Hard to believe, but it’s been three years since I wrote about a little company called Pure Digital and its interesting – but dumb – idea for disposable video cameras.
While it was cool to be able to buy a video camera for $29, being able to use it only once was not cool.
That’s where the hacker came in.
As I reported nearly three years ago, hackers were already at work to unlock the camera’s “one use” limitation so it could be used over and over again.
To its credit, the Pure Digital got a clue, raised the price on its cameras significantly and took over the market for super small, super cheap video cameras beating giants like Sony and Panasonic.
The result is they just sold their company to Cicso for $590 million dollars. Not bad considering all the gloom and doom these days.
What’s the message? There are actually lots of them.
1. Listen to your customers – even people who are hacking your products
2. The right idea at the right time executed the right way trumps bad times and big companies
3. You really should be paying close attention to what we’re up to at the System. We constantly catch meaningul trends and opportunities long before they appear on the radar screens of others.
They’re still time to find out what we’re doing at System 2009 this march 27 & 29 in Chicago:
http://www.thesystemseminar.com/inc.html
– Ken McCarthy
P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.
If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.
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