Sauderites, I would like to pass on Westergren’s words to you. “Entrepreneurship in general requires naiveté. Were you not naive, it could be so daunting that you would either not try it in the first place or you’d give up if you began to see things getting difficult.”

When I was going through business articles the other day, Pandora, an Internet radio service, has caught my eyes. Pandora is a company that streams music and provides recommendations to its users. Their music playlists are often found to be very favorable and accurate to each individual’s preference. This is because Pandora uses real humans to compose them. The system is known as the Musical Genome project and is introduced by Tim Westergren, a musician and the founder of the company.

The way it works is that Pandora hires trained musicologists to sit down at a computer and identify 450 unique characteristics of each song and use this information to insert into a complex algorithm song by song. The process is too difficult and time consuming. No entrepreneurs would have thought of starting such a business in the 2000s when technology could pretty much do everything. However, Westergren ignored all those criticism and therefore kept failing with what he did.

Back then, investors didn’t believe in him because they thought using real musicians would be slow and stupid. However, after so many struggles and after pushing his idea 348 times to investors, Westergren finally found the support. As Pandora’s customers grew, its users database grew allowing the system to be more accurate. Today, Pandora gains its place at the top of music streaming industry with more than 250 million subscribers.

In my opinion, Westergren’s ignorance was the reason for his success. I believe that many businesses that had failed earlier could’ve achieved the same success if they hadn’t given up so early in the game. Remember, your idea might sound crazy and get rejected several times, but it might be the actual one needed. So keep pursuing, one day at a time, and you might find yourself to be the next Pandora!

: )

http://www.pandora.com/about/mgp

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3028215/will-pandora-survive-the-streaming-music-boom

I believe that the idea of sustainability is something that every business should keep in mind aside from the sole purpose of making only profit. One role model company that I would like to share in this article is Patagonia.

During the holiday season of 2012, while most retailers tried to promote their sales as much as possible, Patagonia, in contrast, encouraged their consumers to buy less. On it’s website, the advertisement said, “…we ask our customers not to buy from us what you don’t need or can’t really use. Everything we make–everything anyone makes–costs the planet more than it gives back.”

To make the earth even greener,  Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the company, decided that his clothing products would be made from 100% organic cotton when realizing that industrial grown cotton would hurt the environment. Even though his plan didn’t work out very well since organic cotton industry was not common during the 1990s, he still kept pursuing it until the company earned back its revenue.

Furthermore, Patagonia annually donates 1% of its sales to the environmental non-profits. I think that Patagonia’s mindsets are very admirable and ethical and that other businesses should also consider following them. Patagonia’s marketing strategy on ‘buying less’ didn’t only reflect the company’s good heart, but also contradictorily attracted more buyers!

Thanks to
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681023/how-patagonia-makes-more-money-by-trying-to-make-less
and
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/doing-well-by-doing-good-why-patagonia-makes-a-profit-naturally.html

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