Embarka.com

Click on the logo... go to embarka.com

I am co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Embarka Digital Media, Inc., a next generation Web 2.0 social marketplace. Embarka.com, when launched in February 2007, expects to be the first transaction-oriented international online B2C and B2B social marketplace and independent music portal.

Embarka Digital Media, Inc. (the “Company” or “embarka”) intends to become the leading portal and social marketplace for independent music worldwide using an aggressive acquisition strategy.

Our goal is to modernize the music industry and change how independent music and artists are discovered, how music is organized, shared, and purchased and how concerts are booked, such that control shifts from the record labels to the artists and the consumer leveraging the power of the Internet.

Our unique music portal concept and integrated music scene technology, supports a worldwide marketplace, where musicians, fans and clubs meet to connect, interact, network, trade, buy and sell digital media creations and related merchandise. Embarka is an online marketplace where members make money.

Social marketplaces grow revenue from multiple sources with ad and search revenue supplementing transaction fees, premium service fees and other B2B revenue opportunities. Embarka will have the download and payment features required to create a "micro-market" for members' digital media content.

Among the unique attributes of Embarka is the fact that as a personal digital media publisher, we will target one or more artist vertical application. When combined with the viral nature of a social network, artist communities connect like-minded consumers and businesses in a transaction-oriented online marketplace. This is the future of digital media and independent publishing.

The following screen capture is of the embarka home page




Go to www.embarka.com to register as a beta tester. We intend to launch by the end of February 2007.

Happy New Year! Welcome 2007

I love the first of January like I love a new car, fresh powder at Squaw Valley or a new business deal. Fresh is new, new is promise and promise is hope. Remember your first new bike or your last new car? Remember the visceral feeling of pleasure and pride that comes with having new? Having a new friend, a new partner or new pet? These are all great feelings of promise and hope. A new beginning is exciting and sometimes scary. Why? Well, a fresh start leads to the unknown, the unpredictable and in most cases the uncontrollable. Control is a myth anyway because you can’t really control anything except the decisions you make. So, if you’ve made any decisions in 2006 that you would like to take back, here’s your chance to start fresh and take a mulligan. Enjoy the fresh start and make better decisions in 2007. Happy New Year!

Yet Another Broken Business Model

Gotta love business and corporate finance. Something’s always broken or needs to be reinvented. So, I have an idea for one. Just last night we had a spirited discussion on angel financing. We talked about all those “matching” web sites and “business plan positing” web sites, formal angel groups and presenting to a caputed audience for $3,000?? Gez, if a start up had $3,000 they would be fools to spend that shot-gunning their intellectual property at one of those old-school forums. You can almost launch a web business on $3,000 these days.

So, as we took on the world’s problems one at a time, we did spend some extra time lambasting the angel financing process as we currently view it. Since we all have experience starting companies and raising seed (angel) capital, there was some basis to our ranting…and raving.

I could post a very long message, add charts and graphs, but suffice to say that it is my opinion that many “formal” angel groups should just x%$*&@ retire. The new model should leverage technology and particularly digital media. Like a YouTube for angel investing. Maybe AngelTube – Finance yourself!

Really, there is a model to explore here that could actually work. And, no wine or food is required! If you have ever been a presenter at one of these angel rituals, you know what I mean.

Here is what I am thinking. Combine the best attributes of a fundless sponsor with YouTube-type technology, the speed of Google’s search, the urgency of a ripe pear, the review process of Amazon.com and this model could speed badly needed capital (did I say badly needed capital?) to professionally screened and evaluated yet promising start up companies nationwide.

One event I attended with a client was just miserable. I asked an “angel” in the group of 30 or so middle-aged businessmen and women about their funding process and timing. Their process for evaluating investments was really, really interesting…and creative too! Worse, was their timing for a close. This fellow said their last deal took 120 days to close. OMG! 120 days is a lifetime to a start up trying to pay their phone bill that is 45 days late. Now, a Series A financing should take 90-120 days…not a $250,000 seed round. This is what I call “failure to communicate” and a broken, out-dated model for speeding badly needed capital to promising young companies. I may just do something about this.

The Worlds' Best Hamburger?

Now this is an interesting question and probably fairly subjective. Some will say "it’s outdoors, cooked on your BBQ, while surrounded by friends and family...drinking an ice cold beer". Others will say “Thad B at BOB's restaurant, with extra sautéed onions and six tomatoes". No doubt, someone will say "McDonald's" - subjective for sure and maybe even controversial.

