Hi y'all .. .. ..

I'm writing a story. I have a character who is about 40, has a wife
and three kids, is an ex-Microsoft guy who tries to set off on his own
building a business on the internet.  This business must begin with
high hopes and then slowly, almost imperceptibly fail miserably.  This
could be set within the last few years, before/after 9/11 and the
beginning of the US stock market troubles. Or not.  This guy idolizes
Randy Conrads (see threadview:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=458267) and he tries
to do something like what Randy did: start in his garage and
eventually sell the whole thing for millions.

I can't think what kind of business this might be . . . any suggestions?

ts

Hi, timespacette-ga 

  You are good at posting interesting questions.

   This one too sparked a great discussion -
 and I hope I am not killing it too soon,
 by posting an answer (?). 
 
However,  appearance of
".. What's worse, some of the phones escape into the wild ...
the biochips were engineered using frog DNA.  The smart, durable
phones start to breed.... "
a combination of RUR and Jurassic park, 
 means that brainstroming phase was exhausted ..

I would suggest reading about the real stories of hi-tech companies,
most do fail - for variety of reasons -so that part is easy.To paraphrase
  "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way ..."
www.penguinputnam.com/static/ rguides/us/anna_karenina.html


You need to decide if you are in software (e.g. Netscape) or 
hardware (e.g. Sillicon graphics) or a web-based bussines, such as amazon
(this one did not failed (yet :-)  but for each ebay there was five ONSALE.coms
which did - and read real case histores of the founders
http://www.pbs.org/wttw/ceoexchange/episode_101/jclark_bio.html
://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&safe=off&q=silicon+valley+entrepreneur&spell=1

SEARCH TERMS: internet pioneers
              silicon valley ventures
              silicon valley  pioneers
              
such as
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/siliconbase/oralhist.html

              internet history, such as
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/siliconbase/oralhist.html
              robotics history
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Robotics/History/People/

  same would go for  bio-tech.

 Considering your profile, as revealed by your questions,
and reading news, I would  suggest robotics -
 a remake of RUR with current technology:
 .. The Sword is the first armed variant of a track-wheeled robot developed by
 Foster-Miller of Waltham, Massachusetts called the TALON. ... 
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315008/posts
http://technocrat.net/article.pl?sid=04/11/06/0616207&mode=thread
http://www.arablog.net/blog/archives/2004/11/virginia_adopts.php

I would not go for 'breeding' aka 'soul' failure as Capek did,
 but  mix in some more plausible dangers, like the second amendment. 
2nd?? Well - yes. Amendment guaranted that 'state' and 'citizens militias' 
are  balanced in power. If populace has just knives and 'troops' or
KGB has machine guns, you have similar situations as when 'feds' have
autonomous weapons and citizens have just conventional fire-arms.
Balance is lost.
So you can have to RUR-like failure, or, if you are into wildly unlikely
science fiction, the company will fail when populace, on moral grounds,
will prevail over neocons, and will ban all  machines which kill people...

I would love to read such book.
 Could you post some fragments on GA,
when you have a technical question?

Hedgie

sorry Hedgie, you lost me on the last few paragraphs of your answer .
. . maybe I'm just having a bad brain day, I don't know. . . .

I found some great ideas in Philip Kaplan's book 'F'd Companies' . . .
and it seems to be working okay. Thanks, anyway!

A friend of a friend of mine was doing quite well selling photographic
darkroom supplies. Both his online and his brick-and-mortar businesses
dwindled as digital cameras became more popular. The demand for
darkroom equipment still exists, but there are fewer merchants in the
field, since the market has taken a dive.

HI timespacette. If he is internet marketing, does the thing have to
be real? Could it be something like a ?revolutionary splunder pin?
which no one could possibly be without. You would never have to
describe the product except obliquely, continually extolling its
advantage over previous alternatives such as lower power consumption,
or more housewife friendly. Then of course someone makes a ?turbo
splunder pin? and kills his sales but he suspects that his has been
cribbed by his wife?s alien lover. Just depends on how serious you
want to be -- and I?ve read some of your comments :-)

Or the product could be a virtual haggis. Sorry, couldn?t resist but
Burns? night is nigh.

