The Cloud Economy

The Matrix is one of my favorite movies of all time. Not just because of the movie on itself, which I think is brilliant, but because it really made me think about the concept of been a piece in a system that is controlled by “machines”, and how we could be living in a similar system, but instead of been controlled by “machines” we are controlled by banks and governments.

Since we are born, society and schools have been teaching us to be like robots, to do what we are told, to follow all the rules, to be a cog in the machine of our economy. This is a concept that is very well explained by Seth Godin in his book Linchpin, and to me that feels very similar to what Neo experience before Morpheus tell him all about the lie he is living.

I think that the Internet and “The cloud Economy” open a door to escape from “The Matrix” that we are living in, giving people the chance to play their own game with their own rules. Just as Tim Ferris explains in his book “The four hour workweek”, you have to fight against the assumptions and rules that everyone else is following: “Beating the game, Not playing the game”

Tim’s book was my biggest inspiration to start my last online business, which is structured from the beginning to liberate myself from some of the rules of “the game” that I hated forever, like working 9 to 7 from Monday to Friday, having a boss, working in an office, not having time for projects I really wanted to start, etc.

Since the moment the business started working I felt a huge liberation, very similar to when Neo feels that he can dominate the Matrix, fly all over the place and do whatever he wants. Creating what I call a “Micro-Multinational” business, has allowed me to break most of the rules that “the system” impose on us to be a cog in the machine.

The Cloud Economy is a door opened for those who want something different, those who feel that they don’t fit in the system, those who don’t want to be told what to do all the time. It is like the red pill. Take under your own risk.

Human connections are one of the pillars to create a business. As we’ve been able to connect and influence more people, businesses size have grown at the same pace. Hundreds of years before, when we lived in small villages and with a lack of transportation, one person could connect or influence very few people.

Today, after a process of globalization, as Thomas Friedman says, the world is flat and one single person is able to connect and influence tens of thousands of people using platforms like blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc… Friedman cites ten forces that flattened the world, and from those, four are the most important to create a Micro-Multinatonal business:

1. Netscape: Netscape and the Web broadened the audience for the Internet from its roots as a communications medium used primarily by ‘early adopters and geeks’ to something that made the Internet accessible to everyone from five-year-olds to eighty-five-year olds

2. Work Flow Software: The ability of machines to talk to other machines with no humans involved. Friedman believes these first two forces have become a “crude foundation of a whole new global platform for collaboration.”

3. Uploading: Communities uploading and collaborating on online projects. Examples include open source software, blogs, and Wikipedia. Friedman considers the phenomenon “the most disruptive force of all.”

4. Outsourcing: Friedman argues that outsourcing has allowed companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components, with each component performed in most efficient, cost-effective way.

In a flat world we can connect with anyone and spread our message to the masses in a way that was totally unthinkable a few years a go. When you can connect with that many people, is much easier to generate a good number of clients for your Micro-Multinational Business and generate a very good income. And it is the flat world what makes possible that a small business like mine can have clients in more than ten countries and employees in three different countries.

A flat world also allows you to hire people from all over the world, getting you access to the best professionals and freelancers or access to the best price for a service. Websites like Elance or Odesk are platforms that make this process really easy. This way, my small business, which is run from a 2006 Macbook, can hire a VA in Argentina and a programmer in India.

But the best example of a Micro-Multinational Business that is perfectly leveraging our flat world is 37Signals (maybe not that “micro” anymore), which has millions of clients from all over the world using their products, and also employees in different countries and cities around the USA.

Think you can’t do it yourself? Think again

The content of this blog is going to based on two main pillars:

• Understanding what the Cloud Economy is
• What do I mean with a Micro Multinational company and how to create one

In this post I want to tell you about what I mean by a “Micro-Multinational” company, which is my own definition to reference a kind of business that others like Tim Ferris has called a “Muse”, Chris Guillebeau has called an “Empire” or Everett Bogue has called a Minimalist Business.

When I started my first internet project as an entrepreneur I dreamt about creating the “Next big thing”, the next Google, the next You Tube or the next Amazon. I thought about a “super cool” start-up, with VC funding, awesome offices, a great team, developing a product that everybody will love, ending up been acquired by Google, Yahoo or Microsoft for at least 500 million $.

I thought that was the only way to do business online, but very soon I realized that was like playing the lottery, and that there are much more ways to create an online business that I enjoy and are much easier to make work. I could create a “Micro-Multinational” company, which has the next specific characteristics:

• It sells its products or services all over the world
• It employs as few people as possible, also all over the world
• It has very little overhead
• It is based on systems and automation to free up as much of the owner’s time as possible

With a business like this one you are not going to be the next Zuckerberg, not going to be listed in Forbes magazine, probably not going to buy a Ferrari or a luxurious Yacht, but you will not have a boss, will have more time to do more things that you enjoy, live and work from everywhere you want and live what Tim Ferris call the “New Rich” life.

Here starts a new journey for me. The challenge to start over with a new blog, in my second language, to create an audience for the message I want to spread, and to turn it into a business to prove, again, that “The Cloud Economy” is a reality, and that anyone can create a “Micro-Multinational “ company from scratch. In front of me I have a very long road, and this is the first step to get to the goal.

In this blog I’m going to talk about what the Cloud Economy is, which are the different factors that has changed the old paradigms of business, who are the guys that are taking advantage of this new way of life, and how you can do the same. It is going to be tough, but I learnt to take action and keep pushing to make things happen.

The reality is that I’m scared. Scared to be laugh at because my english writing skills are not the best, scared to talk about economy and business, scared of nobody interested in what I have to say, scared of failing with this new project, and scared of so many more things. But I also learnt that the most important actions are never comfortable, that in order to get any success you need to confront fear and beat it.

I thank you for been here reading the first post of this new blog and I hope you stick around to see how the story unfolds and whether I succeed or fail with my goals. I’m confident that the read will be worth it.