36 strategies of war ( *geekalized )

We all know the prince, sun tzu's art of war and the 48 laws of power.

This is a comprehension of the three that fit's the new era of technology, open source,

API, geeks, VC's and many others.

1. a mix from Sun Tzu's strategy Borrow another's hand to kill. (Kill with a borrowed knife.) and the 48 laws of power; get others to work for you but always take the credit.

   Take somebody elses money ( VC ) and use it to hire people and crush your competition, by making a better

   service free. Or even give money away ( which in the end won't work though )

2. weaken your enemy from within, pose as a friend work as a spy ( another mix of the two )

   Spy on your competition, do it yourself through partnership or better* get somebody that has worked for

   your competition to work for you.

   Woo and demoralize their workers by making untrue offers.

   Pay a hacker to kick their servers ass, means to the end

3. Conceal your intentions

   Create a buzz by beeing mystic, and secretive, only give people a short glance at what you're doing and then quickly take it away.

   What was that new service I hear something about on Techcrunch? Yeah, it's not open yet? When will it open? You get the picture, people gonna talk.

   And when you're ready BANG! you hit them with all you got.

   Also because these days, for a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand max. you can create any website in the web.

   People can easily steal your idea, and be there first.

4. Those that rose to power through the arms and fortunes of others

   and the laws that apply to them.

   For those that rose to power through other peoples fortunes and army, is only one way they can be sure to stay in power.

   Try to cut loose and independent, or better, keep control from the beginning, never give away a controlling stake, and never trust friends more than you have.

   A new geek that get's to power because of the money from others, has to know his financials, be cash-flow literate and plan to the end.

   You can't afford to not be aware of you're companies financials, and you can't afford for others to know more about it than you.

   Since, if that is the case, they have the power, they will tell you how to spend, what you can and can't do.

   And you will have no choice but to listen to them, since you don't know what else to do.

   A geek with a goal has to know some accounting. And the once that master the art of financial planning and calculation will be invincible.

5. So much depends on Reputation, Guard it with your life.

   I try to explain this with examples.

   Google = don't be evil, Apple = simple, and Microsoft = Darth Vader and the Dark Side.

   Digg = the geek shall inherit the earth, Netvibes = usefull, AOL = who?

   Be carefull about your reputation, don't make misstakes in public ( AOL search release )

   And if you can, leak bad news about your competitor, create them if you have to, find their weaknesses and exploit them, but be carefull to not let others know that you said it.

   Only light the spark, for the fire will come from the public.

6. Mercenaries

As I said above, use spies and hire people from your competitors, but never put to much trust in them, as they have betrayed their former Employer and are likely to do so again. Use them, like pawns, never give them to much authority in your company.

Never, never rely upon them.

7. Win through your actions, never through argument.

Bitching about you did something first will not get you anywhere in the internet.

( i.e. Friendster, patent come...patent go. )

In the net, you have to do, you have to act, innovate and create new things, if others copy you must apply the above strategies, if you copy even more!

Netscape has been arguing for ages, altough they could really hurt microsoft with the suit, they never recovered neither. Instead they could have worked on mozilla firefox.

8. Catch a fish while the water is disturbed ( Strategy 20 ) and Law 17, keep others in suspended terror, Cultivate an air of unpredictability.

Microsoft is terrified of google, so are, ebay, yahoo and all the other big players.

They are stunned and paralyzed and only move slowly because they are trying to figure out googles motives and intentions.

This is very advantageous for Google, their competitors are petrified.

Google did this by moving in to every sector, spending huge amounts of capitals and release new

services everyday, every new product by google is another potential risk to a competitor.

It doesn't matter if it does well, as it captures the whole attention of your enemy, let them know you can do it all, you can do it for free, and maybe do it, but only if it's lucrative.

9. Play dumb, hide behind the mask of foolishness and then attack.

Prejudice is the worst misstake one can make, yet most companies still do it, and it is to their peril.

If you're competitor is not concerned with you, you can sneak up, even partner with him, he will never suspect anything from you, if he believes you're not capable of taking him down.

Hide you're ulterior motive behind the mask of the naive, and needy geek.

10. Concerning the princes ministers, learn to keep people dependant on you.

Machiavelli put them in three categories

Kind one is capable of thinking for itself, kind two is capable of understanding others thinking and a third can neither think for itself or understand others.

The first is of the highest excellence, the second is excellent, and the third is useless.

Always look for the second, but also have the first. as the Second will depend on you and your pay check. Encourage both to think independent, but don't teach them business.

