Thoughts

Summer is coming up and lots of great gatherings ahead. I am so lucky to be surrounded with friends that like me and my loved ones to visit when they are switched off. Bali, Mallorca, Ibiza, Italy. Summer will be good. Business is moving ahead, but never thought the music industry would be so tough and hard to convince. Next week we can announce a great deal, that will have everything we worked for at IIP proven to be right. After hundreds of meetings with record labels, investors etc etc. (music industry) this soon to be announced customer was the first that truly understood what we have created with FUGA and took the effort to do a proper technical and operational due diligence. We even learned things from their questions that enabled us to enhance our service with so very cool features.

This brings me to the following. The digital space is a weird one. Still in its infancy and searching for a way to generate revenues that bring back the old days in making money with music. Take The Orchard for example (ORCD). They generate around $59 million and are not profitable. I know that the Orchard is not unique in its case, many other digital pioneers will be found dead on the side of theroad to a well functioning and mature digital market space. When starting IIP I knew it wasn't going to be a walk in the park and that it was going to be hard to convince all those players to not develop their own technology platforms any more, but to use FUGA as a shared infrastructure underlying all those great services out there. Slowly we start to get the clients that understand this and that are willing to sink their investment in technology and replace it with a much more efficient, flexible and reliable platform.

So what is it that makes it so hard?

The big bosses within all companies rely to their IT/technical people for knowledge about what is good/bad. The problem with our proposition is that it takes away a lot of work/responsibility from those that advise the decision makers. Catch 22 right there. How to overcome this? We focus on the brave ones that see that their added value doesn't lie in the functionality FUGA offers (Asset management, Product management, Release management, Delivery management, Business intelligence), but in creating the content and marketing. But this strategy takes time, so at the same time we look for strategic partners that can help our customers to cross the bridge and let go of their developers, project managers etc. It is so necesary that the industry has a standard and is compatible. The new music industry must be hyper connected, flexible and above all fast in their time to market. Why?

Everything goes faster and faster and if you don't fuel the grid with your content, others will do it and you lose to the opportunity to monetise the great creations of your artists. I am in this business for almost 4 years now and still believe it's possible to get this vision accross to all that make decisions on weather to build systems inhouse, outsource or what ever. But sometimes I feel frustrated that this isn't just about making the music flow to her audience and make good money with it. It's about people their jobs (it still applies that you will never get fired by hiring IBM ;-). I don't want frustration to motivate me, so every day I try and focus on what is the core of what we do and how can we enhance our customers business. What a journey... Seeing light at the end of the tunnel is fantastic, but not knowing how far to reach it makes it an adventure I would think twice about starting again. I love it and like my beloved friend Chris always told me, I will go for gold....

I wonder how the future will look like every day, not so much as audience, but as active participant in creating the next day. It gives me the energy to keep going and to believe in what I do. I realize that my believe in the ability to change the world comes from nowhere, it's just there. Sometimes I think that I must be insane to believe in something I don't understand. Thank God I am not the only one. Feeling crazy all by your self is so boring and makes one do even more crazy things. I feel lucky because of many small things in life. Kids, Love, Summer, Amsterdam, rest of the world, new born people.. Every day a new day and nothing we have to do about it. I don't know why, but I get more focussed on trying to understand the big questions every day. What is our Universe? Why are we here? Why am I here? etc. etc. Every time I think I know a bit more I reaize I know a lot less. Reverse laws of the Universe that bypass my imagination and comprehension. Back to work