, there are times when my obsessions aren’t productive. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. When I realize one of my obsessions is stopping me from moving on with my life, here’s what I do. I put it in The Box. It’s a simple little mental exercise whereby I mentally gather up all of the items associated with the obsession and put in into a solid, lead-lined safe. Then I lock the safe and store it away in one of the back compartments of my mind, like the Ark at the end of Indy 1. Then, whenever a thought associated with the obsession pops into my head (because, as you know, you can’t stop these thoughts from happening as there is no free will. If you don’t believe me yet, listen to G’Day World podcast #155), I just say "put it in The Box". And the energy (what is the definition of that again?) that the thought has seems to lessen. That’s not saying it completely disappears, but it diminishes and, over time, will drift into the background. Remember: put it in The Box.
2. THE STOPWATCH.
I learned this one from Merlin Mann’s excellent “(10+2)*5†productivity hack but it has a range of other uses. Again, even when I’m using The Box to store away something that I need to forget about, going completely cold turkey is frakkin hard. So I’ll allow myself to think about the thing inside the box for a couple of minutes a few times every hour. I use a stopwatch (if I’m working at my PC I use this excellent little app) and set it for ten minutes. I make a deal with myself that I will ignore the urge to open the box for ten minutes and, for that ten minutes, I will work on something important. Then, when the alarm of the stopwatch goes off, I allow myself 2 minutes to think about the thing inside The Box. Then, reset the stopwatch for another ten minutes, and get back to work. Eventually I can lift the time on the watch to 15, 20 and 30 minutes. Then a whole hour will go past before I remember I need to visit The Box.