Best

Maybe it would help to think of why the business fails and then be
inspired by the type of business;

1.  As pink suggested, try something that becomes obsolete due to
modern science.  Maybe a custom check printing business that goes
under because people stop using checks.  Or a stationery store.

2.  Something that is subsequently made illegal - like the sale of
Vioxx, or downloading music.

3.  Something that is already illegal, but he gets caught - bootleg
movies, drugs without proper prescription.

4.  A faddish invention that stops being popular, or that is so
popluar that everyone and their uncle starts making them.  I always
wanted a child tracking device to use at an amusement park to keep my
kids from running off and getting lost.  I also considered selling
add-a-bead jewelry to highschool kids, each bead stood for something
like "I have a boyfriend," "I am in the band," "I am doing it and my
parents don't know... but there is no good way to stop others from
making them too.  How about a picnic table that folds up for storage
in the winter?

5.  Maybe your hero is too successful and expands too quickly.  Loses
control over his staff and becomes inefficent and implodes.

Hope something in all of this brings out your muse.

I thought this guide to Internet industry failures might be helpful,
but a lot of the sites to which it links are themselves defunct!  (Not
all, though.)

http://search.looksmart.com/p/browse/us1/us317831/us317879/us65960/us923021/us1138003/

He starts a Search Engine thing which really explodes until something
better comes along.

I can't think what but it could be a Giggle.

hey, back at the keyboard . . . all interesting comments so far and
thank you efn-ga for that link; will study it some more . . .

guzzi & PB -- although this story has much irony, it's not really a giggler . . . 
(at least not this part!)

but I always enjoy yours . . .   :-)

keep 'em coming; I need all the help and giggles I can get . . .

ts

Here's a whole book full of crashed "dot coms."  Not an extremely
detailed analysis of them, but if you go to the nearest book store and
flip through it you are sure to get a few ideas for an online business
that is going to crash.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743228626/
(F'd Companies by Philip Kaplan)

This list of Ghost Sites could be inspirational.

http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/mef.shtml

character traits of my guy:

he's ex-Microsoft, he's smart at the tech end of things
wouldn't do anything illegal
would generally see the trends in product marketing world 
(i.e. the decline of photographic equipment would be a no-brainer)
but his business has something to do with people-service, rather than 'product'
he's a dreamer, an optimist, a puer eternus
he imagines that everyone will want this service, but somehow it all
goes terribly awry . . .

? ? ? 

ts

I am reminded of Steve Martin's invention, the Opti-Grab, in the movie
"The Jerk." It's a funny-looking little doohickey that fits on the
nosepiece of your eyeglasses. The inventor goes from rags to riches,
and back to rags again when it is learned that people become
cross-eyed when they use the invention.

So, for your story, how about high-tech goggles that make images on
your computer monitor appear to be in 3-D? They sell like the
proverbial hotcakes until it is found that, after a few months of
using the goggles, people develop eye problems of some kind.

ahhh!! . . .  the proverbial Google Goggles TM !!!

http://www.mortalwombat.com/Image/goggle.gif

well then, Pink, tell me true:  has it already beeen done?

somebody's at least got a logo, was that you?

(I could mention you on my acknowledgement page! ... or do you want royalties?)

ts

Something PDA related?

See http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20041223_155104.html

this looks like a good possibility . . .

not being savvy on these devices myself (cellphones don't work where I
live) I would have to post a whole new question to get clear on the
terms and definitions, etc, etc.

good one, thanks!

ts

Timespacette, 

What kind of business would work with the character and his story?

Try to unravel the question a little.  Then knit the ravelled sleeve
with care, so it looks like an answer.

