The ageless Ms. Time

There is a habit of starting stories with ‘Once upon a time’; this one’s different.

For, in this story Time plays the lead. Its about a lady named Sensei Time introspecting post Industrial Revolution, seen through the lifestyle of few of her children.

It was a silver morning. The factories roared with pride and its sirens shrieked Time’s arrival and departure, revealing her stride. It was on that particular day that Time decided she would pay the workforce by the siren.

For 8 hours of work, she decided to pay them with an agreed upon compensation. And with every extra effort, an incentive would be provided to complement the hard labor.

Time’s workers were the satisfied of the lot, as the wages she provided kept them happy and busy.

Businesses flourished, and many new enterprises were born to Time. The enterprises were Time’s children and she used her energy and authority in nurturing them. The growing up enterprises further added human resources to its workplace.

It all went fine, until one day the workers at some of Time’s enterprises were dissatisfied with their compensation and expressed discontent at how their work-life balance had suffered.

The business around busy-ness had been questioned.

Nevertheless, Time managed to keep their concerns at bay, comprising after mediation with the ruling parties for each enterprise.

Time grew older. She witnessed the rise of automated machines and the prominence it placed in her life, as it offered the flexibility to boost productivity at her enterprises. As she grew older she found some of these automated machines could use an added upgrade, done digitally, and she obliged.

However, workers at many of the enterprises staged a silent protest in a revolution that had to bear, Digital Revolution.

The protests remained silent as Time had full control over her enterprises that had gained the capacity of functioning without its workforce.

With the coming of age of this revolution, Time had found some of her best performing kids in Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and a host of other Fortune 500 companies. Other than private enterprises, Time also engaged in nurturing governments, consultants and freelancers in establishing them.

*** Taking a top-down approach with getting to know some of Time’s best known children (the enterprises), her foster kids (the consulting class) and the less privileged (the labor class) through their lifestyle ***

The business context - to make sense of how market scenarios have shaped after the digital revolution:

The value chain for a consumer market is divided into 3 parts : Production, Distribution and Consumption.

To make a profit in any consumer market it is needed to either gain a horizontal monopoly in any of the 3 parts or integrate two of the parts to deliver a vertical solution with a competitive advantage.

Before the internet era, the competitive advantage belonged to the one controlling distribution.

Eg: Newspapers, publishers, hotels, taxis etc had the business model with distributors backward integrated with the suppliers, and competing for exclusive supplier relation.

The internet era disrupted this altogether by distributing digital goods with zero distribution cost and zero transaction cost. Now distributors can forward integrate with consumers at scale. Here the distributors are none other than aggregators providing consumers with a superior user experience, which attracts suppliers to the platform. In turn attracting more consumers followed by more suppliers in a virtuous cycle.

Eg: Search (Google and web pages), Feed (Facebook and content), Shopping (Amazon and retail goods), Video (Netflix/YouTube and content creators), Transportation (Uber and drivers), Lodging (AirBnB and rooms, Expedia and hotels).

These internet based companies may have disrupted certain markets, but its just getting started. In the coming years with overall digitization and activating data using Artificial Intelligence (AI), most of these disruptors will sink their teeth in.

Enterprise : Amazon, Jeff Bezos and his ever lasting Time machine

The online marketplace, Amazon, is one of the most powerful technology companies in the world, headed by arguably the most powerful man within the technology realm at present. It’s original value proposition was low prices first and foremost.

Quoting Shakepeare,

“The world is a stage and we are all actors playing our part.”

Amazon’s success saw Jeff Bezos transition the world into an Amazon storefront and the shoppers gleefully enacting their part.

Now Amazon has its focus on saving its shoppers their time. With Amazon Prime delivering packages in an hour or so, and with its latest acquisition of Whole Foods, hopefully dispatching groceries too.

Bezos also happens to be a lead investor ($47 million) on a non-atomic clock, setup underground in a mountain in Texas that is supposed to last more than 10000 years. The Pyramid of Giza might have lasted that many years. But America is just 300 years old, and Amazon could pray last a century. Then what attracted Bezos into making that investment?

Recall the proverb,

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in?"

In Jeff Bezos words,

"We humans have become so technologically sophisticated that in certain ways we're dangerous to ourselves. It's going to be increasingly important over time for humanity to take a longer-term view of its future."

Which simply means that at a certain point in time, we need to view ‘time’ as the guardian of our future (sic). Here ‘time’ is a placed a value, that even if human civilization were to be doomed after say a nuke, or civilizations rise and fall, time shall be the sole survivor!

