June 2009 Archives

Dominic here.

June 23 was the final Waseda Marketing Forum of the academic year, which went off with a bang with World Wrestling Entertainments (WWE) VP of East Asia Marketing, Ed Wells. Before arriving at the WWE a year and a half ago, he worked at major entertainment companies like Fox, Viacom, Nickelodean, MTV, and Disney, and is the consummate entertainment marketer. WWE is his latest, and possibly most exciting assignment yet.

The WWE has come out of a gradual transition from what many remember as the World Wrestling Federation, and has become a fully integrated multimedia company with a market cap of nearly 900 million USD. Mr. Wells presented some pretty shocking facts about the WWE's success: they are publicly traded company on the NYSE, they broadcast in 145 countries in 30 languages, they are the United States' longest running weekly episodic show, they are the #1 program on their respective channels, and for the past three years they are the number two searched entity on Yahoo!, behind Britney Spears and beating out Barack Obama, even during an election season.

Mr. Well's presentation was entitled "Marketing to the masses in an increasingly diversified marketplace," but what he wanted to focus on was "marketing in the day of the incredible shrinking budget," a topic that was perhaps more relevant and universal for the audience. He listed three important factors for marketers to remember; creating an emotional connection, integrating and leading, knowing your assets, and knowing your limits.

Emotional Connection - As an entertainment company, their wrestling broadcasts contain distinctive characters and storylines. The success of a talent ( a wrestler ) is not solely judged by the wrestling ability, but also by their ability to connect with the audience. "You either make it pop, or you don't. If you don't you can expect to be phased out." The ability to emotionally connect with the audience is what makes the fans of the WWE so loyal in following their favorite stars through different mediums, and makes them so varied in age, race, and gender.

Integrating and Leading - As a multimedia entertainment company, Mr. Wells displayed the media assets through the form of a wheel, which listed mediums like television, magazines, pay per view, talent, internet, mobile, etc. Every one of these mediums is an entry point for their audience, but it is even more important to lead the audience to go around the wheel, following the WWE through different mediums. Leading them around the wheel has to be logical to the user. "Does it make sense in a multinational setting?"

Know your assets - In the day of slashed marketing budgets knowing what assets you can utilize is important. Agencies can be expensive. The WWE tries to keep as much of what do in-house, from production crews to marketing.

Know your limits- The caveat. There are people that can do things better than you, and it is essential that you utilize their expertise. In Japan, collaboration is an important tool to reach the market, as the WWE recently did with popular local artists to create t-shirts promoting their brand.

The WWE will have a tour in Tokyo at the Budokan on July 7th and 8th. Check out their website here, tickets are still available.

Michael here.

Shack here. We celebrated the second anniversary of Tokyo 2.0 Monday, with the biggest meetup in the history of the event. Some of the attendance was probably due to Geeks on a Plane, Dave McClure's traveling band of VC's and innovators.

There were some great presentations...

...a huge crowd...

...and excellent networking, in the small amount of downtime between presentations. I met some VC's from the bay area, had some conversations about the state of venture capital and angel investment in Asia, and caught up with buddies from the Tokyo tech world. The crowd was a little bigger and louder than optimal for deep conversation, but it was still a great time.

Dominic and I are on the steering committee for Tokyo 2.0, and we'll be working together on the July event. It's a great chance to learn something and start building a network here, so if you've got Monday, July 13th free, come on down to Super Deluxe at 6:30!

For more photos and thoughts from the event, head over to my personal blog, Shack in Japan.

 

We heard from Daniel that an Investment Competition was taking place inter Japanese Universities. Ken attented and noted down the following key points:

 

The idea is to form a team of 3 to 5 people (recommended to include a girl) to come up with a report on a company assigned for every team about the IR (Investor Relations) of the company. Last year, it was Kao(花王).

Each team has a mentor who gives some advice. The length of the time to talk to your mentor is limited to 6 hours. 

 

Schedule

June: They are going to decide which company we all need to write a report on.

July 27^th: Kick Off Meeting

Early August: Seminars on corporate ethics and ways to analyze the company

September 7^th: Analyst meeting

October 5^th: Deadline for the first draft

October 26^th: Deadline for the final draft

November 6^th: Results

November 27^th: Awarding ceremony and final result for Japan competition

 

You need really good Japanese proficiency to participate in this competition.  You are going to be talking to your mentor (Certified CFA) and write a report in Japanese.