But really, what is your definition of a great hamburger. Which condiments do you like? What is the best type of cheese? Choice of bread; toasted or cold...sesame seed bun or English muffin? Best type of vegetables and toppings. It's up to you Wimpy!

Please forward this on to your friends, family and co-worker then send me your thoughts.

Why?

Well, one of my projects for 2007 is to launch the world's best gourmet hamburger restaurant with two of the top restaurateurs in the country...they will no doubt want to know your thoughts. So, please tell us about your fantasy burger, your favorite type of fry and include your email address. When we have the results and a location for our first World’s best hamburger restaurant, we’ll let you know.

Simple Syrup

Taking charge is providing leadership on a mission for a specific purpose. Gifted leaders automatically take charge; it's just natural for them to do so. A few months ago, I attended a weekend retreat that taught leadership and relationship skills. In one of the segments, we learned how to place personalities in four quadrants; analysts, promoters, supporters and controller. That was interesting and a bit self effacing. I learned that I was a cross between a promoter and a controller. Like a good bull shitter and a control freak…sounds like a sales manager to me.

This was really enlightening…really…because there were a lot of screwed up people in this weekend leadership class. Of course I wasn’t one of them.

Some of the most valuable life lessons come from simple ideas and exchanges. I met some really interesting folks that weekend and formed one great friendship…after staring in his blue eyes for almost an hour. Yes, that was a drill and it was intense.

I also learned a valuable management lesson while listening to people and “sizing them up”. There are three ways to manage people:

1. Push them to achieve
2. Pull them to meet their goals; or
3. Hit them over the head with a baseball bat

Knowing which to do whom when is the key to successful management. So, in some cases, do all three. It’s okay to mix and match…as long as you have established where they are on the quad.

So, analysts are real slow but careful thinkers that hate to shop. That was interesting, s I started to frame my personal and professional relationships around this new thought. Kind of like a procrastinator…at least that’s the view from the control freaks perspective. They are in the top right.

Below them is the support group, the nurturers. They’re not really just a bunch of whiners. More like kind, good field reps or a good lieutenant and probably some of your most loyal best friends. Again, it’s your perspective. If I was an analyst not a controller/promoter (bullshit sales manager-type) my perspective may well be different because controllers always tell the truth.

The promoters, bottom left of the quadrant, are more dominate and to the point. The “one call closer” type. Let’s “giter-done” so we can do something else type. Great space for entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, sales, marketing and other professionals. Now, the funny thing was not one of the 30 or so folks in our session was honest enough to place himself or herself in the controller position; upper left. People wanted their friends and spouses to go (the real control freaks) into the quad…but NOT THEM. Not one person made the leap. A couple were on the line between promote and control but never crossed the line to honesty.

This was enlightening for two simple reasons:

1. People are generally full of shit and dishonest with themselves and;
2. No one wants to be perceived as a control freak.

By the way, simple syrup is that gunk bartenders use to sweeten cocktails, especially a good Irish coffee. It's water and sugar...honestly!

Embarka Music Portal is getting closer to launch...

What if there was a way to reinvent a whole industry. How powerful and exciting would that be? The Internet changes everything and forces one to evaluate basic and mature methods of conducting business. While the Internet has yet to figure out how to deliver a pizza... physically anyway, everything digital can be however. My favorite subject and industry lately is digital media. In connection with this, I co-founded embarka digital media last January because I personally believe that all media will be delivered digitally in the future making broadcast television irrelevant and CD's obsolete. If this prediction is true, then I want to be part of this shift.


We are all pretty excited around the embarka offices these days and not just because it’s Christmas. Alpha 15 was delivered 25 days ahead of schedule using 33.3% of the original budget. We are raising the second round $1 million we need to bridge us and the Beta until we complete the management team and secure our $5 million Series A beginning in January. We have a valuable salesforces.com tool set, an eBay marketplace wrapped in a MySpace social network business plan that leapfrogs the competition. A lot of domain expertise and a keen sense of the market have fast-tracked this.

So, thanks to our 8 programmers, 7 seed investors, 6 months of planning, 5 business models, 3 great attorneys, 2 project managers and 1 great idea…and a musician in a pear tree.

Recently I had a conversation with an entrepreneur who also believes in this vision. We started out discussing blogs and the fact that a new blog is started every 0.8 seconds. We then moved quickly to discussing the billions of web sites that occupy space on the Internet. This is exciting! No shortage of customers here. This tells me that personal digital publishing and user generated content will be the standard in the future for communicating thoughts and perspectives on any subject matter. I want to be part of this too.

