The Framed 1’s Life

Ten Lessons from the Internet Shakeout

The past boom and bust of the Internet sector is one of the biggest business events of the past several decades. In the interest of finding lessons that help us avoid similar debacles in the future, here are ten observations about the dot com shakeout.

1) Nothing changes overnight. The single most fatal miscalculation investors made regarding the Internet was to massively overestimate the speed at which the marketplace would adopt dot com innovations. That assumption of speed dictated the rapid pace and scale of investment by both VCs and public investors - and the resulting over-investment led to the inevitable bubble and bust. We somehow believed it was different this time. It wasn’t. It will always simply take time and lots of it for people to integrate innovations into the way they do things.

2) New stuff doesn’t replace old stuff. History tells us repeatedly that innovations almost never replace existing products but rather typically worm their way into the mix and inhabit their own niche. Yet, many dot coms and their funders persisted in modeling businesses that assumed a zero-sum game in which, say, online retailing displaces a significant percentage of existing retailing. In retrospect, all we had to do was look at the history of catalog marketing to predict that e-tailing might wriggle its way into some minority of purchases, eventually reaching its natural saturation point. Recognition of historic precedent could have spared some large and costly investments.

3) Too early? Too bad. Timing issues continually pop up in the post-mortem of the dot com shakeout. Many of the web’s wrecks came to market with high-cost products well before the infrastructure was ready to receive them. The digital entertainment category is one good example. Companies like Z.com, Pop.com, Icebox.com, Digital Entertainment Networks and Pseudo Networks all may have had good products, but they were much too early for the broadband marketplace.

4) Many startups were fundamentally uncreative and “un-Internet.” Many failed Internet startups began with ideas that involved little more than shoveling an existing business model onto a web site - or copying another company that did it. Just as “shovelware” in the content world involved transfer of magazine or other traditional media formats directly to the Internet, so too did much e-tailing simply export catalogs to the web. Online retailing of “stuff” is perhaps the most obvious and uncreative use of the Internet, and like shovelware, it largely fails to take advantage of the interactive features that give the Internet its power. The more creative - and sometimes successful - e-commerce startups leveraged Internet tools to produce such innovations as pricing “bots,” collaborative purchasing, person-to-person trading, e-procurement systems and name-your-price bidding systems for perishable inventory.

5) All we, like sheep, will go astray (with enough pressure). Amid speculative bubbles that last as long as the dot com one we have recently witnessed, even the most disciplined investors can conclude that the rules really may be different this time and eventually give in to the wicked ways of the herd. Ironically, it is many of those most righteous hold-outs that inherit the iniquity of us all - those that capitulated and invested just as the bubble was about to burst lost both their shirts and their integrity. By contrast, the prodigals that jumped on fads with the alacrity of 13-year-olds had already cashed out handsomely. Few of us are immune from speculative frenzies.

6) Free is folly. The junkyards of many innovation cycles are piled high with business plans built around the idea of giving something away free and “making it up on XYZ.” A decade ago while I was working at Ziff-Davis we received a business plan that called for giving away free fax machines and “making it up” on faxed advertising. That’s only one step sillier than giving free exercise machines to health clubs in order to sell advertising blasts to sweaty boomers. The numbers simply don’t work out for most free models. The Internet’s low incremental distribution costs nourished a large crop of freebie wannabes - and now the “F” section of our shutdowns list is very long indeed with names like FreeInternet.com; Freerealtimeworld; Freeride; FreeTaxPrep.com; freeWebStuff.com; freeworks.com - you get the picture. Next time around - we’ll focus on our value proposition a bit more closely.

7) We used narrowcast to broadcast. A surprising number of entrepreneurs, presumably in the search for the big play, decided to use the Internet, the ultimate narrowcasting medium, to reach the widest and most undifferentiated consumer markets imaginable. In using the WaterPik of the Internet to water the broad consumer garden, entrepreneurs bypassed the many rich demographic lodes that the Internet enabled them to mine for a fraction of the cost of the big play. Many of the big and broad consumer startups ranging from Value America to Webvan went aground on the inherent low margins and the massive marketing and infrastructure costs of such ventures.
The $50 million rule can kill. Many dot com casualties fell victim to the temptation to gin up business plans to meet the size criteria of the typical venture capitalist. A typical VC firm, in order to justify the time it spends on an investment, needs to dispense fire-hose amounts of cash, implying that the recipient business must be fairly big, able, say, to generate revenues of $50 million in three years (hence the $50 million rule). The resulting dynamic creates a sort of theme park of co-dependency - VCs dangle big carrots to encourage bigger thinking on the part of entrepreneurs whose DNA already is programmed for grandiosity. The sad result is that many of these inflated business plans were overfunded. They were never destined for the fifty-mil world, but would have made nice $10 million to $20 million businesses had they been more appropriately financed. In retrospect, angel investing, with its ability to funnel smaller jets of funding, would have been more appropriate for many of shoulda-been-niche plays.

