Official Richart Ruddie Blog - Internet Entrepreneur

Today I learned What LL Stands for in LL Cool J

LL Cool J stands for Living Legend. He is also the one who came up with GOAT fittingly enough. 

At the 2021 Rock N Roll Hall of Fame inductee special in Cleveland, Ohio we got to here Dr. Dre share some other great stories about the New York rapping legend who is really true to his name:

At 17 he came out as a superstar for Def Jam and Dr. Dre was just geting started spinning Rock The Bells in the club where the audience went crazy, With 13 studio albums over a decade. From Around the Way Girl, Doing It, Going back to Cali, and its not where you're from it's where you're at as the legend says he lives in California now and Dr. Dre gives him some "California Love". While he stayed true to his roots in Queens New York the rare artist beloved by you, your mom, and how many other rap artists stay relevant after 30 years.

LL. Cool J is the one who came up with the phrase GOAT the Greatest of All Time. The Tom Brady's and Michael Jordans of the world are thankful for that!

Really though the LL stands for Ladies Love Cool James.

Clubhouse Heading to the Dog House?

Is it time to ring the trouble house alarm and discuss? After getting off to arguably the hottest start of any startup and sky rocketing to a fast valuation of $4 billion with no revenue but some of the biggest and brightest names in the VC space. Now however a recent report discusses the slow down and this is just as they roll out replays which is a way for clubhouse creators to distribute their content. Replays will allow those who create audio content on their platform to record the rooms and repost this content on 3rd party platforms. The issue is why did they take the radio approach and something ephemeral and pivot now?

 

Why it may be too little too late to get out of the Dog House for Club House?

With Replays, creators can now share their conversations and audio on other 3rd party platforms that have the ability to amplify their reach exponentially. This includes all the biggest social media names who have already copied their idea such as: Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. So now they can connect with their fans through their base on these other sites (reminder Clubhouse has <2 million MAUs).

 

So Replays 101 is a podcast like feature and if they utilize the new startup from David Sacks and Jason Calcanis (did I spell that right J. Cal?) they can turn audio directly into a podcast. "Replays also allows creators to pin links to specific segments, skip to the next speaker, see who’s joining the conversation, and see total attendee counts. Listeners can tune in at 1.5x or 2x speed, pause, and create 30 second clips from the recording. The downside is that creators cannot receive tips through Replays like they can in live conversations." So why take away the monetization ability?

So is all of this too little too late? Replays sounds great but why didn't they keep the ability to reward creators? Think about Youtube and why people create content and upload music videos on there? It's cause they are getting rewarded each time you listen. Why stop that at any point of the funnel in the clubhouse funhouse?

So how bad is the downward trend for the formerly most popular app of 2021? In April 900,000 people downloaded clubhouse on an invite only basis. Not bad? Well 2 months before that 9.6 million people downloaded the app on iOS only. In April they were still getting upwards of 10 million active weekly listeners but as of summer time it has dropped down to only 2 million. 

The challenge is it went from the newest cool kid in the school to a high school drop out looking to get it's GED. The flop may be that they can't keep up with the biggest tech companies that typically only get a 1 year head start before their ideas are copied (Jeff Bezos used to say 2 years but that number has dropped significantly as we now see).

Are the copy cats the problem? I think it stems more from the alienation of Android users. With that kind of funding and valuation why didn't they get into the Google play store sooner? By the time Spring ended they rolled out the Android app but it's fanfare was starting to dwindle instead of using those extra 10 million users globally to fuel further growth. So while that was stagnant Twitter which already had an Android app rolled out Spaces, telegram a global privacy chat platform launched Voices Chat 2.0, and then Facebook did Facebook with Audio Rooms, Discord launched Stages, well you get the idea right? Did I mention Spotify laucnhed Greenroom as well?

So the invite only on Clubhouse was good at first but hurt their growth... By July they dropped the invite only codes.

They stopped having high quality conversations on the platform. So better payment to those attracting listeners should have been done, dropping the invite only earlier, stopping hate on their platform was listed as a risk, and not rolling out Replays sooner. 

So while I would love to see other startups succeed and everybody can be a Monday morning quarterback. This should give some perspective on Clubhouses Dog House Days.

-Richart Ruddie

Can't Cancel Scams Stretch to Newspapers Online

Read this interesting article about how the Federal Trade Commission is going to crack down on violations and news organizations that they specify that do negative option billing, let you subscribe and sign up online but make it nearly impossible to cancel your subscription to an online newspaper. https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/11/the-end-of-click-to-subscribe-call-to-cancel-one-of-the-news-industrys-favorite-retention-tactics-is-illegal-ftc-says I would guess that this is not going to get a lot of coverage as newspapers need this subscription revenue and would not want to post an unbiased news piece about the shady business practices that are consistently implemented among most of the news sites.

