Don't make my eyes bleed: a rant about business plans by Neil Davidson

http://www.neildavidson.com/dontmakemyeyesbleed.html

by revorad • 15 years ago

143 37 15 years ago

amirmc• 15 years ago

Nicely put together. Business planning can be great to help people organise their thoughts and uncover issues they'd overlooked.

However, business plans can easily fall into the same trap that bad powerpoint ends up in. That of authors hiding behind it instead of using it to tell a story. It's the story that really matters.

erichocean9• 15 years ago

I liked his "what is your mantra" slide. For my own company, Fohr, we have a slide with our "Investment Thesis", which seems to be similar in spirit:

Fohr is able to leverage computer-photography and the ﬁlm Carpathia to build a proﬁtable, next generation ﬁlm studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with computer-animation and Toy Story in the Nineties.

UPDATE (edited version based on feedback below): Fohr can use the first feature ﬁlm we're making with "computer-photography" to build a new, publicly-owned ﬁlm studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with Toy Story and computer-animation in the 1990s – if we can raise the funds to continue our technology leadership over the next two years.

revorad• 15 years ago

I'm most likely not your target customer, so ignore this piece of criticism if it's useless to you:

I don't understand what your company mantra/slogan above means at all.

The words "leverage" and "next generation" ring MBA-speak alarm bells in my head. Generally, "leverage" can be substituted with the much simpler "use". And you don't get to decide if your technology is "next generation". The market will decide years later.

What do you mean by computer-photography?

I don't know the film Carpathia.

The analogy is very vague. What exactly are you repeating?

erichocean9• 15 years ago

I don't understand what your company mantra/slogan above means at all.

In your defense, this comes after three slides of prep which explain computer-photography, and how Fohr is like Pixar.

I meant "leverage" in the sense of "strategic advantage; power to act effectively". "Use" is better though, and I'll switch to that. I do think next generation applies here -- provided you think Toy Story was a next generation way to make animated films.

What do you mean by computer-photography?

I wrote a primer on it here: http://erichocean.com/fohr/lighting.html. In a nutshell, if a classically-trained Director of Photography can light the film's CGI environments using their existing, real-world knowledge of lighting, and if those "virtual lights" are identical to their real-world counterparts, the 3D rendering engine falls in the "computer-photography" category.

I don't know the film Carpathia.

Well, it hasn't been made yet. :) Hopefully you'll see it when it comes out, the release date is November 20, 2013.

The analogy is very vague. What exactly are you repeating?

Fohr is at the place, as a company, that Pixar was at before they made Toy Story. Our "Toy Story" is a film called Carpathia. Similar to Pixar, we can build a public company on the strength of our first film and computer-photography. (Pixar IPO'd a week after Toy Story came out, in 1995.)

Our basic investment thesis (why we think investors should invest in our tech side) is that we can take the same path Pixar did, leading to an IPO. (We can make Carpathia regardless, but we can only build an independent studio with investment on the tech side of our business.)

Hope this helps, and thanks for the feedback!

arethuza• 15 years ago

I personally find that including words like "profitable" in that kind of pitch actually comes off sounding negative as that property is rather implied by the overall context - by including that word you aren't really adding extra information (you would presumably never state that you were going to build a non-profitable film studio).

Note: this could well be a personal grump of mine!

erichocean9• 15 years ago

That's great feedback! I similarly dislike meaningless verbiage, but somehow didn't see it in my own writing (heh).

cubicle672• 15 years ago

I've been reading through your blog, and it took me a while to get what you're doing. I'm still not sure I fully understand, but this sentence (last line from http://erichocean.com/fohr/story.html) looks like it captures what you're doing quite succinctly:

moving lighting into pre-production

To me, that sells it. It's concrete and it promises something that (I assume) directors would love to be able to do but can't (yet!) because it's pretty much impossible

Question - Which part of Pixar are you hoping to emulate? The studio part or the technology part? Will you concentrate on making films or on building a technology that you can licence?

erichocean9• 15 years ago

First, thanks for taking the time to give your feedback. "Moving lighting into pre-production" is the key thing that allows all of the other good things to happen, and cannot be done today without our tech (AFAIK).

