20-Apr-2024 11:41 GMT.		 UNDER CONSTRUCTION
[News] AmiWest transcripts onlineANN.lu
Posted on 07-Aug-2002 21:48 GMT by Seehund22 comments
View flat
View list
You didn't listen to the live UGN broadcasts from AmiWest? You didn't download the recorded speeches and interviews? Well, here is a (moderately) low bandwidth consuming opportunity to catch up with what people are fighting over today! I have sweated over the telephone interview with Thomas Frieden (Hyperion) and the speeches by and the interview with Bill McEwen (Amiga, Inc.).
Come, be amused and nauseous, scared and excited, it's all on the house. Be baffled by the mystery of the vanishing hardware, see the Mighty MacE pull new hardware licensees out of his hat and get a naughty sneak peek of The Sexy Future Of Mating Fridges (all with Amiga(TM) stickers). Pick a future Fanatic Faction already today - is Symbian or WindowsCE.net the True Amiga?
List of all comments to this article
Sorted by date, most recent at bottom
Comment 1cOrpse07-Aug-2002 19:51 GMT
Comment 2Nakkel07-Aug-2002 19:58 GMT
Comment 3takemehomegrandma07-Aug-2002 20:10 GMT
Comment 4takemehomegrandma07-Aug-2002 21:31 GMT
Comment 5Douglas McLaughlin07-Aug-2002 21:57 GMT
Comment 6Troels Ersking07-Aug-2002 22:06 GMT
Comment 7Seehund07-Aug-2002 22:33 GMT
Comment 8Douglas McLaughlin07-Aug-2002 22:39 GMT
Comment 9Darrin08-Aug-2002 00:17 GMT
Comment 10Johan "Graak" Forsberg08-Aug-2002 01:48 GMT
Comment 11George Wyche08-Aug-2002 01:48 GMT
Comment 12cheesegrate08-Aug-2002 02:51 GMT
Comment 13Joe "Floid" Kanowitz08-Aug-2002 03:52 GMT
AmiWest transcripts online : Comment 14 of 22ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 08-Aug-2002 04:35 GMT
There's a great piece where Bill McEwen can't understand how a company that is in the black and profitable would need outside investment. That should be a healthy reminder to us that Bill knows nothing about the history of our industry.
Several very famous computer companies were once in exactly the situation he describes. I'll give the example of Acorn here, who are these days mostly associated with ARM, but were once a brand new start up making hobbyist computers.
Acorn had some great people, some great ideas and a bank loan. They bought hardware for a certain amount of money, made computers, and sold them for a bunch more money. These things were flying off the shelves - it turns out that people wanted to buy computers. A lot of people.
So at the beginning of each month money from last month's sales was pouring into their bank account and Acorn had to make a choice. How much should they spend on making next month's computers ?
Spend the same as last month and let the savings build up? Spend the money coming in - Expand slowly and gradually carve out a niche?
Bill would have lost Acorn a lot of money and probably made sure that they got eaten alive by their competitors. What Acorn actually did was to borrow as much as possible and expand as quickly as possible. As strange as it sounds if your company is genuinely profitable it makes sense to *borrow* money and seek outside *investment* in order to make even more profit.
This doesn't apply to huge, mature companies like industrials, because they can't expand quickly so they don't need the money. It also doesn't apply to a few insane cases like supermarkets and Microsoft, which generate so much CASH that it's often impossible for them to spend it, let alone borrow more.
Jump...
#16 Anonymous #17 Anonymous
TopPrevious commentNext commentbottom
List of all comments to this article (continued)
Comment 15smithy08-Aug-2002 13:49 GMT
Comment 16Anonymous08-Aug-2002 14:28 GMT
Comment 17Anonymous08-Aug-2002 14:30 GMT
Comment 18Seehund08-Aug-2002 23:17 GMT
Comment 19Anonymous09-Aug-2002 00:13 GMT
Comment 20DaveW09-Aug-2002 08:04 GMT
Comment 21smithy09-Aug-2002 13:29 GMT
Comment 22pixie09-Aug-2002 13:42 GMT
Back to Top