MediaShift’s first two titles are How to Self-Publish Your Book (80 pages, $3.99) and Your Guide to Cutting the Cord to Cable TV (50 pages, $2.99). (I have to point out here that GigaOM’s also got a cord-cutting ebook, written by our own Janko Roettgers.) The titles are available through Kindle and the iBookstore for now and will eventually be available through Nook; print-on-demand editions will also be released, priced at $4.99 to $6.99.

Mark Glaser, the executive editor of MediaShift, says he’s planning on releasing 10 to 20 ebooks this year, depending on how well the first titles sell. “This is a test for us and PBS,” he said, “so we will learn as we go and adjust prices, length, subject matter and more.”

At a paidContent Live session hosted by Slate chairman Jacob Weisberg, three media companies described a new breed of creators who are equally at ease with content and technology. This has led to the emergence of non-traditional media influencers such as comment communities at Reddit, and at Vox Media sites The Verge and SB Nation.

“In the day, if you wanted to create media, you had to start as an intern making coffee,” said Vox CEO Jim Bankoff, adding that now anyone with $100 can make a movie. He explained that this democratization of content creation has resulted, in some cases, of Vox hiring people on the basis of their comment contributions.

This has led to a culture of empowerment in which everyday people are as fluent in media as many traditional journalists. More and more, they are taking to public platforms to not just report, but to take part in the news.

Erik Martin, GM of Reddit, cited “random acts of pizza” — a community on the site that sends pizza as a gesture of support, most recently to emergency workers in Boston.

But does this new culture of public participation also has a dark side? Slate’s Weisberg pointed to Reddit’s current efforts to identify the Boston bomber, including posting a suspect’s photo on the site, as approaching vigilante justice.

“Reddit may be creating the next Richard Jewell,” said Weisberg, referring to a police officer who foiled an Atlanta Olympics bombing plot only to be falsely accused as a suspect in a traumatizing “trial by media.”

Martin said he regarded the role of Reddit employees as “groundskeepers” who helped discrete communities determine their own standards.

Dan Roth, a former Fortune editor who now oversees news on LinkedIn Today, offered a further example of how non-journalists are creating media. He described how executives like Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson are now writing regular columns in their own voices. While such contributions in traditional media typically amounted to no more than press releases, Roth said that readers’ ire at inauthenticity has forced even corporate executives to reevaluate how they write.

Check out the rest of our paidContent Live 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

A transcription of the video follows on the next page

Go to page 2 (of 2) on paidContent .

Books have always been Amazon’s bread and butter, and much of Amazon’s ebook strategy has focused on finding more ways and identifying new devices for people to enjoy the pastime of reading. The car is the logical next step, considering how much time people spend their automobiles on their daily commutes and simply running errands. In fact, a lot of drivers already do plenty of reading in their cars with audiobooks, using both physical and digital media. Some people have even managed to cram Amazon’s Audible books into their car stereos using USB drives or auxiliary ports.

Amazon stands to gain plenty by embracing that trend, and I don’t just mean by selling audiobooks in the car. (In case you’re wondering, it’s not possible today to stream an Audible book through Cloud Player). While there is a healthy segment of readers who just want audiobooks, I bet there’s a far bigger market of people who normally read their books in ink — in either the printed or digital variety — but would like the option of switching to audio when they get behind the wheel.

No large-scale development required

For Amazon to make that work it would have to supply its books in dual-media formats. You would then read from your Kindle or Kindle smartphone app when otherwise unoccupied, but once you stepped into your vehicle the device would automatically pair with the Kindle app in the car, which would immediately start reading your book aloud at the exact point you left off.

Amazon already has much of this technology in place. Last year, Amazon introduced Whispersync for Voice, which allows you to pair an Audible book with an ebook for a few extra bucks. Amazon isn’t just selling the same media in two formats, it’s integrating them. A narration feature allows you to listen along as you read from the Kindle — after each word is spoken the text is highlighted on the screen. Customers can switch between audio to visual-only formats with just a touch of the button.

It would be cinch for Amazon to integrate that technology into the car. It would merely have to develop software for the Kindle and Kindle apps that would integrate with the various automakers’ connected car interfaces, just as it’s done for Cloud Player on Sync AppLink.

