Start-up outfoxes Apple, Dell and HP by offering stock options with PCs
Community for hire
God bless Silicon Valley. Where else will you find a PC start-up offering stock options to create faux communities?
Earlier this week, we brought word of CherryPal, an intriguing Mountain View-based company that wants to do nothing less than rewire the PC market. It's got a 10 ounce "desktop," which runs on a low-power Freescale chip. All told, the machine consumes just 2 watts of power while performing even better than $3,000 space heaters from Dell, HP and others, according to CherryPal.
The company has yet to ship demo units of its products, so it's hard to tell if the machine will really live up to its billing. And once those demo units do ship, it may be awful difficult for Joe Public to find some honest reviews.
We've spotted numerous ads on Craigslist where CherryPal is offering up stock options to bloggers, writers and students who will extol the virtues of its product.
Let's see how the ad starts off.
"We are going to build the brand based on our core values, inexpensive, green, user-friendly and last but not least open. Open in our world means open source software applications as well as open communication; a consumer brand that encourages users to share ideas and influence the roadmap of future product releases.
"The products will be launched in July ... with a really big bang!!!"
Er, open apparently also means fake. And core values mean bribing people to like your gear.
"We are looking for "Brand Angels" who can spread the word through social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and others.
"Last but not least - we have very interesting compensation models (including stock option plans) in place. You will receive our product for FREE, and we rely on you to share your experiences through social networking sites/blogs. We will compensate you for promoting our product."
What happened to the good old days when you bribed people behind closed doors? That's how you make it seem like there's a real community championing a product. Tsk, tsk. ®
COMMENTS
AI Significant Difference for SocioPolitical Regime Change.
"So, the MO is:
1. Find some VC funding
2. Build hype
3. Repeat until popping up on all the hot company lists
4. Flip it to someone with too much money
5. Profit " .... By Daniel Kluge Posted Thursday 19th June 2008 10:12 GMT
Back in 1999 probably, Daniel, but in the Now, Profit is Loyal Servant/Master Slave to <Run>
It is a good way to spend the marketing budget
They could hire a marketing company and pay them a ton of cash, or just do it this way.
This way is much stronger, and they will limit the number of people who can get involved, i.e. get the free machine.
The cherrypal looks quite smart, and the cloud computing idea is going to be interesting as well. That is maybe where the speed claim is coming from. Processing shoved to the server. Really we are having the return to thin clients, or as I like to call them Lean Clients, or Fit Clients.
The servers probably won't be green in and of themselves, but overall they will produce a net green effect, allowing processing to be centrally managed, rather than having powerful processors consuming power, but being left idle.
A lot of good ideas in this little box of tricks.
I'm in
Sent them an e-mail. I'm in. Whatever it is, if it runs without crashing and I can install apps that work, I'll definitely give it honest reviews and post on it!!
Interesting idea
One of the problems with communism has always been that that when the bolshie workers control the means of production, the poor sods who only have to buy the product end up losing out (think British Leyland). And one of the problems with capitalism has always been that when a bunch of faceless shareholders exhibiting borderline-psychotic selfishness control the means of production, the poor sods who only have to buy the product end up losing out (think ..... well, pretty much any privatised company really).
Now, if the means of production were controlled by the people who purchase the product .....