9) It’s hugely difficult to build chicken and egg simultaneously. Many of this past year’s disasters stemmed from business models that required the startup to build both a critical mass of buyers and a critical mass of sellers - and do it at the same time. Many B2B marketplaces fell into that category, as did collaborative purchasing models, rewards programs and many others. It requires huge amounts of money to create either half of the equation in a many-to-many model. Investors that want to create the next eBay had better plan to spend a lot of time and even more money to do it.

10) Prediction tools must improve. As we observed above, the biggest mistakes of the dot com bubble were mistakes of timing - of misjudging the speed and direction of development and adoption and placing investment bets accordingly. In order to avoid those mistakes in the future, we need better predictive tools to plot the speed at which new technologies will spread. Spreadsheet gymnastics by 20-something b-school graduates should not dictate our investment decisions. We can produce better predictions. We have the data - from decades of technology innovation. We have the ability to analyze the data - after all, Everett Rogers wrote “Diffusion of Innovations” 40 years ago. We have the history. The dot com bust suggests we should begin to learn from it.

— Tim Miller, Webmergers, Inc.
From : http://www.businessplanarchive.org/whatwecanlearn/tenlessons.html

The immigrant who became the ‘doughnut king’ had wealth and clout —
and a nasty gambling habit. Now he sleeps on a trailer porch.
By Sam Quinones, Times Staff Writer

On the porch of a friend’s mobile home in Long Beach, the Cambodian doughnut king falls asleep each night shivering.

Once, he enjoyed the warmth of family and the respect of his community. Once, he was a poor boy who carried away one of Cambodia’s wealthiest daughters. Once, he was a millionaire who met three U.S. presidents.

Ted Ngoy made a fortune in doughnuts. Over the years, he led thousands of his countrymen into the business. Through doughnuts, many Cambodians stepped out of isolation and into the American mainstream. And a new figure emerged on the California business landscape: the Cambodian doughnut-shop owner.

Today, at 62, the doughnut king is broke, homeless and dependent on the goodwill of his few remaining friends.

"He lost all the doughnuts," said James Dok, director of the United Cambodian Community, a social service agency in Long Beach. "He has to start a new life."

He was born Bun Tek Ngoy. His mother raised him in a rural village near Cambodia’s border with Thailand. He was Chinese Cambodian, part of a despised underclass. In 1967, his mother sent him to study in Phnom Penh, the capital. At
school, Ngoy fell in love from afar with a beautiful girl. Her name was Suganthini Khoeun. Her father was a high-ranking government official. Her brother-in-law, Sutsakhan Sak, was chief of police and would become, briefly, the country’s president.

Suganthini’s parents hoped she would marry well. Until then, she was kept sheltered. At 16, she had no friends, could not talk to boys and was forbidden to leave home alone.

Ngoy lived in an attic apartment a few blocks from the Khoeun family’s mansion. The son of a peddler had no chance with such a girl, no right even to think of loving her. But one night, he had an idea.

He sat on the roof of his apartment and played his flute, the music sweeping over the neighborhood. Suganthini and her mother heard the music. Those are the sounds of a man in love, her mother said.

Ngoy wrote to her. I am the flute player, he said in a note passed through the family’s maid. A week later, Suganthini wrote back, and the two began a secret correspondence. Ngoy asked to visit.

"I don’t think you dare come to my room," she responded. Soldiers and dogs guarded the mansion. One night in a pouring rain, Ngoy scaled a coconut tree beside the wall surrounding her home. He cut his chest sliding under barbed wire. From the wall, he leaped onto the roof and crawled through an open window. Drenched and bleeding, he tiptoed into a hallway. He had to guess which room was hers.

He opened a door, and there she was.