Question - Which part of Pixar are you hoping to emulate? The studio part or the technology part? Will you concentrate on making films or on building a technology that you can licence?

I'm a filmmaker, and started looking into how Pixar was getting such good results in 1998. I decided at that time that it was their ability to start rough, iterate and fix things, as they moved towards the final product. In live-action filmmaking, we basically are always shooting "final" footage and don't get to iterate much at all.

Anyway, long story short, I wanted to iterate on live-action stuff, and it turns out that in order to get imagery before production that is valid when you get to production, you need 100% physically-correct lighting (or what I now call computer-photography).

So, my goal is to emulate Pixar in the studio aspect -- how they develop and produce films. I'm not opposed to selling our technology, but I think that the core "tech" has very little to do with why Pixar is successful as an animation studio -- it's basically a legacy part of their business.

In fact, Pixar's Renderman division is in Seattle, and is run totally independently. (Most people think Pixar gets "first dibs" or whatever on new rendering features, but they don't. Pixar uses the latest version of Renderman like everyone else.)

brain5ide• 15 years ago

From what I've read it seems like your mantra should be like Coca cola zero branding: Real CGI, zero cost. Well, 20% to be precise, but still. Mantra is a slogan that everybody should understand. You give it to a preschooler and he knows what to do. Correct me if I'm wrong.

erichocean9• 15 years ago

I like it. How does "Instant CGI" sound? That's probably closer to our system (it's instant when you're shooting on set -- obviously it takes time to set up the CGI environment, although changes do happen in realtime -- moving lights, props, etc).

Our computer-photography system, called Metropolis, can still run in real-time with arbitrary camera movements (e.g. Steadicam), even when actors are being composited live within the CGI environments, and even when the CGI environment contains animation (wind, water, etc). The camera operator sees the combined scene in the viewfinder, live.

jonnathanson3• 15 years ago

"Fohr can use the first feature ﬁlm we're making with "computer-photography" to build a new, publicly-owned ﬁlm studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with Toy Story and computer-animation in the 1990s – if we can raise the funds to continue our technology leadership over the next two years."

- "Computer-photography" doesn't sound all that compelling, to be honest. How is this better than computer animation (CGI), as used by Pixar, Lucasfilm, et al.? Assume that the layperson -- investors included -- will have no idea what this phrase means. Instead, substitute a brief description of what "computer-photography" can do that makes it so compelling. Is it massively cheaper than traditional CGI? Is it more publicly accessible? Easier to use? Does it produce superior results? Let's assume, for a second, that it's cheaper than CGI and produces comparable results. In this case, I'd use the phrase "advanced, radically inexpensive computer animation technology." Or something to that effect.

- Strike the word "new" from the first sentence, because obviously it doesn't exist yet, and hence, the creation of the studio will be the creation of a new studio. Ditto either "feature" or "film," as the phrase "feature film" is redundant. (Yes, I'm aware that there are technical differences within the industry between a "feature film" and other types of film. But the word "feature," used as a noun, will suffice on its own).

- Describing your goal as simply "a repeat of...Pixar" makes it seem as though you're simply building a Pixar knockoff, a few decades after the fact. I like how you reference Pixar, because it gives the reader a good sense of what this is. But how is this different from Pixar, if not better than Pixar? Looking back at your "publicly owned" statement, would it be fair to call your studio a "Pixar for the people"? "Pixar for the YouTube set"? Or something to that effect? Tell us why the world needs Fohr, not why the world needs Pixar Clone.

erichocean9• 15 years ago

The feedback so far has been fantastic (and unexpected), and your comment was no exception. I'd like to respond to one specific line:

"Tell us why the world needs Fohr, not why the world needs Pixar Clone."

A common complaint I hear is "Why can't Hollywood make movies as well as Pixar?" When people say this, by "Hollywood", they mean live-action, non-animated movies -- movies with real people in them.

The reason Hollywood can't make movies as well as Pixar is because Pixar cheats -- Pixar can do things that "Hollywood" cannot, due to technology differences in how the films are made.

