#kgrindjonny

Kgrind.com  - the multi channel broadband entertainment network that was going to be the first global, multi platform MTV ... A template for television in the new media age!  A post card from the future that confused an excited people as much as it made them cynical ...

How did this skateboard punk (me)  come up with such an ambitious plan?   Why did Macquarie Bank, the most hard core of all investment banks, decide to back him? How did he convince them? What was the X factor that this Jon Peters character had? What was the telling thing that made Macquarie Bank (and other investors in Silicon Valley) so excited and so keen to fall over each other to get a stake in the game ? Was it just another dot com>? Or was there some substance to the pitch? When the dot com bubble burst why were Macquarie unable to take the business fwd if they believed in it so much ? Was it all just a lie? A myth ? Why were people so keen for this to be the truth? What was the truth behind the mysterious bail out offers from UPC Holland and who were the backers who finally took it forward . What ever happened to Jon Peters? If he was the man with the billion dollar vision then where is that vision now?  What did his staff really think of him? 

Truth is that Im the only one who knows all the answers to all of this is Jon Peters (me!) - all answered in a no holes barred book  'Turning Purple in the Purple Patch - How NOT to be an Internet Entrepreneur!'  

Presented as interactive e-book - this book takes readers on a no holes barred interactive journey into the world of new media by covering the four start ups that Jon Peters founded from 1998 to 20012. From the dynamic Siicon Valley loaded bubble of Kgrind, the adult entertainment portal at Private.com, the women's adult entertainment brand Riot Kitty to the privately backed drug fuelled 'Dallus' - the book cuts away to video interviews, photographs, website designs, sex!, recorded conversations of threats and accusations, secret meetings, abusive and threatening emails - all taking you inside what really happens in the world of an entrepreneur with a vision that everyone wants to own and and where everyone believes that they are on the brink of being a billionaire !  

This blog will include many of the exerts from the book that relate to solely to Kgrind ... Other insights to  other start ups can be found at www.jonp.com ... The book will be released in chapters over the coming months ! 

In 2007 I was saying this to my Dallus investors ... "MySpace would be unable to re-design owning the fact that this would disrupt their very core. The space is clear for a new competitor"  

How did I know this?  The thing about MySpace was that their code was very easy to hack. It allowed all the rock bands and artists to add modifications / customisations to their accounts + you could get these from people on-line and integrate them.  Artists then spent so much time on these modifications and then building audiences around them that these customisations became the part of MySpace that people loved and the very asset that MySpace had (an awesome asset btw) . Fixing their site up and streamlining it like Facebook would mean that users would lose all these customisations that they had spent so much time on.  This would mean the end of Myspace.  In 2007 they were stuck with the web streamlining, functionality now they key driver and sites life FB starting to take advantage of this (even though I still say it's boring and kinda sux) 

So-  Facebook was emerging with slicker & more streamlined designs  ... The only way out for MySpace was to own ROCK, POP and HIP HIOP - which they could do as they had all the deals they needed with the record companies already SIGNED . This is what they should have done .. but alas did not do!  They still could have survived - and when Justin Timberlake joined them he created a 'creative' team that was aimed at re-designing everything and bringing them back from the brink.

But then they fucked up again!  

 The new site disconnected you from your original fan base ...  They expected you had to re-build your fan base all over again@!  They effectively deleted all the work that everyone had done to create what MySpace was. 

Hey Im not Notrodamas but picking the future in social media is something that I reckon I've always been able to do ..  It;'s funny as most of my friends here in Sydney don't know about my life as a social media guy ,, I think they all just think Im a druggie ./ drunk ... I guess you only know what you see and you're only as good as your last game! 

When I explained the future of MySpace (of course not in the detail as I did above)  to my investors - at  the time I was living in London ./ being held prisoner by my investors in an apartment that one of them owned up stairs above where he lived in Shepherds Bush . I was there waiting for my own dot com to go live & was living on hand outs and porridge. We were 5 weeks late on delivery and this had created such a stir with them that they had pretty much taken me prisoner / not allowed to leave London until what was promised was delivered.  I get it BUT 5 weeks late on delivery is really nothing in this space. 

I tried to convince my investors that all we needed to do was invest a little more in Dallus (a similar concept to MySpace but a next generation version) to speed up the delivery and we could take the space on.  I had all kinds of rock bands, Dj's, promoter and the like all lined up to crank it + I was full of confidence. I couldn't convince my investors that I was telling the truth - they thought I was lieing about the state of my own site .. So what chance did I have?? 

In a nutshell I had eroded all my cred - they had no basis to believe me about anything. 

FYI - I arrived there in March 2007 and was still there in November, still a prisoner, when the site finally got delivered. 

How it got delivered is another story ...

p.s and for anyone out there who still thinks Im a druggie / drunk here's what;'s happening next ... Facebook is designed in a very vanilla fashion. It delivers great in depth functionality and it works .. BUT it's boring + they are very 'fun Police' about things.  The next generation of social networks are almost upon us and they will be way way different. Facebook will evolve into simply a log in system that logs you into the social web and ensures that you can connect with anyone on the social web anywhere.  The next generation is all about integrating the social web with entertainment and interests in the form of content & recommendations.  So it's all about CONTENT !  Content creators have been scared off by the social web .. They have been 50% paranoid about it and 50% secretly doing courses at night trying to work it all out. Full blown entertainment channels with the social web so integrated into them that you don't even notice are coming .. They are movies, they are TV shows, they are concert tours, they are conventions .. they 70% user driven and 30% producer driven .. (yes Producers stand up! ) ..