I can't take it anymore...
13/02/2008 09:10  - (SA)  

Chris Roper

I can't take this shit anymore. What the hell is wrong with you people? You're so negative, I'm surprised the air doesn't freeze around your empty heads.

The latest pile of pessimistic crap to pass across my much abused desktop is a blog entry from one A Smith (an alias, I assume), entitled "Another reason to emmigrate [sic]."

Let me quote the blurb in full: "Never mind our electricity issues, crime and political mayhem - I've found another reason to emmigrate [sic] from South Africa. Business in the rest of the world sounds so damn easy!"

The blog's called Ideate, which I assume is a corruption of the word "idiot", and it's touted as: "Some passionate entrepreneurs share stories, adventures and lessons in their quest to do great business on the Dark Continent."

Yes, you read that correctly. The Dark Continent. Ha ha! The Dark Continent! Sob.

Let me get this straight: you want to do great business, but your idea of selling your environment as business-friendly is to refer to it as "The Dark Continent"? That's like selling Big Macs with a campaign that starts "Now with more minced hoof and intestine!"

Genius comes in many forms

I shouldn't be so critical of the ideates, I guess. They're just trying to keep a smile on their faces while confronting some pretty crap realities in South Africa. But when you start looking everywhere for reasons to emigrate, I can't help thinking that you've already made your minds up.

The blog entry paints a picture of how easy it is to raise R30m if you aren't living in this goddam hellhole of a country, a place so incredibly backward, dangerous and, yes, dark, that you can't even get someone to give you millions of rand to put up a site with videos of fat people dancing.

Here's the entry, pretty much in full: "Take these guys for example: DanceJam. They've come up with the idea of a website where people can upload videos of themselves dancing, and other people rate them. Wow, pure genius. Never mind that they haven't even launched yet, let alone made a cent in revenues, but they've been given over R30m in funding by investors. That makes this "idea" (plus some unfinished code and a few servers) worth more than a bunch of our established, and profitable listed companies on the JSE."

Now this idea isn't such genius. One of my staff thought of it a few months ago (and she ain't no genius), but we didn't launch it because we live in a country with minimal broadband penetration, and where the advertising model is such that you need massive traffic to make video-upload sites a more attractive proposition than, say, a site with pictures of girls with big breasts sitting on motorbikes.

I know, this is the Dark Continent, where people have natural rhythm, but even this obvious plus didn't sway our business decision.

At least he can spell 'emigrate'

Also, a minimum of research reveals that the person who raised this funding in America was MC Hammer, which is slightly different to some arb coming in off the street with the idea. And I'll bet MC Hammer can spell emigrate, which probably also makes a difference to the way his business proposals are received.

There's also just one other small point. We live in South Africa. South Africa, it will shock some of you to learn, is not in fact a small province of Silicon Valley, or even an outlying suburb of London. We have our own reality to live with, and yes, it includes companies like Eskom, who really should be the ones with the business slogan "a quest to do great business on the Dark Continent", since they're the morons apparently hellbent on making it dark.

But it also includes a host of great business opportunities, and lots of people willing to take chances on good ideas. We can all have big ideas that'll work in America, but having ones that work here is not as easy. And I don't think they'll work in Australia either, if that's what you were thinking.

Now we can go two ways with this. I could just pour more scorn on Ideate, or I could get a little more positive on their arses. It's easy to criticise negative people, but that's just heaping negativity on negativity, and if I remember my high school physics correctly, all that gets you is tears.

So I suggest you pop over to their blog to check out their entries, and then offer them money if they have any good ideas. And tell them to cheer up. They clearly haven't lost their sense of humour, but maybe some thief has stolen their perspective.