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A satirical poem I wrote about law, meant to amuse those in the industry who understand the funnier narcissistic side of law.

The Art of Law

The market creaks, the money awakes – so long it’s been in slumber,
The M&A teams get prepped; a world is ready for plunder.
The Investment Banker hits the phone, a new deal is to be done,
And so the market is alive again and law is on the run.

New suit, new pants, new shirt and tie – a handshake and smile,
‘What deal can I assist you with today kind sir? – i’ll walk a country mile,
Funds management, restructuring, IP or project finance?
The more I can provide you with, the more that we can dance.’

The money flows, the deals get done,
A toast, a cheers, a bravo!
A new house, a new car, another holiday –
It’s all part of the show.

The regulators twist and turn, the boom is in full swing,
The cash is flowing, companies are so pleased – surely not a time to step in?
‘Free market, free rein, self management – no policies defeated,
Why bother the legislator, when no regulation is needed!’

The margin hits, the bankers bust – they no longer meet the call,
The phone calls start, something’s amiss – don’t tell me of a fall!
It’s now insolvencies turn to shine, the pessimists fine show,
Bankruptcy, debt and receivership – the world does not yet know.

The newspapers hit the streets – the populous roars with anger,
‘It’s the bankers and their god-dam risks – their salaries and their squander!’
The Government screams ‘it’s no time for blame, let’s try and fix the problem’,
They make promises of transformations only to deepen our debt for longer.

The law firm shifts, the parties stop – the champagne fountains halter,
‘It would be unruly of us to continue in this light’ – says one truly pompous partner.
‘As while times get tough around the world, and the deal flow stream dries up,
The insolvency practice is our new success, our knight in shining armour.’

The market slows, production halts and companies shut for good,
The cycle has hit the bottom again, time for a recessionary hood.
And quietly in the background, against all the market changes,
The law firm is engaged again – this time for spades and aces.

The work pours in, the candle burns – insolvency stares down the hours,
While the entire M&A Team sleeps soundly, without so much as even a cower.
The billing rate does not stop, it counts against the clock,
The firm a presence recessionary proof – the law clearly is not.

– by Tim Davis (Feb, 2009)

Update: This data has now been provided freely – mainly because I am a great bloke (and also because I had so many requests from people wanting too use it for good causes.)

I have been sitting on some data for a while now that took me a considerable time to put together simply because there were no sources I could find on the Internet which provided it. This data is being released under a commercial licence share alike license solely because of the *pain in the ass* it was to compile and put together – not to mention the time involved. It is a list of 202 ISO Countries and their relevant States and Territories from all over the web since I couldn’t find one source that had the data aggregated easily.

I’ve tried to keep it relatively cheap in cost and the only reason a price is attached is because of the manual effort involved in getting this together – pretty much meaning it’s done and you don’t have to do anything. I am sure someone out there is going to find this data useful. Feel free to Contact Me at any time about this data if you have questions or queries.

Includes 202 Countries and total Unique States of 3697. Microsoft *.XLSX or *.XLS is downloadable.

• ISO Alpha-2
• ISO Alpha-3
• ISO 3166 Country Name
• Individual Country States

To find out more or visit the Data page above.

You know, it’s amazing – the slogan “The Wonderful World of Disney” no longer makes me think about Disney. I have since destroyed this one fantastic childhood slogan that was instilled in me from the age of about 3 and replaced it with “The Wonderful World of Free”. Yes, it’s perhaps a little sad but working on a technology startup tends to do that too you when you are trying to establish viable revenue streams for your business.

You see the world of “Free” has really taken over the Internet. Content is now consumed on the Internet at a rate that has never been witnessed around the world before, and people who access the Internet expect this content to be free. The predominant reason for this is that people pay for their access to the Internet and believe that this is the ceiling point for their use of products and services on it. Take content for example, I read an article on the NY Times website from a fantastic author regarding the state of the Internet. If this author intended on charging me to read the article – I am presented with two options:

1. I can simply pay for the article because the authors writing, style, opinion and experience on the topic supersedes any other content available and the value equation of his writing exceeds any other content available (or that I can find).
2. I can simply scour the Internet looking for similar articles which comment on adjacent subject matter that is relevant to the thought process I am attempting to collate in my head. If the end justifies the means and I discover relevant content which is free – no need to pay and my value equation is satisfied.

You see Internet users now expect content on the Internet to remain free. The age of “charging” for content – or any products or services for that matter – is only valid when the consumer cannot get that particular content, or that particular product or service anywhere else. The value equation for the user has to reach the climatic point where attempting to search for similar content can, and simply does not, satisfy the users needs. It’s at this point, and I believe only at this point, that a user will cough up some hard earnt dollars in order to satisfy their desire to pay for products and services on the Internet.

If we take another example that is more prevalent in this day and age – Facebook. People use and consume content on Facebook everyday and just expect the services to work. The mere fact that it costs Facebook millions of dollars per month to provide these users with this service is irrelevant to those whom consume such said content and use it daily. After all, the service started out as free and users expect it to remain that way – right?

