This is interesting. When did the Seattle Times sell their “background” as part of an ad? I wasn’t aware they were doing that.
I was going to resist sharing any public thoughts on the end of Rob Glaser’s 16 year reign at the head of RealNetworks. But as I read through some of the comment boards, trolls and scrubs who have never started anything in their life have taken some cheap shots, so I’m going to give my take.
In 1994, we had 14.4 modems and something called Mozilla to surf the web. Microsoft was finally rethinking their now infamous decision that the Internet wasn’t a place where they should concentrate. And Glaser looked into his crystal ball and said, “You know what, I bet some day we’re going to use our computers to watch programming more than we use our TV’s.” You have to remember, that back in 1994 that idea was akin to someone today saying, “I’m going to be able to take this IP signal from my watch and make it a holographic projector that plays HD signals against blank walls at 1080i.”
Now, not every decision was right. And plenty of smart people were under-utilized. I was just a young Marketing Manager, and never in the inner circle of decision making, so I have little insight, and sometimes fell victim, to some head scratching decisions.
But at the end of the day, Rob built an industry from scratch, weathered recessions of 2001 and 2009, had to battle the full force of Microsoft’s vengeance when they realized it was a space they needed to be in, distributed more than a billion RealPlayers without much of a marketing budget, took his company public, changed his business model on the fly from software to subscription, and had to balance the public’s desire for free media vs the music industry’s desire to extort money from all of us. That’s a pretty complex game of Lemonade Stand he had going. Go through and name all the companies that you’ve seen in your lifetime that started before (or around) Real and have been more successful while staying independent. Microsoft, Apple, Google, ebay, Amazon, Yahoo. You can’t say AOL – they sold out. Skype – sell out. YouTube – sell out. Netscape – gone. Napster – gone. Maybe Adobe and Oracle? Sidewalk – gone. Expedia came out of Microsoft and sold out to IAB, so they don’t count. I’m sure there are a few more, but the list is pretty small.
It would have been easy for Rob to sell to Microsoft in the late 90’s for a few billion. We all probably would have made a few more short-term bucks. And Microsoft would have had to spend way less money than they did over the next decade systematically trying to destroy Real. But he didn’t sell, so we all took our sticks and bows to fight against the machine guns – and we did pretty well.
I have a lot of anecdotes about Rob that don’t need to be shared here, but I’ll sum it all up with this. If you have the pleasure to run into him at an event, introduce yourself and say hi. He’ll grill you on your business and ask 100 questions abut what you’re working on. The conversation will move so fast that it will be hard to keep up. But you’ll understand how smart the guy really is, and you’ll see that he simply wanted to win.
My guess is that around the halls of RealNetworks this week, people are looking forward to change. They see a happier, more corporate, less politically incorrect place where they won’t get yelled at for mistakes. But the problem is that most of those people weren’t there in the 90’s. To them, there’s always been audio and video on the Internet, and they simply don’t get why Real was such a big deal. They don’t understand that they worked for the Web’s very own Marconi, they just want to complain about his flaws. But around the city, you see Real Alumni collectively tipping our caps. And I know a lot of people say this, but I still have more friends than I can count from my days at Real. The people were there (with some notable exceptions) were fantastic. Smart, gifted, ridiculously focused and cool. There was something about that company, especially back in the 1990’s, that drew great people who were glutton for punishment. I remember telling my dad when I first started there, “It’s pretty scary. Every meeting I feel like I’m the dumbest guy in the room.”
No one is perfect, and like everyone Rob has his flaws, but it was a real professional privilege to work down the food chain from someone who built an entire industry.
If you don’t know the name Dick Friel, well then you simply need to re-evaluate how much money you give to charity, because it’s not enough. There’s a small number of A-list auctioneers in this town, so if your event was any good, you had about a 1 in 3 chance of seeing Dick and Sharon Friel at the mic.
The Puget Sound Business Journal reports that Mr. Friel has passed away at the age of 76. I had the pleasure of working with him and his wife on the Cure Autism Now Auction back in the early 2000’s. He was a genuine professional, with a jovial smile and demeanor that was all about business – the business of making money for charity.
I was naive to how auctions worked when I first saw him prepping. He asked for the attendee list and list of items. He then ran through his mental rolodex as easily as I remember baseball stats. “Oh, Mr. Brown loves vacations. He’s good for $1000 every event so let’s save this Italy trip and focus on him.” “The Jacobsons would go nuts for this necklace, but they always leave by 9:00. Let’s move it to Item 3.” “I know Mike and John are Pearl Jam freaks. Let’s get a bidding war on that studio session and then convince Eddie to let them both in.” From a marketing perspective, it was a thing of beauty to watch. And the winners were always the charities.
Farewell, Mr. Friel.
Sure, the Seahawks screwed up back when they shoved Holmgren out the door and “supposedly” gave Jim Mora the keys to the castle. But give Seahawks senior leadership some credit for trying to right the ship.
Years ago, in the Ruskell vs Holmgren battle, they chose the wrong horse. Who knows what the real dynamics were between Holmgren and everyone else at Vulcan, but for some reason they chose Ruskell’s side. That decision is done. But then at some point they realized their gross miscalculation. So they did the right thing – they unwound all decisions that were based on Ruskell.
Unfortunately, that ended up screwing Jim Mora. But at the end of the day Mora hitched his wagon to Ruskell, so when he imploded, Mora had to go with him. Mora was Ruskell’s way to get rid of Holmgren. It’s a simple game of office politics. When the guy who makes you a star disappears, you better have a bulletproof resume that can stand on its own.
So what do the Seahawks and Tod Liewicke do? They go get one of their own guys. Remember, Tod’s brother is Tim Liewicke, named the 2nd most powerful Sports/Events figure in the country, and who helped build the luxurious Staples Center in Los Angeles and Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif. As moguls in the LA sports scene, there’s no doubt that Liewicke and Carroll go back a few years.
Also, keep in mind, Tod Liewicke has a boss, and his name is Paul Allen. I’m guessing Allen doesn’t like having his name dragged around in the mud, and like any billionaire, is probably a little preturbed that his giant play toy is being laughed at by the other billionaires in the sandbox. Liewicke needs a fix – or at least a plan – from someone with a winning record, and Carroll fits that bill.
Now there is one thing that should make Seahawks fans cringe. The deal is supposedly 5 years, $35 million. Who cares about the $35MM, the number that is painful is the 5 years. That means the Seahawks are going to blow it all up, giving Carroll 2 years to completely undo the current damage and start over, and then expect him to have some modicum of increased success in Year 3. It’s going to be a couple of painful 3-13 seasons in 2010 and 2011…But look, winners stay winners. And if he learned how to build a dynasty at USC, maybe he can do it here.