Specifically, Pixar can iterate on each movie for years, making drastic changes to the story, timing, edit, music, dialogue, acting at any time. They literally "make" the film hundreds of times over a four year period.

In a way, Pixar starts very early on with the "minimum viable film", and mercilessly beats out every problem until the film is as good as they can make it. Then they release it to you and me.

Fohr has the tech and filmmaking system to take that same approach on a live-action film (the key tech needed to do so is computer-photography). So in the sense of "making better movies", we want Fohr to be a Pixar Clone. That's our whole goal.

jonnathanson3• 15 years ago

Also, a word of caution: be very careful about laying it all on the line in a single film. I mean, Carpathia had better be darned good. You've referenced Pixar, so for better or for worse, people hearing your pitch are going to be expecting Toy Story. And all of the baggage that comes with it: top-notch animation, brilliant writing, creative direction, tier-one voice acting, etc. If Carpathia is anything more than a standard deviation below typical Pixar fare, you're in a dicey situation.

Bear in mind that even Pixar didn't launch with Toy Story. The company was founded in 1979, and Toy Story debuted in 1995. In those intervening 16 years, the company did a lot of white-label work in the B2B space, for such clients as George Lucas, PepsiCo, and Disney. It also produced a few short films and interstitials. All of this was part of a slow, steady ramp-up to its first feature-length production. And that production, Toy Story, was as much a triumph of writing and voice talent as it was a triumph of animation technology.

If you've got a great piece of tech on your hands, consider the B2B (or B2-prosumer) space before diving into the deep end. There are a lot of young, hungry filmmakers and mini-studios out there right now who would kill for the chance to do Pixar-quality animation on a decidedly less-than-Pixar budget. You could make some nice coin, and help build your industry credibility and reputation, by providing animation services to these entities. Ditto advertising agencies. Just food for thought.

Finally, I apologize for sounding dickish in these comments. I'm just trying to be constructive, but firm. What you're doing sounds very cool, and I'm rooting for you. I just want to make sure you've got the best pitch (and plan) you can. Betting the farm on a single feature is an incredibly risky strategy. Conversely, if your tech is really solid and groundbreaking, there's no reason why you can't turn a tidy profit with it as you move up the storytelling learning curve.

tobydownton3• 15 years ago

I've seen the feedback for Fohr's mantra (all of which I agree with) and was wondering whether I could get feedback for our mantra/tagline (note: we are still building prototype, nothing to show yet).

Tagline is: "The Game Show We Can All Play"

Any feedback welcome, thanks

StavrosK2• 15 years ago

I like it, but what's the product?

tobydownton3• 15 years ago

Thanks StavrosK, yes, I probably should have provided some more detail around that. We're addressing what we see as the "Game Show problem" i.e. the fact that there aren't any Game Shows that people can play from the comfort of their own home over the internet - why is that? We think we know why and will use a unique approach to address that. So we're creating an online Game Show, one that anyone can play i.e. you get to be an actual contestant who can win real prizes. We're aiming to launch early next year...

atirip• 15 years ago

is this again some "creative" Eric Ries book selling campaign?

jedc• 15 years ago

Nope. Neil is CEO of Red Gate Software, and an angel investor. (And just a really good guy, too.)

He's been teaching himself to draw for a year or so, thus the format. :)

mbesto• 15 years ago

Aside from the lean startup, this is also an invaluable tool: http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/

Compliments Customer Drive Development very well.

lean• 15 years ago

Don't Make Me Download a PDF: a rant about rants

DenisM• 15 years ago

Sadly the choice for slides is between a bare PDF, slideshare and scribd. All three are awful choices imho, so... pick your poison.

saraid216• 15 years ago

We are on The Internet. There are things called Web Pages.

Jun8• 15 years ago

The Google HTML5 template is great: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2780929.

cateye• 15 years ago

I think there is a big difference between "a cool presentation of your business plan" for the outside world and an in depth and detailed plan and research for your own.

I agree that "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."

But this doesn't mean that all you need to know is, what a six year old knows. I notice that we tend to believe that having profound knowledge of your business is unnecessary.

But we don't need to bore everybody with this information.

Don't make my eyes bleed: a rant about business plans by Neil Davidson

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