$100k now or double your pennies going forward? views so far
I recently watched a presentation Scoble gave to grad students at Stanford in which he posed the question - would your rather have $100k now, or a penny that doubles everyday? The analogy was made in the context of social media and marketing. It's probably the most compelling argument I've heard for doing social media to date.
Seth Godin famously says, "good ideas spread". But who spreads them? You? No way, you don't have the time or a big enough bullhorn. But even if you did (say a $100k bull horn), who would you point it at? That crowd of people over there? OK, let's do that. But what percentage is actually going to listen to you? Honesty, they don't know you and a large percentage really can care less what you have to say.
Let your good idea spread exponentially instead of all at once. Trust that the people who share your idea will do so because they have a vested interest in contributing to the conversations of others. They want to contribute something new and valuable in hopes that others will do the same for them. Let your idea be that something.
But there's a key word in Seth's message. *Good* ideas spread. If your idea doesn't spread, it might not be because it just didn't reach the right people. Rather, it may be because it's not that good of an idea in the first place.
But it's just a penny. A friggin penny. What's the risk? Put it out there and see if it doubles, then doubles again, and double again. It's doubled to the point that it's now worth thousands and a level of organic momentum that you can't buy with a $200k bullhorn, let alone one half that size. If the idea is good enough, that $100k will, in the grand scheme of things, seem like a penny.
