1/ Founder Puzzles. Cover Stories. Part IV. Content plays
No hidden, deep, profound, insightful commentary here with this frame.
The image says what it is supposed to say.
Content plays are my favorite startups. Absurdly difficult to get right. Obscenely profitable if you do
2/ Done right, I believe content is one of the strongest export products of any country.
If you look at our music, art, opinions, literature, theater, and documentary scene you would be surprised by the diversity of material and depth of our talent.
3/ We once said the same thing about our technology industry.
Content is going to be bigger, better and richer.
But its not for everyone.
Those of us who get it right are going to do very well. Those of us who don’t are going to lose their shirts.
4/ The old way of doing content, the way we learned in school, is dead.
We have witnessed the many sad funerals in print. There will be more to follow.
The new world of content is a mix of reach, traffic, reader experience and technology. You need all 4 to make it work
5/ How do you go about to model content revenues? What does that involve?
If you sat down to enumerate content revenue streams, it would take you hours to list all of them down.
Just because you can list them down, doesn’t mean that you can make them work.
6/ Content in the new world is not about editorial integrity, authority or word count.
It is about understanding your audience, the context and language they want and giving it to them.
It is about freshness, acceptable quality, wit with a cutting edge, traffic and virality
7/ The new kids on the block get it. Some of them have already figured it out. The rest are on their way.
They are creative. They understand traffic. They get technology. They are broke and hungry.
They are going to eat our collective lunch.
8/ But making a content play work on Excel is just as hard as it is to make it work in real life.
You would be surprised at the number of pivots it take to finally find a recipe that begins to pay your bills.
The magic words. Dimes on a dollar. You can figure it out.
9/ Print is dead. It has been dead for a while, but we didn’t notice it. So is news in the form it exists today.
If you are still hanging in these two spaces, get out.
10/ Founder Puzzles. Cover Stories. Part IV. Content plays
A single customer credit transfer made on the SWIFT network.
The bane of remittance/ free lancer / tech founder challenge across banking sector in Pakistan. More so for small businesses / founders that receive sub $ 1,000 wires.
Once upon a time in a different life we wrote, ran and supported treasury systems that generated MT 103 messages for local banks.
Given how treasuries front / back offices are structured and how all $ payments are consolidated and cleared via NYC, workflow was simple.
Collect all outgoing payments, bundle them together into one balance for one market / relationship / target account.
Send a shorter message to primary US$ Nostro account targeted for out going transfers for one amount.
Open to all undergraduate and graduate programs in Karachi.
If you are:
a) Avid game player
b) Aspiring game designer
c) Care about creative expression
d) Curios about what make games playable, addictive, instant hits, or
e) Love real time community feedback
2019-20.
First and second half marathon.
Remote work + Zoom Cohort based live training.
Founder Puzzles. Product launch.
2020-21.
Surviving Covid + recovering.
Close call.
3rd half.
2021-22.
Context switching. Fixing my knee.
Growth and Economic Complexity.
Raising 6 at 18 post.
Scale multiples and idea selection framework.
The Pakistan dataset.
Ed-Tech and crypto deep dive.
Teaching Venture Capital + Fintech and Financial Innovation.
Shipping FP, 2nd Ed.