To: Thomas Mercer-Hursh who wrote (44829 ) 7/23/2001 2:58:55 PM From: techreports Respond to Back about 1970 one of my fellow grad students took off to study a tribe in the highlands of New Guinea. The group had been selected in part because they were so isolated; their only contact with the outside being a government census taker that would come through occasionally. This fellow packed his way in, fording the mountain steams, etc., etc. and as he came to the last rise leading into the village the chief came forward and offered him a cold Coke. You can imagine the fellow's reaction! It turned out that somewhere along the line they had traded with a neighboring group (who had traded with a neighboring group, etc.) for a couple of cases of Coke and a propane refrigerator. Whenever there was an important visitor they would fire up the fridge and cool off a couple of bottles. you will notice i said 5 billion to unseat coke, not a tech co. it takes a lot less to attack a tech gorilla. just ask juniper. one of the better VC investments had to be Cerent. i think the VC put up 25 million or so and got a return of like 2.3 billion in crisco stock. hopefully they sold it high. Yes, but they might percieve that as being one and the same. The whole point of brand-name recognition is that people think the brand name implies that it's a superior product. In the case of cell phones, style is also important among the younger set. To those folks, it is almost impossible to select a competing product that doesn't have the hip look and the brand name, because to do otherwise would fly in the face of immense peer pressure. BEAS impresses me more than many more vaunted competitors to MSFT--e.g. RNWK, NSCP. Solid management, business model and technology. They could do very, very well. I would not be shocked to see them as public enemy #1 in Redmond within the decade. durig.com
