How To Put the Radio on the Internet

By Adam Coughlin, Managing Partner at York IE

One of my favorite TV characters in recent years is Russ Hanneman from Silicon Valley. Russ is obsessed with his three comma status (being a billionaire). He achieved this wealth by “putting the radio on the Internet.”

This idea made Hanneman a ton of money. I can assure you that any idea that seems simple is incredibly difficult to execute on and so I give the fictional Russ Hanneman credit. However, from a market education perspective, taking something we know and putting it in a new delivery mechanism is easier than re-imagining the concept all together.

I have had several conversations over the last couple of weeks about this very topic. It started at home with my wife, who usually gives me the best ideas. As I believe I’ve written about before, we’re homeschooling our kids this year for a variety of reasons. My wife is leading this charge and it has been fascinating to watch her process evolve. As she said, the first step in homeschooling is to put school, as we know it, in the home. This means starting at a certain time, having classes for a set period of time, having the teacher lecture, having predetermined breaks, having separate lessons for each child based on grade, etc.

That approach is putting the radio on the internet.

My wife, however, decided to throw out the old playbook and re-imagine what it means to do school in the home. While not totally different, it was different enough where we needed to re-educate the children on this model so that they could understand why “school” didn’t look the same. We’re fortunate because our children are young. They are not totally set in their ways.

This is not the case with other industries. Bold entrepreneurs who want to build products and companies for where the trends are headed have their work cut out for them. While it is important to have a great product that solves a problem, they will also need a healthy dose of education to explain to their buyers why the current way is broken and why this new paradigm, which may involve more upfront work on their part, is better.

This is easier said than done. We are all incredibly busy. If you told me that I could work twice as hard today, so I can work half as hard next week, it may sound tempting until I realize how miserable today is going to be. Changing someone’s habits is hard. As an entrepreneur, you better have extreme conviction that your new world is far superior to the current one. You also need to be patient and understand the challenge facing you.

You also need to start as soon as possible on the education front. Even if your product is not quite perfect begin planting the seed for your vision. It will take time for people to catch up. So don’t wait until the moment you launch. And also don’t forget there is nothing wrong with giving them a better version of what they’re familiar with (radio on the Internet) and then evolving their experience over time.

Either way it always comes down to having a strong strategic vision and then a tactical plan of execution that leads people there step by step. Do that and, just maybe, you’ll be joining Russ in the triple comma club.