I was a subscriber to the Miami-Herald for example and there was no option to cancel online via a subscription page. If you are going to have clients enrolled for online services why make it so hard and difficult for them to cancel? This reminds me of the America Online days or the Free Credit Report days.

Amy Wilkinson Stanford GSB Entrepreneur Advice and Richart Ruddie's Feedback

Solve a problem that hasn't been solved. Here are some Stanford level pieces of advice on great entrepreneurship:

Build something piece by piece from the ground up especially when a program isnt utilizing its full resources. Push forward when governments and other enterprises are sitting idle. Reason by analogy or first principles the basic axioms look at the fundamental truths. Like a scientist would.

An integrator would be mashing and smashing things together. When it does work great value and opportunity is created. Example put together a handbag and luxury and you get LV to the masses. The example from the Stanford professor in the video below talks about Chipotle making quick service or "fast casual dining" through a line up at Chipotle created by Steve Els in Colorado.

Look for things to combine. The internet and retail sites are doing this all the time and this was accelerated with the pandemic growing e-commerce businesses but create novelty and gain traction.

Curiousity unlocks the ability to unlock opportunity. Continue to ask questions, discover, and probe. If you have an expertise and think you know it all then you don't create new opportunities and you fall behind in a rapidly changing world. See what others don't see and have a vision that can bend in a way that wasn't bent before.


For more information see Amy Wilkinson, from Stanford Graduate School of Business. Parts of the above are from her video and commentary from Richart Ruddie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68QW15sBdKQ

Retna Showing Strong Buying During Heritage/Artsy Auction

A Retna piece I was bidding on called White Noise an acrylic piece on canvas thats 5 feet by 5 feet broke through it's high estimate of $60,000 and thus a strong showing and indicator coming into Art Basel Miami at the end of the month for Retna pieces in the secondary market.

That Famous Steve Jobs Quote Every One Should Live By

Quora can be highly addicting. They send you random questions and answers. One that popped up on my feed on the anniversary of his death on October 5th roughly 10 years and a month ago. It talks about how the Apple Founder reached the pinnacle of entrepreneurship. Creating a company from idea to being one that impacts every part of the world and employs thousands of people. People talk about success in these trends but his was joyless in the end. Wealth was one thing but health he was without. Would Steve Jobs have given up his entire wealth and if a theoretical time machine existed would he go back in time and given the opportunity to be healthy, beat his rare form of pancreatic cancer, and be alive today but in exchange he could not be wealthy and would not have the joy of starting Apple Computers? Instead of dying at 56 he would be alive today as a healthy 66 year old...

The line he says about reading a "Book of a Healthy Living" yet. Whatever stage of life we ​​are in now, we will eventually face the day when the curtain falls. Here is the quote below:

"I have reached the pinnacle of success in business. In the eyes of others, my life is the epitome of success. However, apart from work, I have little joy. In the end, wealth is just a fact of life. I'm used to.

At this moment, lying in my sick bed and remembering my whole life, I realize that all the accolades and wealth that I was so proud of, have paled and become insignificant in the face of impending death.

You can hire someone to drive the car for you, to make money for you, but you can't have someone to carry the disease for you. "

Lost material things can be found. But there is one thing that can never be found when "Life" is lost.

When a person enters the operating room, they will discover that there is a book they have not finished reading "Book of a Healthy Living" yet. Whatever stage of life we ​​are in now, we will eventually face the day when the curtain falls.

 

From the Steve Jobs quote another reader chimed in as I don't believe the below was said by Jobs but talks about money and life. A great book for anybody who resonates with this would be Peter Singer's The Most Good You Can Do. It discusses Effective Altruism a principle we should all consider.


"Honey Love for your family, love for your spouse, love for your friends are very important. Appreciate those around you.

As we grow and, therefore, the wiser we become, we slowly realize that wearing a $300 watch or a $30 watch both say the same time ...

If we own a Crypto wallet

from 3 ETH or 30 ETH, the amount of money inside does you no good at the grave

Whether you drive a $150,000 or $30,000 car, the road and distance are the same and you will arrive at the same destination.

Whether you drink a $300 or $10 bottle of wine, the hangover is the same; whether the house we live in is 900 square feet or 3,000 square feet, the solitude is the same.

You will realize that your true inner happiness does not come from the material things of this world.

Whether you fly first class or economy class, if the plane goes down, it goes down anyway. Isn't it Ironic don't you think?

Therefore ... I hope you realize, when you have companions, friends and old friends, brothers and sisters, with whom you chat, laugh, talk, sing songs, even talk about little things - Appreciate them because they are the most precious thing you have ."