Pretty good read from Rolling Stone on Justin Frankel

[KeyserSoze]

Link


Interesting.






KeyserSoze

 

[notfred]

Good article. The guy's a genius with his software and what makes it better is that he's not afraid to challenge the status quo. Makes me look at myself, only slightly younger than him, and think I haven't done much of importance.

 

[KeyserSoze]

Originally posted by: notfred
Good article. The guy's a genius with his software and what makes it better is that he's not afraid to challenge the status quo. Makes me look at myself, only slightly younger than him, and think I haven't done much of importance.

haha, Ya, I kno. I'm right there with you. I'm totally and completely worthless.




KeyserSoze

 

[KahunaHube]

aol's fault for giving him so much damn money.. what do you expect hahah

hes got nothign to lose

 

[notfred]

bump

 

[sygyzy]

Thanks for posting. Excellent article.

 

I am a loser and a corporate whore

 

[tcsenter]

Good article. The guy's a genius with his software and what makes it better is that he's not afraid to challenge the status quo. Makes me look at myself, only slightly younger than him, and think I haven't done much of importance.

Not really. Frankel is the beneficiary of exceptional [and entirely unanticipated] timing. Not that this is bad, timing is often everything....

You know that $6 trillion in wealth that was "transferred" from investors to corporate raiders, brokerages, bankers, fund managers, and other scam artists during the Dot.Bomb crash? Well...Frankel got $100 million of it.

There is no doubt that AOL is every bit as sorry about paying an exorbitant $100 million for Winamp as Time-Warner is sorry about its merger with AOL. Had there been no tech bubble and pervasive climate of dot.com intoxication, Winamp would never have fetched more than a couple million. It will probably take 30 years for AOL to break-even on Winamp.

I don't mean to imply Frankel scammed anyone. Hell, AOL freely gave it to him, but its essentially 'dirty' money, knowing what we know now.

The consequence of Frankel's extreme fortune to have some company, intoxicated by its own largesse, stroll-by and drop $100 million in his lap for a program with very limited market potential at such a young age, is that Frankel's perceptions of how much his work is truly worth or how easily it is to acquire wealth will be extremely warped for many years. The inescapable lesson for Frankel is "Hey, I made $100 million a couple years out of high school by working part-time and being a screw-off the rest of the time. Making money is fiendishly easy!" when the inescapable reality is "it was a dreadful mistake that won't soon be repeated."

This warped perspective is already showing:

"AOL as a company should not just sit on their asses and try to keep from losing as many subscribers as it can," he says. "I mean, I'm a stockholder of the company. I want them innovating. I want them doing things that are good for the world and being socially conscious."

Translation:

"Now that I've got my $100 million, I want AOL to change its ways. I don't want it to be so profit-minded. I got my $100 million, now its time to be socially conscious and do things that are good for the world. What's that you say? But Justin, I think I would like to have a warehouse full of cars and extremely expensive tech gizmos, too? Yeah, well too f-cking bad."

Frankel might be a talented coder, but has the maturity and intellect of a 15 year-old. Unlike the average 15 year-old, who will in rapid order be forced to confront reality when he is propelled into the world of adulthood and the workforce, Frankel can afford to be 15 years-old for a very, very, very long time.