It could also tap into the automakers’ speech recognition systems, allowing readers to pause the audio stream or navigate their books with simple voice commands. Amazon has invested plenty in voice and speech interface technologies over the last two years, buying both Ivona and Yap. Those acquisitions could come in handy when developing any new connected car technology.

Amazon stays mum

I should say now that we have no specific knowledge that Amazon is working on Kindle for the car, but just to be sure we put the question to the company itself. While an Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the company today has the technology to seamlessly switch between book formats, Amazon wouldn’t comment on any future connected car plans. The spokesperson said as a matter of policy Amazon doesn’t comment on future product plans.

That’s pretty much what we expected to hear, but if Amazon does wind up pursuing this technology, I for one would buy it. Today I have an uneasy relationship with ebooks. I download the occasional tome on iBooks or Kindle, but for the most part, I still have an irrational attachment to paper books. I can get away with that attachment because today I can read a physical book in the same places I can read an ebook — on a train or in plane, while camping or lying around on the couch — but one place I cannot read a physical book is in the driver’s seat of a car. By creating a connected car app, the Kindle and ebooks in general would become immensely more valuable to me.

It’s not just consumers who would get excited about Kindle for the car. The automakers would fall all over themselves lining up to support it. One of the reasons the automakers have proceeded so cautiously with app development is a concern over safety — distracting apps could cause accidents. But the auto industry has been quick to sign off on any audio-only multimedia service, as evidenced by all of streaming music and radio apps that populate connected car dashboards.

In fact, audiobook apps have already made their way into many cars. Harman’s Aha content platform has already made into Honda’s connected car platform HondaLink, offering audio book libraries among its many channel choices. I’m actually surprised Audiobooks.com, a cloud-based streaming service, hasn’t launched a connected car app already.

Featured photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Rob Byron

According to the memo, which Advertising Age has published in full, the former head of Gawker’s sponsored content business — which includes the sponsored conversations that Denton launched last year as part of the network’s new Kinja discussion platform — has left Gawker to run his own digital marketing firm, and former Conde Nast ad sales manager Andrew Gorenstein is taking over:

“We’re reaching for 40 percent revenue growth this year, an acceleration from 26 percent in 2012. We had six clients spend over $1M with us last year. Andrew’s new threshold is $5M. In recognition of Andrew’s success, he is being promoted to Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for traditional advertising, our content work for clients and the exploding e-commerce business.”

Denton said last year that ecommerce would be a focus for the company — noting that it was one of the original business models for Gawker but “we didn’t have the scale then to make it work” — but his latest memo makes it clear that the network is going full steam ahead in that direction. Gawker has posted a number of job listings for what it calls “commerce specialists” for sites like Kotaku (devoted to video games) and the female-focused site Jezebel.

Gawker is looking to hire “commerce specialists”

The job listings describe the position as “a new type of service journalism” that includes “everything from posts about the cheapest deal on something our readers need to introducing them to new things they’ve never seen,” and notes that Gawker will be deriving revenue from those posts (if you’re interested in alternative methods of monetization for media, we’re going to be discussing that on a number of panels at our paidContent Live conference in New York on April 17). As the listing describes it:

“Your beat is helping readers buy things. You’ll be delivering content about products that Kotaku readers know, love, or should own. You’ll have both a daily writing assignment and the freedom to pursue your own content ideas. If you’re interested in things like deal forums, coupon codes, giving your friends product advice, and Amazon.com, you’ll use all of those as inspiration to create your own new commerce content product.”

Gawker’s move towards what might be called “commerce journalism” (a term Denton says he doesn’t like using) is just part of the broader trend within a number of digital-media entities of trying to expand their monetization methods away from the declining banner ad business. Sites like BuzzFeed and Gawker are promoting their sponsored content offerings as the solution — although some see that approach as an ethical minefield and point to examples of poor judgment like The Atlantic‘s recent widely criticized Scientology feature.

In a sense, Gawker’s move is just another variation on “native advertising,” which tries to make ad-related content look as much like a site’s traditional fare as possible. Whether the network runs into Atlantic-style problems with this new type of service journalism or advertorial remains to be seen.