 

Merits to participate in this competition

l         Get to know your mentor who actually works in the industry

l         Have a chance to cultivate your skills in financial analytical skill

l         If you win in Japan, you will get to go to Singapore to participate in Asian competition in May 2010.

 

[CFA Global Investment Research Challenge]

 

 

 

 

 

Matthew Skyrm from Sony Corporation's Business Strategy Division visited Waseda University on June 3rd to share his experiences of starting a company from his apartment in San Francisco 10 years ago (which eventually became Kick.com) to raising $7.2 million in venture capital to selling it to Sony. He has spent 15 years in various internet businesses and has had management positions in Sony, Yahoo!, and Kick.com. As the title of his presentation, "From a Geek to an Entrepreneur to a Salary Man" implies, Matthew went through various phases in his career and kindly agreed to share some of the most important lessons he learned from his wide-range of experiences.



The founding of Kick.com was simply driven by Matthew's desire to find a solution to a problem he faced with having music as a great part of his life. One day in the early 90s, when Matthew was listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers on one of the first mp3 players to ever exist, he wondered when the next Red Hot Chili Peppers album was going to be released. He liked this band so much that he didn't want to risk missing out any information regarding the release of the new album. Matthew, who lived in San Francisco at that time, also started to wonder what his brother back in the east coast was listening to. How convenient would it be for a computer to remember what kind of artists you listen to and give you information related to that artist's other songs and albums as well as provide information on what kind of music people in your network listen to? Matthew told his friends about this idea and rented out an apartment in San Francisco to start developing an application that reflected these ideas. This is how Matthew became the founder of Kick.com.

Kick.com's main product was the "Music Companion," a free application that provided users with information on album art, news, reviews, related artists and playlist suggestions based on an analysis of users' listening choices. Although this idea is very common today (you may notice that this application sounds a lot like I-tunes), no one had ever thought of such an application back then. Kick.com was considered to embrace the latest technology and gained popularity among its consmers and investors.

However, with the burst of the dotcom bubble, profits started to decline and the business was tearing apart. Matthew decided it was time to sell the company. He had two offers but chose the one that offered him more money. This way, he was fulfilling his fiduciary duties to his investors, although one of the conditions of the agreement was for him to step down as the CEO. However, the company that agreed to buy Kick.com suddenly decided not to at the last minute, leaving Matthew and his team devastated. This is when Matthew learned that there are no rules in business and that a deal is not done until the money is in your bank account. The truth is that people play tricks and sometimes you may have to be the person playing tricks on other people. Unable to do anything about the company's legal decision, Matthew called up the other company that had offered to buy Kick.com, which was his to-be employer, Sony. Sony agreed to buy Kick.com - but for half the price it had initially offered. Once again, Matthew felt that business is indeed unfair.

Through Sony's acquisition of Kick.com, Matthew became an employee of Sony. Sony wanted to get rid of Kick.com and the team had to obey to their new boss. After Kick.com was dissolved, a new application similar to Kick.com was created by another party and gained popularity. The rise of a similar business model made Matthew realize the importance of timing in business. Later, Matthew moved to Sony Japan where he introduced the same concept of Kick.com to the Japanese. The Japanese liked his idea and immediately put it to use by forming a tie-up with KDDI's LISMO. The song application was created as part of LISMO and was called "Utatomo." Utatomo currently has over a million users.

Matthew claims he should have quit Sony and started his own Utatomo in Japan. However, because of his past experiences with Kick.com, he wanted to stick to a stable job that could ensure a roof over his family. A message that Matthew wants to emphasize here is that fear should never drive your decision.

Although Matthew once left Japan to work at Yahoo! in California, he returned to Japan and is now currently the Chief of product planning at Sony's Business Strategy division. He recently directed the establishment of a video-storage site.

Matthew's presentation was full of lessons/guidance that can be useful in our career and lifetime, such as those highlighted above. However, I sensed that the greatest lesson from his presentation was the importance of finding something you are truly passionate about and working as hard as you can to achieve that goal. Matthew claims that he was lucky enough to have his hobby turned into his career, but perhaps this can be possible for everyone.

Overall, Matthew's presentation was a valuable experience that gave me insight on what the real business world is like, the hardships of creating and developing a company, and what it takes to become a true business leader.


"80 percent of success is just showing up" -- Woody Allen.