Here are some character threads to pick at:
  -his creator's life: "Cellphones don't work where I live."  This
implies a place that's pretty remote, or rugged, or radioactive.
  -his community
	-is it an isolated farm community? 
	-is it in the mountains? 
	-is it Hanford, WA or Alamogordo, NM? 
  -his childhood
	-did he grow up there and stay ?
	-did he grow up there and leave?
	-did he grow up, leave, return as an adult ?
	-did he move there as an adult ?
  -his family
  -his past : why leave MS ?
	-was it time to strike out on his own ?
	-did he have to run away, run away?
	-did retire at 35 -- FYIFV ?
	-did he leave for family reasons?
  -his interests
	- hiking ?
	- birding ?
	- humor ?
  -his flaws
  -his virtues (much less interesting)
  -lessons he's learned from experience 
  -wrong lessons learned from experience
  -what does he value/idealize? : money, family, autonomy,  local
community, community of interest, Bill G, Randy C ?

Mix in your favorite pattern elements. Mine are:
  -parallelism
  -contrast
  -recombination

Play with a more detailed piece of the pattern : Awry?, why?
  - does the company fail because of external problems?
  - or is it something in the nature of the business?
  - or is it in the nature of the protagonist?

This is pretty darn vague, isn't it?.  Let's get a little more
specific, and look at some situations, and possible conflicts.  These
scenarios will be excessively flip, but will show what I mean.  (And
speaking of more specific, for now, I'll call the protagonist Gil B
[please, Timespacette, give him a better name!].)

---------------------------------------------------------

Gil B grew up in Alamogordo, NM.  The contrast between the desert's
peace and the Bomb's destructiveness instilled in him a powerful sense
of irony. This lead him to develop the humor search engine,
giggle.com, which failed because [choose one: ]
  - its IPO date was September 12, 2001.
  - specialized consumer search engines never took off the way everybody expected.
  - Gil's algorithm gave too much weight to "cesium and desistium" jokes.

----------------

Gil B grew up in a small town under the Pacific Flyway.  The migrating
geese inspired his avid birdwatching, which lead to his developing the
birding search engine, gaggle.com.  Migration also provides a nice
metaphor for Gil's pattern of leaving and returning to [choose one or
more: (his wife, his hometown, the software industry)].  Birders
flocked to Gaggle, and its success was truly a feather in our hero's
cap.

But success proved to be Gil's downfall.  He became a leader of the
environmental movement (all right so far ...).  Eventually though, he
began using Gaggle to advocate an extremely hardboiled avian-rights
position: Do not exploit birds in any way; don't eat birds, don't eat
their eggs, don't harm their nests; in fact, don't even TALK about
doing any of these these things -- not in any way, shape, or form.  In
fact, he ran afoul of [choose one: ]
  - his neighbors.  In the depressed lumber town where he lived,
locals asked for "spotted owl" when they wanted their KFC
extra-crispy.  Gil' position was less than popular.  Most of Gil's
parts were found in the sawmill.  Authorities suspect fowl play.
  - the software industry.  Gil began campaigning against Easter eggs
in software.  Gaggle was brought down by dozens of vicious shell
hacks.  It, and he, never recovered.  Nobody knows who hatched the
scheme.

--------------------------------------

Gil's kids hated going to the dentist, no big deal.  But it prompted
him to begin gargle.com.  Gargle slowly grew into the web's #1
dentistry site, eventually surpassing such rivals as isitsafe.com and
openopenopenwidernowkeepitopen.com.  Gil followed his ideals, and
added community and connection features for both patients and
professionals.  He built traffic with incisive journalism.  Gargle's
stories on dentistry in fiction
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=%22the+business%22+iain+banks+&btnG=Search
and  really weird dental questions
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=197812 were hits.  And
a series on celebrity smiles, "Implants and Falsies," was huge. 
Gargle lost money, but it lost less each year.