Consulting class : A writers bounty

Management consultants are always in high demand, particularly when consulting with the Big 4 Strategy firms (McKinsey, Bain &Co, BCG, Booze Allen) or Big 4 Audit firms (E&Y, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG) or lending their advice while being partners at VC firms, PEs and other Financial Institutions.

How about consulting independently as a writer? Can it be monetarily better than any of the above consulting stints?

- A guy in Silicon Valley runs a blog on digital strategy which is widely appreciated. In order to have absolute freedom in his say, without being biased towards any corporations, he refrains from private consulting. He shoots 3 blogs a week, 12 blogs a month, and charges a monthly subscription fee of $10 for accessing the 12 blog posts.

On being asked whether it would be wise to join a VC firm and make more money, he answers,

"The scale at which global subscriber growth peaks is much higher than how a salary grows."

For example: 

- Year 0 : 1000 subscribers —> complimentary

- Year 1 : 5000 subscribers —>   $ 50000

- Year 2 : 15000 subscribers —> $ 150000

- Year 3 : 30000 subscribers —> $ 300000

- Year 4 : 50000 subscribers —> $ 500000

That’s half a million dollars every month for writing 12 blogs. On inquiring if he will ever consider joining a VC firm, he playfully replied, "VC’s subscribe to me ;) "

- Another example is a lady in Silicon Valley who runs an incubator helping startups validate their business model with mentoring and access to her blogs and podcasts. The annual membership to the incubator costs $1000.

The two cases discussed above has one picking revenue in a subscription format while the other in a licensing format.

- A popular blog named Brainpicking, run by a lady named Maria Popova, curating and writing about culture, books and eclectic subjects on the internet. She avoids advertisement, that spoils the user experience and relies on Affiliate marketing and generous donations by well wishers.

- Travel bloggers with a fan following too are paid to publish content, monetized through Affiliate marketing.

All these writers and content creators spend on an average 12-15 hours a day researching content, copywriting and editing before publishing. They go through a struggle to produce top quality content, with each piece they publish.

While the best in the industry do not have a problem with monetization by subscription revenue, other publishers suffer while being dependent on advertising revenue offered by Google, FB, YouTube etc to run the show. This is what is troubling the publishing industry. The App store now has a sea of apps and games, and the advertising model for monetization is not helping the publishers.

For the content creators (videos, games etc), striking gold got a lot harder, as the existing advertising based system is broken.

Talking about industry, the consulting class do get paid a lot in certain professions. Those consulting with a good reputation and practicing professions like CA, Doctor, Architect, Lawyer etc. also take home a hefty paycheck.

The one observation a person can garner from all the above stuff is how ‘time’ can be bartered at a premium, when the merchandise on offer is exquisite.

The less privileged

After discussing two of Time’s favorite children, the least popular is the class of workers contributing to Time’s large family, yet sidelined from any of the achievements. They are the performers who are given a certain target and continue chasing it within a rat race, all their life.

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." ~ Lily Tomlin

The only hope for these less privileged to gain Time’s unconditional love is to raise their net-worth to be placed somewhere on top of the value chain.

Or in other words, simply become rich.

To become rich means gaining wealth, and money usually is made through one of the 5 business models: Advertising, Commerce, Licensing, Subscription, Transaction.

A quick guide to becoming a millionaire in 5 ways (other than highly paid consulting/freelancing):

- Inherit the wealth

- Win a lotto

- An employee investing the savings over the years on long term wise-investments

- Being an employee of a well funded startup and gaining employee shares

- Building your own product/service company

Of all the above, people have the misconception of believing that starting a company is the one which has the best probability of striking it rich.

When in fact, it is the probability of joining a well funded startup as an early employee and gaining shares that has the higher odds.

Long story short, after looking at Time through a first-person perspective, influencing society through enterprises and class based system - what is the significance that time places?

- Is it about building enterprises, making society better, doing a bit of philanthropy and Impact investing?

- Is it to be exceptionally good at something in your lifetime?

- Is it to chase the dream of becoming rich all your lifetime?

The motivation for most has to do with, ’Time is money’, the driver of all things social.

Its either that or the Einstein way, ’Time is space’.

The word ’Sensei’ in Japanese is literally translated as “the person born before another”, and in general usage when used with a person’s name means “teacher”.

Sensei Time, she could be the teacher guiding the system. A teaching can come from a person/guru or from an experience (‘anubhavam guru’).

When a person has gained a positive experience with some success, quite often others compliment with a remark, “That's his/her good time”.

Wishful thinking : The time they are referring to could be the graceful Sensei Time, the mentor unseen and her blessing.