Suganthini was terrified, but she let the stranger stay. For the next 45 days, he lived in her room. He slept under the bed and hid when the maids came to clean.

Late at night, Ngoy would put Suganthini on his back and climb down the roof, then down the coconut tree. They would speed through Phnom Penh on his motorcycle, the couple recalled. Before sunrise, they would climb back into her room.

One night under a full moon, they knelt and prayed. They pricked their fingers and squeezed drops of blood into a cup of water. They both drank and vowed to be faithful.

Eventually, her parents discovered Ngoy and threw him out. They arranged a meeting for the couple at a relative’s house, where Ngoy was expected to formally end their romance. Her parents and cousins hid behind curtains so they could hear him break off the relationship.

Ngoy told Suganthini that he didn’t love her. He was a fraud, he said.

Then he pulled a knife. That is a lie, he cried, and plunged the blade into his belly. Suganthini’s father ran out from hiding and
called an ambulance.

Suganthini’s parents kept her locked in her room for days. Distraught, she took an overdose of sleeping pills and fell into a
coma.

When the couple recovered, her parents finally allowed them to marry.

War erupted in 1970. Ngoy joined the army. With the help of his brother-in-law, he was promoted to major and appointed military attache at the country’s embassy in Thailand.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, and the Cambodian genocide began.

"Then I went to America," Ngoy said, "and created the doughnut world."

The couple and their three toddlers arrived penniless at Camp Pendleton, part of the first wave of Cambodian refugees.

Peace Lutheran Church in Tustin hired Ngoy as a janitor. He found a second job at a gas station. Near the station was a doughnut shop. Night after night, he watched customers come and go.

Eager to learn the business, Ngoy approached the shop owners. They told him Winchell’s Donuts trained store managers. Ngoy became a trainee and took over a Winchell’s in Newport Beach. He hired his wife and nephew. The family members worked 17 hours a day and saved for a year.

Ngoy bought his first doughnut shop from a couple who was retiring. Christy’s Doughnuts in La Habra never did great business. But from then on, every store Ngoy and his wife bought or opened they named Christy’s Doughnuts.

Ngoy bought stores in Fullerton, Anaheim, Anaheim Hills and Buena Park over the next year. He wanted to buy more, but he was exhausted running the five he owned.

Then he had his next great idea. Huge numbers of Cambodian refugees were arriving in California. Doughnut shops were easy to run. An owner could keep costs low by employing his family.

Ngoy would open more shops and lease them to fellow refugees.

"I’m happy; they’re happy," he said.

The Ngoys drove a motor home around California, opening shops in Los Angeles, Modesto, Fresno, San Jose, the Bay Area city of Brisbane, Sacramento and San Diego. At each stop, they set up the business and trained the families who leased it.

Ngoy showed them baking and bookkeeping. He taught them the names of the doughnuts: old fashioned, jelly-filled, glazed. He helped them apply for permits. He co-signed loans for supplies and equipment.

The Ngoys helped hundreds of refugees find housing and apply for Social Security cards. Because of the Ngoys, a Cambodian refugee’s first American job was often in a doughnut shop.

Doughnuts offered an escape from years of welfare dependency. The families who followed Ngoy’s lead learned to run businesses and picked up English. Doughnut revenue put their children through college.

Ngoy doesn’t remember how many stores he started or bought - 40? 50? 60?

"I just want to create as many as I can," he said. "Where I’m going, I don’t know. I just do it."

Like Ngoy, most of the people who leased his stores were Chinese Cambodian. They did business on a handshake, he said, and his tenants always paid.

By the mid-1980s, he was a millionaire. But he was more than well-off; he was respected. In 1985, he and Suganthini became U.S. citizens. They took American names. He became Ted. She became Christy.

Christy and Ted bought a $1-million, three-story, 7,000-square-foot house with palm trees and a three-car garage on Lake Mission Viejo in Orange County. Ted liked Cadillacs; Christy preferred Mercedes- Benz convertibles. They had a vacation home in Big Bear and a time share in Acapulco. They went to Europe twice.

Ted joined the Republican Party, held fundraisers for George H.W. Bush, met former Presidents Reagan and Nixon, and urged other Asian immigrants to support the GOP.

Soon, Cambodians began copying the Ted Ngoy business model. His tenants opened their own stores and leased them out. In the early 1990s, it was reported that California had 2,400 Cambodian-owned doughnut shops.

