For our latest podcast, we spent some time with Maker’s Mark CEO Bill Samuels Jr., who described how one rather influential person helped launched the bourbon manufacturer into the stratosphere of recognition.
He also discusses the rationale and practice of “marketing without fingerprints” and the rapid growth of its ambassador community.
Monthly Archives: January 2006
TomoTherapy Raiss $14M in Late December
Madison based TomoTherapy recently raised $14M in Venture Capital.
Local “Arful Home” Site Guild.com Raises $7M
Judy Newman reports that Guild has raised another $7M. I am impressed that founder Toni Sikes has created an organization with so many lives – not an easy task. During the dot-com era, Guild raised several million in local funds along with over $30M in Venture Money. Those early investors lost their position when assets were purchased from Ashford (Newman briefly touches on this in her article, but doesn’t mention the amounts).
Several years ago, NBC 15 ran a story on Guild. They, too made no mention of the firm’s dot com fund raising and sale. I phoned the reporter (whose name escapes me) and asked why she did not describe the firms early investment rounds? She replied that “those people got to keep their (worthless) stock”.
In some respects, it is a sign of progress that a firm can have more than one life in Madison.
This type of incomplete cheerleading, unfortunately simply makes it more difficult for other entrepreneurs to startup and raise capital. People within the investment community are well aware of these matters.
The Case for Fanatacism
For 80 years, groundbreaking aesthetics coupled with sci-fi features, such as a CD player that opens with the wave of a hand, or self-equalizing speakers, have given B&O products a magical quality that transcends the stylistic comings and goings of competitors. In the eyes of B&O’s brain trust, making that happen boils down to a shocking, and shockingly simple, strategy: Design always wins.
“Personally, I have no influence on design,” says B&O CEO Torben Ballegaard Sorensen, an always smiling, somehow exquisitely tan, square-jawed Dane. In other words, Sorensen, despite his business acumen (or because of it), serves as little more than a steward whose task it is to ensure that B&O’s design process continues unfettered, as it has since the 1960s. Sorensen runs the company’s operations, but he hands over control of product development and design to one superdominant personality–a freelance designer, no less.
Fortune 500 Video Podcast – GM
Interesting look to the future – today: GM’s video podcast of their Camaro concept car. Not sure about the car, but it’s interesting that they are getting the word out using these tools.
IRS Sued on Failure to Release Tax Data
Records showing how thoroughly the Internal Revenue Service audits big corporations and the rich, and how much it discounts the additional taxes assessed after audits, are being withheld from the public despite a 1976 court order requiring their disclosure, according to a legal motion filed last week in federal court in Seattle.
For decades, the information was given at no charge to a professor at Syracuse University, Susan B. Long, who made it available on the Internet at trac.syr.edu, with tools for people to conduct their own analyses.
Among other findings, Professor Long’s information has shown that in 1999 the poor were more likely than the rich to be audited.
David Burnham, co-director with Professor Long of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which collects raw government data, said the withheld information made it impossible to evaluate the intensity of audits. Mr. Burnham noted that the withheld data included figures that indicated how much auditors say is owed in extra taxes, but that the tax agency lets taxpayers negotiate down.
“It is simply impossible to evaluate the I.R.S. without this data,” Mr. Burnham said, “and they know it.”
500 Year Chart of Silver
Americans Grow to Fit Their Environment
Perhaps, not all that surprising. The housing numbers, “I think” reflect low interest rates and a generally expanding econompy.
Detroit International Auto Show Coverage
There’s an extraordinary amount of coverage online. I find the styling exercises interesting – sort of a look into the soul of these companies, or, at the very least their views on what the public wants:
- Autoblog
- Fastlane
- Detroit News
- Automobile Magazine
Joe White looks at the challenges facing Ford and GM. Interestingly, Ford is showing a very large truck concept, the Super Chief that can run on traditional gas, ethanol or hydrogen.
Kinsley on the Future of Newspapers: Black and White and Dead All Over
And so, at last, there are two piles of paper: a short one of stuff to read, and a tall one of stuff to throw away. Unfortunately, many people are taking the logic of this process one step further. Instead of buying a paper in order to throw most of it away, they are not buying it in the first place.
No one knows how all this will play out. But it is hard to believe that there will be room in the economy for delivering news by the Rube Goldberg process described above. That doesn’t mean newspapers are toast. After all, they’ve got the brand names. You gotta trust something called the “Post-Intelligencer” more than something called “Yahoo” or “Google,” don’t you? No, seriously, don’t you? Okay, how old did you say you are?