A new venture for Bailiwick Consumer Group, my little think-tank, fundless sponsor and corporate development company, is SnapMags Personal Publisher. SnapMags is a cool patented digital conversion tool that will enable any person to create digital magazines from personal content and embed them on their blog or web site. Why is this so cool? Well, personal media is viral and by socializing personal media in a magazine format where links to support your content may be included, personal content suddenly become interactive and fun to read in a familiar magazine-type format. So, upload a story, add rich media and relevant links to a Christmas message, or personal travel log and send invitations to your friends. No image reader to download and no barrier to entry…FREE. SnapMags may become a video, photo and travel journal; a business plan, a selling document, a business brochure or book that personalizes and publishes creative works in an interactive way.

SnapMags will power this little application for up to 6 pages for free. Did I say free? Users/readers may then click on the link to the SnapMags web site to learn more or upgrade to premium services at less than $2.00 a page for bigger publications. Pretty cool, powerful and viral. But, wait there’s more. SnapMags will also help with behavior recommendations for rich media…music, video, hobbies, travel, etc. Using search and sort algorithms to manage the collection of data, users will have unique access to relevant information that may ultimately affect their purchasing behavior. Google does this with Gmail...look to the right of your Gmail email browser and see several sponsored links...it's not a coincidence that those paid links are topical.

Looks like an advertising and transaction model using a fun application that can easily be embedded into billions of web sites and blogs…I like that too!

muSick in the Head: Music 2.0 Companies

muSick in the Head: Music 2.0 Companies

Looking forward to 2007

Just this morning I was looking out to a snowy yard and relished its clean, white virgin qualities. When the air is crisp and there is fresh snow on the ground, there is no better time to reflect on the past and plan for the future.

I believe 2007 will be an interesting year for politics, the environment and for business.

Politically, we can't keep discussing the same topics without making progress, particularly as we move into an election year in 2008. Immigration; the Middle East; terrorism, the climate and energy crisis' and the economy, all will begin to see a bit of progress with reasonable solutions beginning in 2007. Demo's will no doubt help this effort.

Environmentally, I see big investment in green technologies. It seems that a lot of wealthy private investors are looking at fueling new businesses that promise to innovate, create and solve big problems. VC's tend to bandwagon and in this case, it may be a good thing. But, I hope the VC's that do invest in this industry take a long term view. It will be like investing in a drug discovery company with a ton of regulation.

Business in 2007 will be opportunistic and I see the IPO market opening up again. Two things are driving this; (1) a lot of capital has been invested in young companies over the past few years, so it's time to monetize. Initial Public Offerings will provide the exit needed to return capital to the institutions that provide the capital in the first place; and (2) Financial markets always have and always will be run by fear and greed. VC's are greedy. But, have they really learned from their past mistakes in rushing young companies to the capital markets? This time, however, it may be good for the founders, the investors and the markets. We'll see.

So, here is my top 10 for 2007:

1. Social networking will begin to mature and go vertical. This will be terrific for the consumer as they splinter off to networks that are meaningful to them. Social marketplaces will emerge and go global providing micro-businesses and independent artists with a unique opportunity to build brands online very quickly.

2. Digital media will be the big growth vehicle as all things digital begin to converge. Billions will be invested in 2007 as fragmented markets begin to consolidate providing exits to all of the start-ups founded years before. New leadership will begin to appear and new consumer brands will emerge as portals for independent digital publishing, digital media and consumers too.

3. The music industry will finally start to wake up and embrace the forces of change. This will be terrific for independent artists but it will still take a few more years before radio, music, fans, clubs and distribution are all in sync again. This is a major shift of power in a $75 billion world-wide industry...good things do take time. There will be a few newly formed companies possessing superior business models that offer fresh perspectves that in fact, may be positioned to lead the new digital media industry.

4. Google should have a stock split because that is the only thing that will move the stock again and start attracting fresh employees. Google will also look to form a media company because at the of the day, they don't really believe that user generated content is the future like Yahoo does. This will be an interesting year for Google as they try to remain agile like a start up with the burden of operating like a Microsoft. Many Google employees are now fully vested and will jump ship to take a short break then start new companies. VC’s will back them just because they have Google on their resume. Big mistake. Remember 1996? VC’s should look to support consolidations not continue to frag the market with me-too companies.

5. Fine dining will lead the restaurant industry in year over year comp sales as casual dining finally fills up. It's been years in the making, but we now have too many casual restaurants operating in the States and sales will begin to naturally fall off. Too many seats, not enough customers and boring menus will help manifest this. Quick casual is still hot, but innovation will need to occur before there is too much excitement in this sector. Hotels continue to offer celebrity chefs low risk start up deals and in exchange, drive consumer traffic to the hotels and resorts. Many chefs will start mini chains of their proven upscale concepts and others will begin making simple foods great. This may be the theme over the next several years. So who does make the worlds best hamburger and French fry?

