
Don't make my eyes bleed: a rant about business plans by Neil Davidson - revorad
http://www.neildavidson.com/dontmakemyeyesbleed.html
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amirmc
Nicely put together. Business _planning_ can be great to help people organise
their thoughts and uncover issues they'd overlooked.

However, business _plans_ can easily fall into the same trap that bad
powerpoint ends up in. That of authors hiding behind it instead of using it to
tell a story. It's the story that really matters.

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erichocean
I liked his "what is your mantra" slide. For my own company, Fohr, we have a
slide with our "Investment Thesis", which seems to be similar in spirit:

Fohr is able to leverage computer-photography and the ﬁlm _Carpathia_ to build
a proﬁtable, next generation ﬁlm studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with
computer-animation and _Toy Story_ in the Nineties.

UPDATE (edited version based on feedback below): Fohr can use the first
feature ﬁlm we're making with "computer-photography" to build a new, publicly-
owned ﬁlm studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with _Toy Story_ and computer-
animation in the 1990s – if we can raise the funds to continue our technology
leadership over the next two years.

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revorad
I'm most likely not your target customer, so ignore this piece of criticism if
it's useless to you:

I don't understand what your company mantra/slogan above means at all.

The words "leverage" and "next generation" ring MBA-speak alarm bells in my
head. Generally, "leverage" can be substituted with the much simpler "use".
And you don't get to decide if your technology is "next generation". The
market will decide years later.

What do you mean by computer-photography?

I don't know the film Carpathia.

The analogy is very vague. What exactly are you repeating?

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erichocean
_I don't understand what your company mantra/slogan above means at all._

In your defense, this comes after three slides of prep which explain computer-
photography, and how Fohr is like Pixar.

 _The words "leverage" and "next generation" ring MBA-speak alarm bells in my
head. Generally, "leverage" can be substituted with the much simpler "use".
And you don't get to decide if your technology is "next generation". The
market will decide years later._

I meant "leverage" in the sense of "strategic advantage; power to act
effectively". "Use" is better though, and I'll switch to that. I do think next
generation applies here -- provided you think _Toy Story_ was a next
generation way to make animated films.

 _What do you mean by computer-photography?_

I wrote a primer on it here: <http://erichocean.com/fohr/lighting.html>. In a
nutshell, if a classically-trained Director of Photography can light the
film's CGI environments using their existing, real-world knowledge of
lighting, and if those "virtual lights" are identical to their real-world
counterparts, the 3D rendering engine falls in the "computer-photography"
category.

 _I don't know the film Carpathia._

Well, it hasn't been made yet. :) Hopefully you'll see it when it comes out,
the release date is November 20, 2013.

 _The analogy is very vague. What exactly are you repeating?_

Fohr is at the place, as a company, that Pixar was at before they made _Toy
Story_. Our "Toy Story" is a film called _Carpathia_. Similar to Pixar, we can
build a public company on the strength of our first film and computer-
photography. (Pixar IPO'd a week after _Toy Story_ came out, in 1995.)

Our basic investment thesis (why we think investors should invest in our tech
side) is that we can take the same path Pixar did, leading to an IPO. (We can
make _Carpathia_ regardless, but we can only build an independent studio with
investment on the tech side of our business.)

Hope this helps, and thanks for the feedback!

~~~
mattmanser
I still don't get what's different? You seem to be talking about CGI which is
obviously used a lot today. Have you not got any screenshots to show the
difference?

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erichocean
The difference is 100% on the production side, not in the final images
(although we can do certain kinds of Avatar-style full CGI environments for
about 80% less than they cost now -- $100K minute vs. $500K minute).
Carpathia, as you might have guessed, is chock full of them. :)

It's the production difference that actually gives us the Pixar-like edge --
we can iterate on the film, slowly closing in on the final film over a multi-
year period. This allows every department time to do their best work.
"Computerizing" the photography (just like "computerizing" the animation at
Pixar) is what allows this to happen.

We've got special tooling to support it as well, but that's what makes it
great in a nutshell: (much) better films at lower cost due to massive numbers
of iterations from concept to final film.

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atirip
is this again some "creative" Eric Ries book selling campaign?

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jedc
Nope. Neil is CEO of Red Gate Software, and an angel investor. (And just a
really good guy, too.)

He's been teaching himself to draw for a year or so, thus the format. :)

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cateye
I think there is a big difference between "a cool presentation of your
business plan" for the outside world and an in depth and detailed plan and
research for your own.

I agree that "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand
it yourself."

But this doesn't mean that all you need to know is, what a six year old knows.
I notice that we tend to believe that having profound knowledge of your
business is unnecessary.

But we don't need to bore everybody with this information.

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tobydownton
I've seen the feedback for Fohr's mantra (all of which I agree with) and was
wondering whether I could get feedback for our mantra/tagline (note: we are
still building prototype, nothing to show yet).

Tagline is: "The Game Show We Can All Play"

Any feedback welcome, thanks

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StavrosK
I like it, but what's the product?

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tobydownton
Thanks StavrosK, yes, I probably should have provided some more detail around
that. We're addressing what we see as the "Game Show problem" i.e. the fact
that there aren't any Game Shows that people can play from the comfort of
their own home over the internet - why is that? We think we know why and will
use a unique approach to address that. So we're creating an online Game Show,
one that anyone can play i.e. you get to be an actual contestant who can win
real prizes. We're aiming to launch early next year...

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StavrosK
That's what I figured, so I think the tagline is pretty much perfect.

~~~
tobydownton
That's good to hear, thank you very much!

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mbesto
Aside from the lean startup, this is also an invaluable tool:
<http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/>

Compliments Customer Drive Development very well.

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lean
Don't Make Me Download a PDF: a rant about rants

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DenisM
Sadly the choice for slides is between a bare PDF, slideshare and scribd. All
three are awful choices imho, so... pick your poison.

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saraid216
We are on The Internet. There are things called Web Pages.

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potatolicious
There's a startup opportunity: because your standard tools for producing
presentations and slides does not connect at all with publishing as a web
page.