This post was updated on February 15 to clarify that the term “commerce journalism” is not one that Nick Denton uses to describe what Gawker is doing with its affiliate link posts.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Shutterstock / Gl0ck

Internet curmudgeon Nick Carr attacked this particular question in a recent post on his blog, and got into an interesting debate with digital-media theorist Clay Shirky via the comments. Ironically, while Shirky is often criticized as a purveyor of wishful thinking about media, it is Carr who argues there is something ineffable and mysterious about the format we know as the book, while Shirky’s argument seems more based in reality

(Note: we are going to be discussing the future of the book and potential business models for book-related content at our paidContent media conference in New York on April 18, with a panel discussion featuring Atavist founder Evan Ratliff and Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks).

In his original essay — entitled “Will Gutenberg laugh last?” — Carr notes that research shows e-book reading is still on the rise, but also shows that print reading continues to command a large share of the market, and that printed book sales are “holding up relatively well.” Some publishers and distributors have even noticed a slowdown in e-book sales, says Carr, who then goes on to propose some reasons why that might be the case, including:

“We may be discovering that e-books are well suited to some types of books (like genre fiction) but not well suited to other types (like nonfiction and literary fiction)… the e-book may turn out to be more a complement to the printed book, as audiobooks have long been.”

Shirky says even e-books themselves are transitional

Among those who showed up to comment on Carr’s piece was Shirky, who argues that it is more likely the book format itself is simply going to die out as a result of the web and other developments — and not just the printed book, but the whole concept of a book, which he describes as nothing more than a “production unit” for content, like the album was for music.

As Shirky puts it:

“Maybe books won’t survive the transition to digital devices, any more than scrolls survived the transition to movable type… what the internet portends is not the end of the paper container of the book, but rather the way paper organized our assumptions about writing altogether.”

In a comment of his own, Carr responds that whatever might happen to reference works like encyclopedias or phone books — which he agrees would make more sense in digital form — books that consist of an “extended narrative, either fictional or factual and almost always shaped by a single authorial consciousness and expressed in a single authorial voice” would always remain, even if it is in digital form, because there is more to it than just being a convenient container for content.

“Your desire to see cultural artifacts as mere technological artifacts, as “production units,” leads you to jump to the conclusion that because the narrative art of the book is resistant to digital re-formation, the narrative art is doomed to obsolescence.”

In a follow-up comment, Shirky maintains that the novel — fictional or not — is a content model that is “pretty decisively wrapped up in the affordances and limitations of print,” from their length to the idea that all of the content has to be delivered at the same time and for a single price. He argues that given the “native grain of the internet,” those features would not be transferrable to an online environment in the long term. In other words, e-books themselves might be just an interim step towards something else.

“If I’m right about this, the fate of the printed book will have less to do with competition from ebooks (at least in their ‘digital copy of print’ versions) than from competition with Longreads and New Inquiry for the time and attention of the reader of extended narratives.”

Will books follow the epic poem into oblivion?

This doesn’t sit well with Carr, however, who responds with a comment that (among other things) accuses Shirky of having an almost nihilistic approach to cultural artefacts like books, and of failing to see that in some cases having a new product or platform replace an old one might be a loss for humanity rather than a gain:

“I’m certainly not suggesting that uniquely valuable forms of media, or the modes of thinking or expression that they promote, are immune to destruction or alteration by historical forces, particularly ones driven by utilitarian concerns. But if such a medium is lost or diminished by technological or economic change, we shouldn’t simply say ‘who cares; other shit will come along.’”

In a response to an email from Wired magazine founder and author Kevin Kelly on the subject, Carr gives some examples of valuable forms of media that he believes have been lost or diminished: namely, “the oral epic poem, the symphony, the silent film with live musician accompaniment, the dramatic play, the short-form cartoon, the map [and] the LP.” And he argues that the book, the movie and the video game could also fall into this category.

In the end, Carr’s argument comes down to a belief that old forms of expression like the traditional book are better than anything that might have come along to displace them from their position of dominance in our culture — and his belief forms part of the argument in his book The Shallows, which argues that digital media is actually changing the way we think, and in general making us more stupid (a view I have argued against).

