This link links to the blog of a person named Martin Varsavsky. As someone says he is an absurdly successful serial entrepreneur.
"It was the roaring 1980s, and Martin Varsavsky was about to receive his MBA from Columbia University—and he still couldn't get a job." Thus begins the HBS article on him.
He's started 6 companies in 15 years. Two of them very successful. His latest venture is quite interesting. It is called FON.
FON is an international company based on the idea of sharing broadband connections through wireless routers. The basic theory - if you’re willing to share your own bandwidth, you can become part of a global network of people also willing to share their connections.
Foneros, the users of the service are known as either “Bill”, “Linus” or “Alien”.
Bill members – after Bill Gates – download secure software from Fon that turns their home wi-fi network into a hotspot anyone within its range can use to connect to the internet for a fee.
Linus members – after Linus Torvalds, creator of the free Linux software – allow their hotspots and bandwidth to be shared for free and can use any other members’ without charge.
Aliens pay to connect to the Fon network and do not share their own networks. Fon and Bills will share the revenues earned from Aliens and other Bills.
he spent €30 million in advertising on his last company, Jazztel, and hasn’t yet spent any money on advertising FON yet. Instead, he’s inviting bloggers to join his board of advisors and asking us to try the product and become evangelists for it.
Bottomline: Do we all need to crave for jobs when we can do sun fun things?Song I am listening to now: La Bamba by Ritchie Valens, one of the 3 guys for whom Don McLean wrote American Pie.
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