(UPDATED) Kanye West recently announced via twitter that he is hiring for a new creative company. Named Donda after his late mother, the company will purportedly have 22 divisions and in his own words “Galvanize thinkers and put them in a creative space to bounce their dreams and ideas” with an aim to "pick up where Steve Jobs left off.” Kanye’s ambition certainly seems as big as his inflated ego.
The amount of projects that very successful people enter into that you never hear about again is insurmountable. People who have gained success in one arena often have a desire to widen their empire, and grow what they believe is a talent for entrepreneurship. But because they have found success in their chosen field doesn’t mean they can conquer all.
LIGHT THE FUSE
If you look at the companies that rule the world today, they grew from a small spark of an idea. They were cultivated and nurtured by individuals until they sparked the imagination of others. Kanye wants to buy all the talent he can, because he believes that is how you achieve your goals, but it is not the talented that you want to get on board, it is the people. The people who are going to use your products, the people who are going to tell their friends you need to use their product.
Facebook, Youtube and Google were not built from a highly paid think tank, but from the ground up. Google didn’t even have a proper domain name for the first year. Even MacDonald’s and Taco Bell started on a street corner, one store at a time.
When you get the brightest and best in a room together, as Kanye obviously wants to do, it becomes so insular; everyone is fighting to be heard and wanting to impress everyone else. It is the people who don’t care about fame, or building the next big thing, or hanging out with the right people, the ones that actually use the product - they are people who make or break it.
KANYE GOES SOUTH
When you try and buy your way into the market you don’t become Google, you become Google +, or Bing for that matter. It just doesn’t work.
Record labels have forever tried to buy success for the bands and this is why the business has crumbled. They would sign everyone they could that resembled the current success story with the belief that with enough money thrown behind them, they would catch fire. But it is the individual’s ability that creates and nurtures the opportunity of success, not the team around it.
Look at Adele’s or Mumford and Sons success, or The Alabama Shakes - who are slowly working their way into the consciousness of the nation. They are born out of something real that resonates, not what a boardroom feels is real and will connect.
The flip side of this is Lana Del Rey, who’s daddy is a wealthy business man and obviously funded her career. When it comes to the crunch, as with her SNL performance, she can’t deliver and the people don’t subscribe. You can’t fool all the people all the time.
KNOW YOUR PLACE
Whatever your business or your musical project let it find it’s providence, its own path. If you strip it of its potential by beating every opportunity out of it before it is ready, it will be too abused and broken to succeed.
Kanye’s project will have so much capital behind it, that anything that gets even a smoldering of success will not be enough to pull it out of the hole it has already dug. Major labels used to look for a minimum of 100,000 sales before it took an act seriously, now they are cartwheeling if they get 10,000. Kanyes company is setting itself up to be just like the old corporate model, which if you haven’t noticed, doesn’t cut it anymore.
Optimism is fine and all, but sometimes realism is what connects the dots.
Robin Davey is an Independent Musician, Writer and Award Winning Filmmaker. Follow him on Twitter @mr_robin_davey