6. Retail and restaurant buy-side multiples are way off their high but sellers are still dreaming of a big pay off. There is also a glut of 30 year old brands looking for buyers and they will have an extremely difficulty time selling. Tired, old, boring restaurant concepts with average or below average unit economics does not an attractive opportunity make. I see more acquisitions fewer mergers and private equity starting to back management teams not just financial statements and hot concepts. So, where are the all star 50-something chain restaurant operators?

7. Back to work. I see people working all of the time. While driving, walking their dogs, sitting in airports and in restaurants, waiting for lights to turn green and on chair lifts...imagine? Blackberry, BlackJack, Palm, Pearl, you name it, we want any gadget that will connect us. Then, there is the natural convergence of sight and sound, the iPod phone? and the Chocolate. Warm fuzzy devices that connect us to our music, our people, our calendars, our contacts and our Internet anytime, anywhere. This place-shifting concept will change how we work and where we live if, companies trust employees to perform. So, I predict a new type of wage scale tied to quantifable performance and results. Historically, only sales personnel had a commissionable performance package. However, some smart HR manager will invent a novel way to pay non-sales employees so the employers get what they need and employees have flexibility and freedom...using their PDA's to connect...anywhere and any time...perhaps all the time!

8. In 2007, the handheld will begin to dominate all technology sectors. Content providers want access to over 1 billion terminals and consumers want to have access to that content and connectivity.

The ability of connect to the Internet is absolutely the killer opportunity over the next 10 years. Imagine having all of your documents stored online somewhere such that they are always with you. Imagine then not requiring anything more than a PDA device with you. You would not need to travel with a lap top. Some smart PC manufacturer will invent a simple $100 device and sell them to hotels by the thousands and to kiosk vending machine operators that rent them by the hour at Starbucks, airports, train stations and schools. No drive required, not really even storage. Online word and spreadsheet programs offered free by Google eleminate the need for Microsoft products. One USB port for a jump drive and an Internet connection and you are working. All you would need is a cellular connection at the least and a broadband connect at best. To call, to write, to access documents, make presentations, listen to music, buy and sell on ebay and research anything anytime anywhere will be the next big thing. The office will shrink to small cubes and conference rooms with digital video teleconferencing when you don’t want to hold an international video conference at the park. Our Occupational Place-Shifting (OOPS), it's happening now.

9. The SUV will begin its slow inexorable march toward its death as the 25-40 year old consumer starts to control auto purchasing. Gas prices will probably never dip below $2.00 a gallon and we have an energy crisis. The consumer knows this and smart consumers have already connected the dots. Oil is the bane of our current existence and is "fueling" climate, economic, terror, war and social crisis' because they are all connected. We need a solution and it will take billions, probably trillions to invent and support a new energy industry. So, we better start now.

10. Health and wellness will become the fastest growth industry when it embraces technology. The reality is that "boomers" are in their 60's, want to live forever and still control 99% of the wealth. You know the saying "if you don't have your health, you really don't have anything at all".

Read a book by Tony O'Donnell called Miracle Super Foods that Heal. This book makes the answer obvious. You are what you eat and we have been eating very well for years.

By combining the passion we as consumers have for gadgets, connectivity and technology with our need to live longer healthier lives, we will see this industry start to dominate all others within the next 5 years. We now drink Xango to relieve pain, seek out antioxidants and spas, rid our bodies of harmful toxins that were not around when our bodies were invented, (means that your liver and kidneys alone will not do the trick in this century) and we look for less fat and to eliminate transfat completely from our diet. We are finally seeing diets that actually work because nutritional programs have been formulated organically to work with our bodies at the molecular level and with our individual personalities to succeed. Isagenix and others like them, will become leaders in a $500 billion industry within the next 5 years. I believe these new age, alternative, nutritionally-savvy comanies have the answer to better nutrition, better health, and the byproduct is living longer and weight loss.

So, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah! Make 2007 a great year for you, your family and your business. There is no time like the present to start fresh with renewed passion...enjoy the snow.

Bio

Michael L. Atkinson is an entrepreneur, restaurateur and investment banker. Mr. Atkinson is currently Managing Director at Bailiwick Capital Partners, Chief Executive Officer at Embarka Digital Media, Inc., and CEO, co-founder at Talktiva, Inc.

For more information see Linkedin.