"Everybody went to the gold mine," Ngoy said.

Despite his success, he said, he felt unhappy and isolated.

"No political life, no religious life, just work, work," he said. "Money, doughnuts, sleep."

He was ready to be taken by a new passion.

He had gotten his first taste of that passion years earlier. The Ngoys went to Las Vegas for the first time in 1977. They saw Elvis Presley perform, and Ted played a little blackjack.

Over the next few years, he went back every month or so, seeing Tom Jones, Diana Ross and Wayne Newton - and betting ever-larger sums.

Pit bosses, floor men and dealers at Caesars Palace, the MGM Grand and the Mirage got to know the Cambodian doughnut king. Casino operators gave Ngoy free rooms, food, airfare and front-row seats to prize fights.

In return, he played their tables and lost thousands of dollars.

"Las Vegas was the new thing," he said, "besides making money and making doughnuts,"

Ngoy’s wife hated his gambling. She would discover big losses, and they would argue, sending their children running to their rooms. She would forgive him when he promised to stop, and he would - for a while. "I believed him a thousand times," she said.

Then Ngoy would fly to Las Vegas without telling her, sometimes staying as long as a week. She would drive there with her youngest son and go from hotel to hotel looking for him.

Ngoy forged her signature on checks. He borrowed money from relatives who had leased his doughnut shops. When he lost big, he would sign the stores over to them.

"When you get to the table, you’re so emotional, evil in your body," he said. "You cannot resist against it."

Word spread. Refugees who had sought his advice now avoided him, fearing he would ask for a loan.

Ngoy tried Gamblers Anonymous. "I cry. Everybody cry," he said. "After cry, go back gambling."

He began placing bets with Cambodian bookies on football and basketball games. He had $50,000 riding on many Sundays.

In 1990, after disappearing for another disastrous trip to Las Vegas, he flew to Washington, D.C., and joined a Buddhist monastery. In saffron robes and shaved head, the doughnut king spent a month meditating. Then he flew to a monastery in the Thai countryside. Each morning, he walked with the monks, begging for food from peasants, crying as the rocky roads tore at his bare feet.

Once back in Orange County, he bet more than ever.

"Monks cannot help me," he said. "Buddha cannot help me."

Cambodia was planning its first elections in 1993, and well-to-do emigres from California were returning to run for office.

Ngoy was one. His doughnut fortune was almost gone. He had sold what few shops remained. A bank had foreclosed on his mansion on Lake Mission Viejo.

In Cambodia, Ngoy formed the Free Development Republican Party. He believed he could show others the path to wealth and opportunity.

He also figured that as a prominent politician, he would be forced to control his gambling habit.

"When I become big guy, then I cannot go gamble because people won’t vote for you. They won’t trust you," he said.

His party did poorly in the 1993 and 1998 parliamentary elections, but Prime Minister Hun Sen made him an advisor on commerce and agriculture.

Using his Republican Party connections, Ngoy successfully lobbied the U.S. for most-favored-nation trade status for Cambodia in 1995, helping create a modern garment industry and thousands of jobs.

When Christy returned to California for the birthday of a grandchild in 1999, Ngoy met a young woman and brought her to live in his house. To Christy, this was the final betrayal. She divorced him and didn’t return to Cambodia.

Ngoy ended his political career abruptly in 2002, breaking with two powerful allies, the commerce minister and the head of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce. At a news conference, he dissolved his party and accused the government of corruption. The next day, he flew back to Los Angeles.

He left behind his new wife and their two children, and what he had seen as his last chance at redemption.

The doughnut king landed at LAX with $50 in his pocket.

He returned to a refugee community in transition. About 30 Christy’s Doughnuts were still in operation, as were hundreds of other Cambodian-owned doughnut shops. But Cambodians were leaving the business, tired of working 17-hour days and squeezing a 13-cent profit from every 65-cent doughnut. They were moving their capital and know-how into liquor stores, markets and fast-food restaurants.

None of the people Ngoy helped get started lent him a hand, he said: "I trained them. I shared love, my heart. Where are they now?"

He says his gambling is under control - though he has no money with which to test this will power. He subsists on small handouts from friends. He turned down a job as a security guard because it required standing for eight hours. He took a real estate class but said he couldn’t retain the details.

