A Quote by Blake Mycoskie
A lot of people like the idea of companies being socially involved in their community, but if you want big companies to get involved in social issues, what makes you think they're going to come down on your side?
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Companies like Spotify, the new Apple service, and all the others are really going to have to pay artists more. And I think it's a matter of time; I think a lot of these companies and the individuals that are involved in them realize that as well. They know that artists are not getting what they should be getting.
When we first started our internet company, 'China Pages', in 1995, and we were just making home pages for a lot of Chinese companies. We went to the big owners, the big companies, and they didn't want to do it. We go to state-owned companies, and they didn't want to do it. Only the small and medium companies really want to do it.
At 25, I made many companies. I was thinking more like a businessman or entrepreneur than a CEO. I created many companies, small companies, medium companies. I tried to be involved in many kinds of activities, in finance, in real estate, in mining.
I'm not involved in light, frivolous matters. I'm not involved in fringe or side issues. I'm involved in serious issues.
I believe companies like ours are going to be as large as media companies and social networking companies that are valued in the tens of billions of dollars.
You get into sports with the idea that you want to win. If you aren't trying to win, what's the point in being involved? Once you do get involved, you realize the team draws so much from the community, and it would be nothing without the support of it. You've got to give back. It needs to be a two-way street.
I want to get involved in causes I believe in, and I know so many others that want to also get involved, but it's hard to know how. Often, it's through big organisations, and you don't know exactly where your money is going or what effect you are having.
One thing the humanitarian world doesn't do well is marketing. As a journalist, I get pitched every day by companies that have new products. Meanwhile, you have issues like clean water, literacy for girls, female empowerment. People flinch at the idea of marketing these because marketing sounds like something only companies do.
All of the great social justice advances that we ever had in this country have come not from people with big titles and not from people at the top, but just from everyday people getting together saying 'Enough is enough. I'm going to change this, and I'm going to get involved, and I am going to be engaged.'
For so long, companies were run using a command-and-control, 'top down' hierarchical method that involved dictating down the command chain and maintaining order. What I've witnessed in our time is evolving democratization, a shift to a demand economy accelerated by technological advancements like social media.
A lot of the companies that I am inclined to get involved in have a mission to fix something that is 'broken' in the world.
When companies get big, they slow down. They're not as exciting. If you want to get something done, it takes a lot of time and a lot of meetings.
Get down to your local swimming pool or your local swimming club, join up and see what it's like. I can guarantee that you're going to meet some great friends. Just being involved in water makes me happy and I'd like to see that transferred across to other people.
I think I'm determined. And I think if you're determined, you're right. Your behavior is exactly the same when you're stubborn, except then you're wrong. And so, there's times when I'm wrong, and I'd say, "Well, you were the dark side of determined." But I think determination, you know, it's like have an idea, think about the idea, the risks involved. What does it take to get from here to there? And then once you make the choice, you just keep going.
Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook get to decide whether or not you get pertinent information about national security issues in your country.
If you think about companies that were built in Silicon Valley, a lot of them early on were chip companies. And now the companies that are there, like Apple, are much more successful than any of the chip companies were.
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