Of course, that’s right – it’s Facebook duty to monetize their business and ensure that they keep providing their services to their users otherwise they will simply change to another service. It’s important to recognise that Internet users are fickle and perhaps they have every right to be – the Internet has an abundance of information and hands the power back to consumers to find the best offering at the lowest value – whether this be in real economic terms or in ‘free’ terms.

So we come to the question that exceedingly enroaches on my mind daily – how can a service such as Facebook “remain free” ad-infinitum? Surely, an apex point will some day arrive where the cost of running the company entirely exceeds the value equation relating to revenue generation? Or perhaps more probably, the product that Facebook is offering no longer fulfills the desire of the millions of users who connect and use Facebook everyday. It is somewhat happening to Myspace, and it is possible that it will happen to Facebook. Facebook was inherently designed for a specific purpose – to share and communicate with friends – yet such a statement does have its idiosyncarcies. The world we are moving into is one where this statement is no longer simply enough – Internet users now, more than ever, demand real-time and up-to-date information in a format that Facebook might not be able to provide moving into the future. Even the design change on Facebook took months, if not a full year, to implement and users are still unhappy about it. But I digress from the purpose of this post (and perhaps this topic deserves another seperate post in itself)

They key question I am really trying to answer is what about all the other products and services out there who simply do not have 1/10000th of the financial capacity of a company like Facebook?

Well, it’s clear that such companies offering these free products and services will simply not cut the cheese in a rescissionary climate where advertising revenue no longer pays for development, hosting, marketing and the like. The days of offering a free product – no strings attached – are long gone in my opinion. The Internet is ruled by a fickle generation of users who demand – no – expect content and services to be free, and if they aren’t – they simply move on. For every paid product on the Internet, 5 more are competing with it that are free. For every service that is launched and becomes popular – another 10 spring up which offer the same service for free. 

So how is it ever possible to beat this seemingly caustic like trend?

The answer is simple – continually innovate. 

There is no other solution to the free problem that to continually innovate and offer features, products, services and content that no one else does, can or has the expertise to provide. Consumers will only pay for products when no other solution exists that meets their value equation. More poignantly, consumers will only pay when for products when no other solution exists that meets their value equation, and the solution that does exist exactly satisfies their needs. There is just no point in producing a great product that no one else has which simply sucks – you wouldn’t pay for it and neither would anyone else (me included). The ideology that needs to be entrenched in all companies (startup and Fortune 500 alike) is effectively this - why pay Peter when Paul is standing around offering everything  for free? Well, I contend that if Peter has something that Paul can simply not offer then Peter gets a new revenue source. If the converse holds true, Paul rears his ugly opportunistic head and takes Peters earnings. 

I believe this really is the unfortunate – nay, perhaps the realistic and capitalist minded truth. Innovation is the key to a great product or service, and a great service is the key to profitability. I believe it’s true to contend that the three are symbiotic in nature – that is, the correlation between innovation, great products and services and profitability is extrodinarily high. The dominance is, however, in my opinion innovation – loose that, and the other elements wilt. The consequence?

Darwinian theory tell us that something else will take it’s place.

Well, I thought you guys might be interested in this since we are getting closer and closer to launching Fluc (although we aren’t releasing a specific date yet!). A few months ago, a number of people emailed me asking whether they could order some Fluc T-Shirts – so I sat down one night and designed a whole bunch which can be seen at the Fluc Store. The main problem was I simply didn’t have the time to organise printing, reconcile billing, ship orders individually and all the other facets associated with t-shirt printing. As we started getting a bunch of people emailing requests to us – our time availability got lower and lower and although we did respond and sent some orders,  the emails kept coming and truth-be-told we simply didn’t have the time. Apologies! 

Well now all those problems have been solved with our new Zazzle Store. We have posted the most requested t-shirts online and you are more than welcome to email us if you want a design that isn’t up on this site yet. Zazzle makes it ridiculously easy for us to manage t-shirt purchases with betting shipping rates, faster turn around times and better printing and shirt quality at cheaper prices. You can order anytime from this site and just to let you know – we make basically nothing per t-shirt as we wanted to keep the costs to you as low as possible. Gosh we are nice!

Feel free to get on and purchase a few tee’s! We ordered a bunch before we made the store public and they really do look insane.

In the spirit of my current video posts, I thought I would post an article about the “Tenth Dimension” – a fascinating video about a look at Rob Bryanton’s exploration into the ten dimensions. It’s a really amazing video which explores some  string theory - a developing branch of theoretical physics that combines quantum mechanics and general relativity into a quantum theory of gravity. Rob purports to explore in this video that subatomic particles which make up our universe are actually created within ten spatial dimensions (plus an eleventh dimension of “time”) by the vibrations of exquisitely small “superstrings”. If you watch the full video, you can really see that the argument which is created is a truly fascinating one and really provides some food for thought regarding the number of dimensions that exist in our universe.