He has converted to Christianity, he said, and prays often, asking God for help. On Sundays, he attends Parkcrest Christian Church in Long Beach. He spends his evenings alone, reading the Bible.

A woman from his church lets him sleep in the screened porch outside her mobile home, which he has fashioned into a makeshift bedroom. His few shirts and pants hang from a clothesline.

Ngoy believes he is suffering God’s punishment for having betrayed the blood vow he made as a young man under the moonlight in Phnom Penh.

Christy Ngoy now owns a Peruvian restaurant in Irvine. One of their sons is a financial consultant; another is a computer-networking technician. A daughter owns a 1950s-style hamburger restaurant in Orange County.

"Once, I said I would die if something happened to him," Christy said of her ex-husband. Their fairy tale romance is so distant, she said, it’s as if it happened to someone else. The stranger who crept into her room more than 35 years ago is a stranger again.

Ted Ngoy has become a stranger even to himself.

"I don’t know who I am right now," he said. "I say, ‘Ted, who are you?’ I really don’t know."

****************************************************

*Originally from the LATIMES.com. Good luck on getting it reprinted Remembered the article after a brief stint with Romanticism — for a while Ted’s wooing style appealed to me.

This blog doesn’t have any coherence whatsoever; I shall just write whatever my mind has for the moment — its close to Overdrive.

It’s just after lunchtime and my stomach’s STILL protesting my fast. I’m still following the Ramadan, and its my 4th year now methinks. I love the idea of discipline in this experiential paradigm shift.

Anyway, I came across a Greek saying on the book "Ogilvy on advertising," and it goes like this:

"When Pericles spoke, the people said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march!’"

Such is the power of communications; such is the power of heart. Victor Hugo once said, "Nothing else in the world . . . not all the armies . . . is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. " Imagine, empires had been carved out of nothingness just because of the few illuminating souls of men. And our course in history has changed forever.

Genghis Kahn, for a point in his life, was enslaved by a rival tribe. By sheer guts and luck he escaped and carved the world’s largest contiguous empire. He would constantly go to the mountains and "counsel with the gods," asking for auspices to tell him if his path would be worth undertaking. Or whether it’s to his calling. Or perhaps he simply went up there to meditate on the possible courses of action.

Like the time when the Khwarezmian Shah Muhammed attacked his diplomatic caravan twice, he went to the mountains and meditated. After a few days, he came down with a message — that the gods promise victory over their adversaries. To my knowledge, I think he was the only conqueror that died of old age, and had the most loyal troops in the world. Cyrus the Great died in battle; Alexander the Great was poisoned; Caesar was assasinated; Qin Shih Huang Ti went nuts after listening to his quack doctors told him ingesting Mercury would extend his life.

But those leaders — they had a thing in common. They stirred the hearts and minds of men. The fueled imaginations and contributed to their already legendary status as living men. They made men rise up and follow.

Will we be producing Great men as those in the past? We ever increasingly need them so in the present. We need to march to our destinies. . .

I think therefore I exist.
That is what I dreamt I told you
when the weather was nice,
raining and shining
in a cavort with Miss’n Nostalgia,
in a tango with Possb’lty,
and a dirty Ramba with Fate.

I thought therefore I existed.
That is when I called out
to the family of Mushashi
and asking him to duel
with Liu Bei as my sword,
Guan Yu and Zhang Fei’s his
and find out if Kong Ming was us.

I thought therefore I exist.
That is when Suze Randall snapped
and stole the lofty pictures of me,
imprinting photos of curious childhood,
rebelling teens, conforming adulthood
in my most private chest,
with my life spread like a Centerfold.

I think therefore I existed:
That is when you came
with a disgusted look
and promptly broke up with me
the first time we met,
seducing me to the very end
to your lair deep in Atlantis,
and promising me your love
when it was last we saw another.
Walking away in tears, my thoughts ran
when my self entered the scene and said:
“I exist therefore I think.”

Word History: The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, “Flen flyys,” from the first words of its opening line, “Flen, flyys, and freris,” that is, “fleas, flies, and friars.” The line that contains fuck reads “Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk.” The Latin words “Non sunt in coeli, quia,” mean “they [the friars] are not in heaven, since.” The code “gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk” is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w. This yields “fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli.” The whole thus reads in translation: “They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].”

From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fuck

Well Ballanced

You scored 70 % Lefty and 85 %Righty!