While Gargle lost money, Gil set his ideals aside in order to serve
the greater good -- and pay the bills.  He started an exotic dancer
site, gogoanswers.com.  Gogoanswers had all the expected features,
plus it built its community.  Customers asked the toothsome dancers
questions.  And customers asked each other question, too.  
Gogoanswers was a massive success.  Here's how Gil went broke from it:

Gil had learned two important things in his career.  First, he was
almost always the smartest, most competent person in the room -- any
room. Second, there was one surefire way to not explode in rage when a
subordinate screwed up a vital job -- prevent the screwup by doing the
vital job himself.

So, chronic understaffing caused by explosive growth + inability to
delegate + a flu epidemic + a holiday weekend = Gil worked 72 hours
straight, with no breaks and no sleep.  At the end of it,  he posted
two new series : "Implants and Falsies #2" and "Microfloss."  Really,
it's not surprising that he managed to post them to the wrong sites.  
And it's not surprising that, once he got into bed,  he was harder to
rouse than a dead grizzly bear.  When our Sleeping Ugly awoke -- 18
hours later -- he had more headlines than ever.  But he lost most of
his advertising, and he never got it back, and he went broke.

----------------------

Most vertical B2B portals died quick deaths.  But -- following the
lead of his hero, Randy C -- Gil built a genuine community around his
adhesives site, glueglue.com.  Glueglue's unusual stickiness allowed
it to survive far longer than most B2B sites.  The Glueglue
community's  survival contrasted ironically with the way [choose one
or more: (the nation's politics, Gil's marriage, the company Glueglue
Holdings Inc.)] came, um,  unglued.

----------------------------------------------------------

These pieces, alas, also show what NOT to wear:  You don't over-tailor
the suit so much that the character can't move normally.

Hope this helps,

sjlewis

I see this guy - let's call him Danny Zuko - living on a rock
somewhere in the Pacific.

This rock - let's call it Bikini Atoll - is so remote that it's used
as a testing ground for new weapons, including nerve gases.

One day, Danny loses his nerve, jumps in the sea and after a series of
amazing adventures with whales, sharks and mermaids, he is washed
ashore near the Microsoft Barracks where a kindly billionaire takes
pity on him.

He falls madly in love with Maria, one of the young lady scientits,
who tells him of a secret new development project that is set to
revolutionise the world.

Armed with this inside knowledge, he decides to set up business as a
Window Cleaner and he also woos Maria, the lovely scientit.

Sadly, Danny falls off his ladders which causes him to lose more nerve
and he is then unable to pursue his chosen vocation.

Fearing that Maria, the lovely scientit, will not love him anymore, he
returns to the Rock where he signs up for the local monastery and has
that special haircut.

We then see him living the life of a monk but one day when his rich
baritone is soaring out of the monastery he hears an echo.

Climbing the tower, he sees a beautiful nun dancing joyously on the
Rock and YES it is Maria, the beautiful scientit, who has wearied of a
world of windows and seeks her only true love within a windowless
monastery.

Like it?

Yes and so will your public!

Good Luck ... Now do the easy bit!

<smile!>

I"ve no time to respond just now  . . . . back soon!

PB:  'scientit?'

ts

Okay, I'll play:

<quote>
Here are some character threads to pick at:
   "Cellphones don't work where I live." -- that's me, not this
character.  It's me who doesn't know anything about cellphones . . .
This guy, Gilbert, could know a lot about cellphones, and lives in the
same town that Randy Conrads lives, which is Kent, Washington, a very
suburban bedroom community of Seattle. In fact, he drives by the
Conrad's home often on his way to the local Seven-Eleven . . .