Make sure the first always relies upon you in some way and is never able to do without you, make their fortune depend on yours or your company.

There are many ways to do so, small stock options are one of them.

If you see that they are putting their own interest first, slowly remove them, as if they go, they will take people with them and rip a whole in your army.

That's also why you can't find them at once, use pretext to add another capable person to his position and fire him after your soldiers have accepted the new minister

I would write more, but I have stuffs to do.

10 for the day another 10 next time.

You don't always have to be evil or devious,

you can also do something good that helps you, start an API take the credit for letting developers make a name for themselves through your website.

there is a few good points to that,

no. 1 is that you get quality work, people that do something because they want to are more motivated and naturally deliver better results than people that have to work for you.

no. 2 you get that quality work for free, this is the only time and occasion I really see a win-win situation in business.

no 3 You get a buzz, and make a name for yourself in the industry, it drives more visitors to you as people also want to promote their own tools and widgets for your website or service. It strengthens your image to be good. And in the end that is what you are, you drive the internet and it's technology forward with limited open source.

You spark new ideas and don't even have to do anything for it except provide a little code.

Be sure to only give them a bit though, don't release your whole source code, you can't fight copy cats, but you don't necessarely have to make it easy for them either.

An API can also serve as a Job search, the devs with the best widgets could be working for you soon. ( or at least partner. )

12. Weaken the strong and make the weak depend on you.

The Weak, small publishers and bloggers that don't understand to much tech, that don't want to bother with design, formatting and code.

The Strong depend on them, therefore if you can make them depend on you you weaken the strong and powerfull.

But be cautious, they have to want to depend on you, as competitors can arise out of nowhere these days.

People used to depend on Microsoft, but because they were almost forced to do so, they jumped ship as soon as they had the chance to do so.

Make them trust you be geneorous, be for free, and do everything to keep them.

Offer them protection and help, ( small business = help = revenue increases money making and publicity )

Publicly stand up for them, and they will do the same for you.

This is becoming real long,

13. Conquer and subjugate, wipe out your enemy completely,

Never look for only beeing another site in your niche market,

weaken your enemy to take over, buy them out, become the only advertiser on their site which will make them dependant on you.

Kill if you have to ( the market ) if you can, kill the market temporarely, until your competitor grows tired or runs out of money.

learn your turf if you don't know it already, learn your customers if you don't know them completely, and understand your competitors if you don't know what they're up to.

brings us to 14. Know your enemy, their every move, their every though, never stop beeing cautious and never start beeing paranoid.

Always be prepared so that you can catch them off-guard and not the other way around.

Maybe mark that if you can't figure out what your enemies are up to theres three reasons that could apply

1. Your inept, stupid and lazy, it's sad but I've seen many enterpreneurs thinking they were the only people thinking, and that's what lead to their companies demise or subjugation.

2. They're up to something big, and you should prepare yourself, best go back to strategy No. 2 , pose as a spy, and figure out what they're doing.

best way get one of their workers on to your side.

3. They're really up to nothing, that's no reason to relax, actually it's the worst of all,

why are they're up to nothing?, is the market already saturated? is there no money to be made anymore? are advertisers pulling out?

In fact it's better on your concience to know that the enemy is up to something big, since you can prepare for it.

But if he's up to nothing there is nothing to prepare for, and you have to find out with all your might why he's up to nothing.

I followed a big Internet site in copying there system, I wasn't the only one but after a little bit in time, I saw that they weren't bringin anything new, I learned from a source they had laid off half the people, but in difference to me they had a few millions in VC $, I pulled out and 1year later the competitor closed to. ( actually that was just recently )

15.

Make the enemy come to you ( 48 laws of power )

lure your enemy on the roof and then take away the latter ( sun tzu's art of war )

With baits and deceptions lure your enemy into treacherous terrain. Then cut off his lines of communication and avenue of escape. To save himself he must fight both your own forces and the elements of nature.

Well times have changed, but there is a few things you can notice these days, maybe what's still not seen in the business world of tech today.

Like Ipod Sandisk and the new zune,

microsoft came out with the zune, Ipod had to bring a new one,

Sandisk introduced the new 8gb player, Ipod Nano had to do the same ( wow already 8 gigs huh??? )

Microsoft and Spaces, Netscape and digg, yahoo vs google, you can always see these catch up tactics.

If you know your competitor well enough, you can manipulate him with your actions,

you have to know how he will react, once you master this everything will be a game.

And if you think you're in control, think twice maybe you're not.

it's like chess, if you get the king close enough, you can take your opponent out with a single pawn.