Congratulations, you have well developed skills in both hemispheres. You see an abundance of ideas and you can easily make plans without getting lost in possibilities. Both the details and the bigger picture are obvious to you. You can relate to almost anyone, and understand their perspective. Undoubtedly you are good at anything you set your mind to. It may also be possible to hypnotise you.

From: http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=8956862395592315116′

I just came home from chillin out with a good pal of mine, Christian. We talked, caught up with what happened with our lives in the two months I’ve been gone. It felt like I’m back home. Tadaima.

Whilst hanging out in his room, he made me listen to a recording Donna and he made one time. It was sublime. But the conversation that ensued proved much more valuable eventually — we talked about artistry. He mentioned that Donna never studied music theory, even something as simple as chords and notes (although she can read limitedly), but her keyboarding was awesome! In Chris’ own words, she "feels the music" and that she’s "a right-brainer."

According to Chris, she was living proof that one need not learn too much technical stuff. He adds: "technical people, left-brainers, are robots!" Perhaps. But then, he himself got entrapped in its highly organized world, only to resurface back to the creative uncertainties of right-brainness. "It was a choice," according to him.

What struck me was that when I whined that I wanted to write, he told me bluntly: "then write! Writers write. They don’t criticize. They do what they want to do." I think I’ve lost it. My "soul." Drowned out in a fabricated, interwoven world filled with survival, realities, and depressing truths.

Our conversation turned to Steve Jobs, founder of Apple. He once went to India on a pilgrimage, seeking for enlightenment. He eventually returned home and started Apple computers. Pilgrimages may be necessary to know your soul, we both agreed. But knowing is a small part of the equation.

"Obsession is the root of talent," philosophized Chris. Totally agree. But it has to burn you; consume you; spit at you and humiliate you; then finally love you like a hard-to-get lass of your dreams.

Dammit. Maybe I should just start writing. Spill my guts out again and be the soul exhibitionist I had been, letting the true me out in complete abandon. I should simply write whatever this mind dictates and let my hands do the talking. Grammatical worries and speling problems b damnd.

I want my voice back. I want my soul to talk back.

20: And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
21: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
22: And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.
23: And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them.
24: For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day.
25: But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.
26: And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
27: They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
28: Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
29: But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
30: Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
31: In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.
32: Remember Lot’s wife.
33: Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.
34: I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
35: Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
36: Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
37: And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.

I once dreamt dreams to hold the sky
And that I, as I grasp, shan’t die—
An Everest out to touch the stars
Rising to meet destiny afar;
That I, in my time, shall awake
With an empire of my hands make;
But this lone dragon must defy
The banal farmers growing rye.

Alas, I awoke from the stars
And wrought to start my life’s best hours.

According to economist David Galenson, there’s only two major kinds of Geniuses, namely:

1. The Conceptualists
2. The Experimentalists

The Conceptualists are those that gets hit by a creative spark at a younger age and are then able to produce works that alters the landscape. Here’re a few some of these folks:

LITERATURE: The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Age 29

PAINTING: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Pablo Picasso
Age 26

FILMMAKING: Citizen Kane
Orson Welles
Age 26

ARCHITECTURE: The Vietnam War Memorial
Maya Lin
Age 23

MUSIC: The Marriage of Figaro
Wolfgang Mozart
Age 30

Experimentalists, however, takes time to mature; henceforth, they usually produce their works at a later stage in their lives.

LITERATURE: Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
Age 50

PAINTING: Château Noir
Paul Cézanne
Age 64

FILMMAKING: Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock
Age 59

ARCHITECTURE: Fallingwater
Frank Lloyd Wright
Age 70

MUSIC: Symphony No. 9
Ludwig van Beethoven
Age 54

Of course, there are still what Galenson would consider “Moderates,” but most geniuses fall under those two. Talk about a major paradigm shift — geniuses are both BORN and MADE. Some simply take time to mature. Here’s the parting shot by the articles author:

“Of course, not every unaccomplished 65-year-old is some undiscovered experimental innovator. This is a universal theory of creativity, not a Viagra for sagging baby boomer self-esteem. It’s no justification for laziness or procrastination or indifference. But it might bolster the resolve of the relentlessly curious, the constantly tinkering, the dedicated tortoises undaunted by the blur of the hares. Just ask David Galenson.”1

1Article and image from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/genius.html