Not only have hiphop artists been rhyming about business, and making references to the industry, but they have been conducting legitimate businesses outside of rapping, for years. From Run DMC's major sponsorship with Adidas, to Russell Simmon's and Phat Farm, but also 50 Cent's deal with Vitamen Water and Coca Cola, Jay-Z's minority stake in the New Jersey Nets, and much more. But now days, rappers are actually getting into the web startup game as well. LL Cool J has created Boomdizzle.com, TI runs Streetcred.com, Dame Dash heads up Blocksavvy.com, and Russell Simmons now has Globalgrind.com. HipHop music lovers are heavy web users, and loyal consumers. And hiphop artists and record label moguls are capitalizing on that fact, by bringing their current following, and their buying power, to their other business ventures, including their web startups.
I think a fantastic example of this startup/hip hop analogy is Cash Money records, which started very low budget and applied the "release early and often" philosophy.
Hip hop has an immense amount of culture in it. As with anything, there is terrible rap that is empty of anything worthwhile, and there is hip hop that beautifully embeds the struggles and hopes of a generation and a creative outlet for those that otherwise would not have one.
There are many ways to interpret those lyrics, here is mine:
#1 -> don't brag. common sense
#2 -> never let them know your next move, is not exactly about innovation, it's about being unpredictable so it's harder to hit you. For crack dealers this makes sense. Innovation in the drugs scene would be to come out with a new way to get high (which crack actually was...).
#3 -> never trust nobody: Paranoia is the hallmark of the true junkie, as well as of the dealers scene. It serves no place in business, you have to learn how to trust people. Key employees, business partners and so on. This is coming from somebody that has been burnt once. I'd rather get burned again than to live my life in fear of what my partners could be doing to screw me over. And patents are totally against my principles, time to market is what it is all about and the internet has made that easier than ever before. You actually can make a killing on an idea+good execution these days. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't investigate if there is a fire when you see smoke. Paranoia spoils the atmosphere like nothing else will though, so use with caution.
#4 never get high on your own supply: crack dealers parlance to make sure you understand the difference between the stuff you've got for trade and for personal use. If you can't make that difference you'll use up your trade stash and you'll be out of business. For regular business people this is bs, if you would not use your own product you're basically telling people that it is not good enough for you. The chairman of a major car brand had better drive his own product, not a competitors or the press would have a field day with it.
#5 don't sell to friends and family: I've got mixed feelings about that one. It's true that you might not get the best feedback possible that way, but look at it from another angle, if they won't use your product, how on earth are you going to sell to perfect strangers. And discounts for friends, family and employees are quite ok, especially if the product is virtual.
#6 no credit -> agreed 100%, but also the other way around, take no credit for the company unless you absolutely have to. Very few startups need (large) lines of credit. If you're working on something virtual there are only a few things that will actually cost money. It's probably better to save for a bit and then to execute than to load up your fledgeling startup with interest payments right from day #1.
#7 separate family and business -> It depends. Some people work great as a team, even though they are family, some people can't even go to a birthday party together even though they are family. Just as with strangers with family it is important to have your responsibilities and rights absolutely clear. It's a lack of clarity and confusion that will lead to trouble, not whether someone is family or not.
#8 no weight -> this relates to not carrying stuff so that when you get stopped for a check you don't happen to have a load of stuff on you, so use dead drops and so on. Good advice in the drugs world. This is good advice, so keep your passwords where you can get at them but nobody else can, preferably in your head.
#9 I don't understand the slang, so no comment
#10 is about accepting drugs that you can not pay for, in other words consignment sales. Bad move for a crack pusher. For a business it's a way to finance real world stuff that they are sure they can move, it's a lot cheaper than going to the bank which is why it's done all over the world. But mostly in the physical goods trade. Hard to 'consign' a bucket of bits. The equity or loan question is a tough one, each startup sooner or later has to face it and if and when the time comes you'll have to weigh the price of equity very carefully against a standard loan.
So, no offense to the late Notorious BIG, but the interpretations were a little stretched.
If anybody should get any weird ideas about me because of the above, I grew up in a city with a very lively drugs scene, but I never even smoked a cigarette.
Regarding number #9, it refers to the very real danger those involved in the drug trade face if they are perceived to be even in the same vicinity as officers of the law. If you are seen to be an informant, your competitors (or even partners in your supply chain or organization) may take preventative retaliatory action without worrying about getting all the facts.
I think this is actually one of the most fitting of the 10 points. You have to be very careful about appearances, both with respect to potential dealmaking, as well as more generally staying out in front of the curve in managing your brand image. Its easy for people to jump to conclusions, and it's generally less stressful to keep the message clean from the beginning than to have to backtrack and explain that you weren't in fact trying to block all traffic to 4chan.
I thought this was really pretty funny; I would have been concerned if there was NO stretching of the interpretations. These guys do seem to have found some pretty innovative ways of looking at business intelligence...
- a host of other large companies (100's of them), government entities and so on.
Payment: UP FRONT, or no deal. It's my product, I set the terms.
So, no, that's not crazy.
Some of them had to make some kind of internal exception in order to be able to pay immediately without having to go through their regular procedure, but if you have what they want there is always a way.
My company was small, 5 people or so at the time, payroll to meet and a simple choice: Am I going to spend my time on small customers that pay or on large customers that do not ?
When told their payment terms were not acceptable to me invariably the reaction was something like: Oh, ok I get it, let me see what I can do here, in all cases (and the list is much longer than the one I gave above, we sold lots of licenses) the deal went through and I could then afford to treat these people just as well as my other paying customers.
If somebody is going to pay you in 60 days or 90 days and you're selling capital intensive stuff, such as software that you still need to develop or customize then you are setting yourself up for a very nasty fall.
In that case get enough money up front that your development costs are covered, money on the barrel on delivery.
Otherwise hope that your competitor will pick up this customer.
Interesting experience. I've sold big packages to big pharma and our experience was different: we could game the scheduling of payments over the life of the contract, but they refused cash up front payment.
However, given your experience and ours, it probably depends on the industry; we were in media and you were in software.
aaahh, of course ! I was wondering what was up with those bags... The funny thing is in dutch we have an expression (zakkies plakken) which literally means 'to glue bags', it's slang for being in jail because that was the work they set prisoners to do in the past.
I was wondering whether this was some strange English analogue.
Not only am I a big B.I.G. fan, I agree with the article's interpretation of the song. Great tips. For years I have though of startups in the same way. When I created my web startup (http://www.bidrealm.net), I worked by these same rules. And now someone has actually written it down, and related it to a hiphop legend at that. In short, startups need to protect what they've created in every way, dont mix business with pleasure, nor business with family, keep costs low, and debt minimal if not at zero, and dont trust anyone 100%.
Well, I don't know about the rest of them but number 3, lose yourself, seems to be about his life- rapping. Not about start ups. "Palms are sweaty, knees weak- arms are heave, vomit on your sweater already- mom's spaghetti." Ect. Ect. He seems to be talking about the rap battle he is about to have..you know, like in the movie 8 mile..
