HeyChristine.com

Thursday, December 7th

Invest in ORIENTED.COM?

I cannot believe how fast time flies. I think Gus is supposed to be back tomorrow, geez. And I'm still not done with this site, though it's as close as it can get right now. I've been working on the Investor Relations page and it is just not easy. Mostly because I'm having to take the original business plan of ORIENTED.COM (that's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one, "original business plan") and condense it to something like an Executive Summary but more 'interesting'. I figured, this is my one moment to SELL the idea, so I need to make it count. I can't seem to decide how much or how little to include, and so, the struggle continues.

At first I was getting pretty pissed off at myself for not having completed the reference pages sooner, but now that the holidays are rolling around, I wouldn't mind some time off from all this madness. I used to stress out all the time, feeling pressured that we had to be FIRST (with ORIENTED I mean). But over the past few months, I have come to realize that being first means nothing if you don't know what you're doing, or if the goals are short-sighted, at least in terms of building sustaining businesses.

Instead of trying to provide products and services that people need to enhance their lives, products designed with attention to quality, a lot of these dotcoms are only focused on coming up with the easiest way to make a quick buck. And it shows. Though it may work for a few lucky winners and is even appropriate for certain industries, in general that is not what brings online community businesses to fruition. Here's an article that I refer to from time to time which I thought summarized it quite well:

WOW. I just read that article again. THAT is a f***ing AWESOME article! But I digress... I think what also gives me the confidence I have is that a lot of these "online communities" don't even know what a community is. It goes back to the Old Economy rule of "know your business." I have a history replete with hands-on experience with community service organizations. Building communities is what I do, so when I look at competitor sites, I can immediately gauge their knowledge (or lack thereof). My favorite community sites to poke fun of are those created by former investment bankers. It's quite funny.

And finally, as I continue my rant for the day, I intend to enjoy myself, to take the time to understand what I'm doing, and to do it right. Look at what has happened to all those people out there who about killed themselves to raise funds before knowing what they were really doing, burning up their credit cards and life savings, and sacrificing their personal and social lives, only to have it all crash and burn before their very eyes. It's called GREEEED, POOR planning, and lack of a fundamental vision. Where are these boys today? Hmm. It takes time to build a good thing.

I always smile when people say to me these days, "Christine, the market's really tough right now, getting funding is going to be hard." Yes... the market's crapped out because stupid investors invested in stupid ideas and convinced stupid people that they were all going to be rich DESPITE the stupidity (and yes I own some of those stupid stocks) but what does that have to do with me and ORIENTED? That's like saying that you shouldn't take a bite of a juicy sweet apple just because all the oranges in the field are spoiled. I say,

EAT THAT APPLE, BABY, OR GIVE IT TO ME. CHOMP CHOMP.

Sheez. No wonder I like that article so much. I only now just realized that it was written by the same guy who wrote "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies". All this time I had no idea. Jun (who introduced that book to me two years ago) is going to laugh when he reads this. Okay so I can be a real ding dong sometimes, but my point here is that the section on Sony's most humble beginnings is what keeps me going.

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Last night at the movies...

Mike took me out to dinner and the movies to thank me for encouraging him to purchase the domain name, JudgeBao.com ROFL. I had called him last week (and yes I heard the usual executive chair squeak) to ask him about certain legal risks that may be incurred from this site. We somehow got to talking about why he should purchase his own domain name if it is still available which turned into a conversation about Judge Bao (Bao Ching Tien), and then we discovered that that URL was still available!!! I was like, MIKE GET IT NOW. He got so excited he almost started hyperventilating, "What do I do? What do I DO!" It cracked me up. So I made him take me to dinner to thank me. See? We're making history!

Mike and I had dinner at Planet Hollywood, and there we ran into Ted and Ellie and the boys, and their old friend KAREN, whom I used to know back in D.C. TEN YEARS AGO. I was dating one of their friends at the time, my old sweetie Alex, and it was so totally weird to see her again. She has two cute little twin girls, awww! They were visiting Taiwan because her husband has family here. MAN. That era of my life, when I did that 6-month coop program at the U.S. PTO, was a-whole-nother universe. Will have to go into that later.

Acer Ginny, who just got back from San Jose, joined us to see Charlie's Angels (what the heck happened to that picture?!). I thought it was hai hao, although the part where Cameron Diaz danced on the Ssssssssssoul Trrrrrrrrrrain was hysterical! Mike and I went NUTS. Ginny didn't seem to think it was so funny and neither did the rest of the audience (they totally didn't get it). EYE thought it was funny because I used to love that show and wanted to be a dancer on it too, LOL. Not sure why Mike was laughing...

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