  -his community
        see above
  -his childhood
        he grew up in Palo Alto, CA, went to UC Berkely, loved surfing
(he misses the Big Waves), worked for a time in Silly Con Valley,
before he moved to WA and met and married his WA native wife.
  -his family
        typical, very typical.  the kind you see on TV commercials,
happy, happy, happy . . . all the time. . . . and 2.5 kids and a
golden retriever, SUV, the works.
  -his past : why leave MS ?
        -was it time to strike out on his own ?  BINGO!  yes.
        -did he have to run away, run away?  no, he's well-liked. They
wished him well.
        -did retire at 35 -- FYIFV ?  nope.
        -did he leave for family reasons?  nein.
  -his interests
        - hiking ?  yes, he's the typical Seattle flannel shirt kinda
guy, but he'd prefer to surf.
        - birding ?  don't think so.
        - humor ?  He's funny, he's Mr. Charm, in the best sense of the word.
  -his flaws - 
  -his virtues (much less interesting) - see above, also, he's loves his family.
  -lessons he's learned from experience - he's been rather sheltered.
  -wrong lessons learned from experience - his assumption: business is
a piece o' cake.
  -what does he value/idealize? : 
money - yes 
family - yes 
autonomy - not so much, he just wants to make a lotta dough, fast.  
local community - hmm, not really 
community of interest - yeah, but he misses the writing on the wall
Bill G - no
Randy C - not necessarily personally (he doesn't know him) just as an ideal.

Mix in your favorite pattern elements. Mine are:
  -parallelism, contrast, recombination      --- could you say more here?

Play with a more detailed piece of the pattern : Awry?, why?
  - does the company fail because of external problems?  probably not;
probably doomed from the first
  - or is it something in the nature of the business?  -  yes.
  - or is it in the nature of the protagonist? -- yes.
The more I think about this, the more I think it has to be something
LIKE Classmates, that is a SERVICE, not a product. It has to be
intriguing, but pie-in-the-sky, could be funny, but has to be
believable.  His nature is partly to blame for it's failure: he has
the initial idea, he is carried away by the romance of the initial
idea and does not pay serious attention to the business plan.

This is pretty darn vague, isn't it?.    NO, THIS IS GREAT!

PB: the plural of 'scientit' must be 'scientits', right?

" . . . or am I right?"

ts

oops!  what is a story with the characters having MAJOR flaws?

as I said, he is the quintessential peur eternus, a grown-up, charming, Peter Pan. 
he's blind to business reality
even when he realizes the business is going down the tubes, he doesn't
tell his wife
(she has growing eBay business, and as his is failing, hers is taking off . . .)
he's got a big mortgage, car payments, 2.5 kids, the "whole catastrophe"
he's scared out of his wits
(it's also a matter of pride)

enough?

ts

BTW I love both Gil and Danny

. . . and their misadventures

 . . . maybe they could get together for a miniseries?

ts

And now here's a salacious twist ...

QUOTE:

She has growing eBay business, and as his is failing, hers is taking off ...

UNQUOTE

A stripper selling her services on ebay!

YES I do like that!

Especially if he becomes a monk.

<quote> Okay, I'll play. </q>

Thanks for letting me in your game, ts.

<q>
"Cellphones don't work where I live." -- that's me, not this
character.  It's me who doesn't know anything about cellphones . . .
</q>

I  apologize.  I wasn't clear there.  I didn't mean ?Timespacette  =
Gilbert.?  What I meant was,  well, several things ? none of which I
managed to say.

First,  I _like_ your cranky cell phone.  That's a nice crisp detail.  

Details add life.  Hannibal Lecter's main trait isn't a taste for fava
beans.  But a dish of fava beans says something  that  a double chili
cheese fries does not.

And the easiest place to get details is your own life.  Places and
people, actions and feelings:  anything in your experience can be raw
material.  At Gilbert's high school, one  perennial argument was,
?Coolest Steve: Jobs or Wozniak??  At my alma mater, the question was,
 ?Best pickup truck: Ford or Chevy??

Now, Palo Alto is famous for technology and higher learning (computers
help both), while my hometown is best known for tomatoes and nudist
serial killers (a reliable truck is essential).  Very different
places, right?  Not really.  At both schools, everything was the same:
  - disputants'  knowledge of the facts (obsessive); 
  - their precision in applying those facts (clumsy); 
  - their oratical zest (bloodthirsty);
  - and their other hot topic (Joe Montana:  godlike, or  merely superhuman?)**

In both places, everything was exactly the same, except where it was
different. Everything was the same because the underlying structure
was the same:  bored teenagers parroting what they heard from their
parents.  But details put flesh on the structural bones.

