{"id":1091,"date":"2023-02-06T23:03:52","date_gmt":"2023-02-07T03:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/and-then-that-happened-seths-blog\/"},"modified":"2023-02-06T23:03:52","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T03:03:52","slug":"and-then-that-happened-seths-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/and-then-that-happened-seths-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"And then that happened | Seth’s Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

The world changes and we have a choice:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Fight hard to keep it the way it was.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Notice what happened and then decide to do something with that insight.<\/p>\n

Thirty years ago, AOL was my company\u2019s biggest client. They charged users $3 an hour to use their precursor to the internet, and paid content providers a royalty based on time spent on their \u2018site.\u2019<\/p>\n

We invented a breakthrough game that was played in a chat room. Our testing showed that people (millions of people, probably) would play it for hours at a time. We developed a series of games with AOL that were fun and engaging, and were a few weeks from launch. It was certainly the most profitable project I had worked on to date.<\/p>\n

And then AOL changed to flat rate monthly pricing. And the royalties went to zero.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sunk costs were real, but the sunk costs didn\u2019t matter. What mattered was that our project was built on a foundation that had disappeared. In less than an hour, we walked away from all of it, which enabled us to build the tools and products we needed.<\/p>\n

The world is changing faster than ever. Sometimes for the better. Always giving us a choice to react or respond.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n