Virgin Group founder Richard Branson is featured on the Games Changers program on Bloomberg TV - Richard Burdett - Photo

Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen is featured on the Games Changers program on Bloomberg TV - Brian Solis - Photo

Video Beat EXTRA - Part 1 - GAME CHANGERS - MARC ANDREESSEN & RICHARD BRANSON

James Loving - National Radio Text Service

Bloomberg TV's weekend programming is addictive. Their programs focus on the movers and shakers that created the most popular business in the world today. The information presented is inspiring and eye opening. They explore their strengths, weaknesses and faults - Recommended TV Listings

Saturday December 10, 2011

THE GOING (FORWARD) GET TOUGH

"We tell you true," as many in Thailand say in broken English. The bottom line is that we are addicted to Bloomberg Television's program Game Changers and its weekend programming featuring the major players and entrepreneurs of modern business. What these Game Changers programs bring to the public is a diverse array of profiles of the brilliant creators of today's new growth businesses. All of those featured have one thing in common that being their refusal to accept failure and quit. Most have another thing in common although they are great in creating they lack business management skills.

From our first exposure to the Game Changers program featuring Twitter's Jack Dorsey & Craigslist's Craig Newmark they moved on the following week with half hour feature/doc the focus then shifted to Harry Potter author JK Rolling and Anna Wintour the editor-in-chief of American Vogue. Both have impeccable ideas and superior business management skills. They are two ladies that have hands on control of their business affairs.

The following week the program went overboard with a one hour feature on Googles founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin the creators of Google. The show revealed the companies growth from its germination as an idea formulated in a garage to being valued at billions of dollars and one of the top four major Internet players.

This show went the extra mile by including the duo's lack of business aptitude to succumbing and abandoning their core values of integrity and principals to falling on their swords in an effort to expand their business. In the process they intruded on the public's privacy and security with their street view project.

Their failures were prompted by the urging of their investors who demanded a return on their investment i.e. the shades of the corruption on Wall Street and the US government that has created the domino effect that has brought the world's economy to it knees.

Their other major flop and disrespect of the property of others was publishing books without seeking permission from the books authors or publishers. Since that airing of the program we have monitored their business and have discovered that they are now deceiving the public by segmenting the search information available in certain countries and censoring out he world search information. Information that relates to the world view has been replaced by a local perspective promoting regional businesses and the world view now cannot be accessed. In the past both the local and world searches were available. Greed in selling their ad word program on a regional basis is the first rationalization that surfaces for such a move.

Two weeks after the airing of Rolling and Wintour Game Changers repeated the Wintour segment. She was paired with a story on the Koch family business which is mired in mystery. Being a private company they aren't required to reveal their earnings. That show exposed how the brothers of a family business splintered apart due to disagreements of how the business should be run. Conflicting ethics played a role if their separation.

This week the focus is on Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. Andressen helped create the Mosaic browser while a student at the University of Illinois. Although he was one of the major creators of the project and wanted to stay on at the school and be in charge of it but the university denied him the opportunity.

He moved on the Silicon Valley and teamed up with Silicon Valley Graphics founder Jim Clark. Clark was excited about Andreessen's ideas and invested a third of his worth $5 million in the young entrepreneur's projects. The result was the web browser Netscape.

The business was so successful that Bill Gates of Microsoft became interested in the browser business. That resulted in Microsoft licensing Andreessen's original idea from the University of Illinois which led to Microsoft entering the browser business and the creation of Internet Explorer. Law suites followed Microsoft's forming exclusive agreements with other companies and having IE included in their Windows 95 operating system. The US government ruled it a monopoly.

Andreessen won the first fight but eventually lost the war with Gates when Netscape was squashed like a grape by the Internet beast and went out of business. That didn't deter Andreessen who went on to create other ideas which included forming Loudcloud, a services-based Web hosting company that made an IPO in 2001. Loudcloud sold its hosting business to EDS and changed its name to Opsware in 2003, where Andreessen served as chairman. Opsware was purchased by Hewlett-Packard in September 2007 for approximately $1.6 billion.

He also went on to co-found Ning and is an investor in social news website Digg and several other early-stage technology startups, like Plazes, Netvibes, CastTV and Twitter. His latest project is the RockMelt browser launched in 2010.

He serves on the board of Facebook, eBay, Kno[citation needed, Hewlett-Packard, Bump, TinyCo, and Mixed Media Labs. Before it went defunct, he was on the board of Open Media Network, a combined Kontiki (VeriSign) client and media player, launched in 2005.

On July 5, 2009, Andreessen announced along with his longtime business partner Ben Horowitz, the formation of their venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, aimed purely at investing in the best new entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the information technology industry.

On September 1, 2009, an investor group including Andreessen Horowitz acquired a majority stake in Skype Limited. In 2010, an investor group including Andreessen Horowitz invested $46 million into Kno, Inc., a digital education platform company.

Richard Branson was a young entrepreneur who started a business at the age of 16. He failed in several ideas but struck gold with his plan to start a student magazine that was his first success and reached a circulation of 50 thousand.

He then moved into the mail order record business that evolved into adding record stores and a recording company. Mike Odlfield's album Tubular Bells witch became an instant hit selling 16 million copies. Branson was off and running from there.

The Englishman ran into trouble along the way with tax evasions charges. He spent a night in jail and was bailed out by his parents who had to put up their home for bail money. Eventually he paid a $150 thousand fine. From that experience Branson put his priorities in order and surged on.

CONTINUED Part 2 - Branson Puts His Life On The Line - Please note program schedule below for the times of the telecasts

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