Anyway, what I meant was:  That cell phone is a nice detail. You can
use detail to great effect.  For your whole life you've been
accumulating details of every kind: simple and intricate, quiet and
loud, unique and universal.  And you can remix the hell out of  'em.

    Next: It's Little Story Pieces, not Binary Computational Narratology

-sjlewis


**(The answers are Woz, Chevy, merely superhuman.  Because my dad says so.)


PS   ts, I think Gil and Danny would make a great team.  Gil's wife
could join the team, as another scientit.  Scientits usually travel in
pairs, don't they?

Anyway, here's a scenario: Danny & Gil are working on a radical new
concept that will put them far ahead of the mobile phone competition. 
Their phones have a new chip incorporating biological elements.  The
genetically-engineered biochip makes the phones smarter and more
durable than other models.  Even better, the biological elements allow
the phones to actually empathize with their owners.

Unfortunately, your typical bio-phone don't have  a whole lotta love
for its owner -- not when the owner punches it in the face, slobbers
on it, and then trades up to a newer model within a year.  Quality of
service gets very bad.

What's worse, some of the phones escape into the wild.  Worst of all,
the biochips were engineered using frog DNA.  The smart, durable
phones start to breed....

Are you ready for  ?Cell Division??

-sl

PB & sl --

this is getting better by the minute . . .

more later, when I catch a little opportunity on the 'puter.

ts

<q>
Mix in your favorite pattern elements. Mine are:
  -parallelism, contrast, recombination      --- could you say more here?  </q>

Off  with the details!  Let's see what's underneath.  First, I have to
confess that it's been a long time since I've studied Plot and Story,
so my terminology may be both  idiosyncratic and imprecise.

Some good links:
http://www.psu.edu/dept/inart10_110/inart10/narr.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Narratology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36_Dramatic_Situations

Anyway, there are patterns in the way we see things.

Let's break it down into tiny pieces.  By ?things,? I mean: 
  - anything that can exist, or act, or be acted upon; 
  - their actions (and existence);
  - changes in things and their actions;
  - relationships among things, actions, changes, and relationships.

Here are some patterns for combining things:
  - Pairing:  Two things. 
  - Repetition:  Two things are the same
  - Contrast:  Two things are different.
  - Reversal:  Two things changing.
  - Recombination: More than one of the above.  Repeat as desired.

This is as basic as I can stand to get.  If I were truly rigorous, I
would drop some binary narratology on you -- just begin with the null
set and derive everything from that (?In the beginning, there was
nothing ....?).

These pieces are small enough.  Our ?things? turn out to be nouns,
verbs,  modifiers (adjectives & adverbs)  and prepositions. Their
relationships easily extend  to phrases and even simple sentences.

And in the patterns, we've got some simple yet flexible rules for
putting things together.  These patterns ? pairing, repetition,
contrast,  reversal, and recombination ? govern the ways we put
together story pieces. They are so simple you'll see them everywhere 
(Unfortunately, they're so general they may blend into each other and
everything else.).

In language, we use patterns to construct everything from sentences 
through paragraphs up to the most complex arguments.  In storytelling,
patterns are fundamental.  They are how we  arrange details into bits
of character and incident.  And they govern the composition of the
largest elements.  Look for patterns in: characterization, themes,
conflicts, situations,  story elements, plot devices, dramatic
unities, and the dairy section of your grocer.


Coming next:

    - Frankenstein's Baby

    - Examples using my lame stories from up thread

    - Examples using GOOD stories

    - Missy Elliot explains it all


-back soon,

sjlewis

There are different ways for success. Especially for gay he has got
experience and knowledge in internet in computer and able to open
e-business for ?work at home?. One of possibilities, for example, may
find here: http://newestmobile.blogspot.com/. And be sure that it?s
only one from millions other ways.