Are we seeing the rise of new artistic forms that will be as beneficial to humanity as the epic poem was, or the symphony, or the silent film? I think we are, and Clay Shirky seems to as well, but Carr clearly disagrees. Who is right won’t be known for some time, if ever.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Marcus Hansson, retro writer and Frederic della Faile

What will next year bring? Everyone loves to look into their crystal ball, and we’re no different. So here are our collective predictions for 2013, from books and video to newspapers and advertising.

This is one of a handful of pieces over the next week that looks at what’s coming down the road next year in the various sectors we cover.

Laura Owen

Jeff Roberts

Robert Andrews

Janko Roettgers

Mathew Ingram

Go to page 2 (of 6) on paidContent .

To be clear, this isn’t about finality or absolutes, and we should especially not think in that fashion in a field such as digital media and its technologies – a field that is forever transforming. We should, however, consider the subject of maturity in its relative sense, in comparison to points of reference: a time, a sector, a different pace, perspectives that always evolve.

Media, as a segment, has always been unique (and fortunate) in its public relations. After all, it’s perhaps the only sector that reports on itself. The challenge then is to sift through the noise and vested interest. To help us out, we can rely on the cold, disinterested financial markets.

Here’s what we have observed:

(1) There has been venture capital consolidation, leading to fewer individual points with bigger and possibly less adventurous pools to deploy.

(2) There is an increased emphasis on revenues and earnings (as distinct from pure potential and option value), accentuated by post-IPO flagship properties that have been penalized as the operation has not kept up with the optionality.

(3) A significant portion of M&A activity has consisted of smallish “acqui-hires“ that take out the upside of willing sellers before the startup has hit its theoretical stride.

(4) Cash accumulation by some of the largest competitors continues, and sometimes the cash is even sent back to shareholders through dividends or buybacks.

(5) Many of the sector leaders have underperformed relative to analyst growth expectations in the latest reporting period.

With this backdrop, a number of predictions are in order. Think of these as New Year’s forecasts if you like, considering the season, but more truly they’re observations for the visible future.

• With maturation in the underlying assets, look for maturation in the way these are funded. As we climb up from small and early venture equity to mid-stage to late-stage to growth equity, buyout finance, and even debt capital, look for all of these follow-on pieces to increase in prominence and traffic. Some of the sector linchpins are already tapping the bond markets and securing debt ratings, which reminds us that media was at one time a borrowing sector (when it was old enough).

• Look for greater business emphasis on volume, capabilities and capitalization. While it pays to be small, nimble, and agile – able to navigate sharp turns in periods of high volatility and find plenty of new openings into which to dive – when the terrain is calmer and the openings narrower, this value proposition can start to lose its charm. Look for dominance (if not survival) to overtake iteration as buzzword of choice in our vernacular.

• In the strategic community, look for M&A activity to take place based on the integration of disparate parts. We have already observed the confluence of media and commerce, of finance and technology, of media and finance, and obviously media and technology. Look for these combinations to continue and for strategic directions to be set on an increasingly integrated field, where the distinctions will be blurrier between retailer and media outlet, between hardware and software company, and, most notably, between information and money flows.

• In keeping with the motifs of size, capital and integration, look for hardware to assume a more central place in the imagination of founders and the strike zones of buyers and investors. In comparison to software, this realm is more capital intensive, longer cycled, and difficult to “pivot” – which is alright when the turbulence is diminished and the money is perhaps more patient.

• Lastly, look for traditional media to garner increased attention from new media. This sub-segment that was at one time the only segment had been of late forgotten. As the breathlessness for novelty subsides and competition for market share and revenue intensifies, traditional media will be revisited and its audience and communities recognized for untapped value.

There are two overarching themes in these assorted observations and the handful of forecasts presented: On one hand, convergence and overlap (of sectors as well as capital sources); and, on the other, a progression from an era that was arguably defined by its financial ventures to one that is more highly strategic in nature.

Seeing these parallel patterns from another angle still, we note a transition from the more or less speculative gambit to a market that is structured, calculated, and framed within a narrower band of potential outcomes. We are seeing, in short, that digital media is verging on adulthood at last.

Dan Ramsden is founder and partner at CoRise. He blogs at discourseandnotes.com; follow him on Twitter @d_ramsden.

The story turned out to be baloney and was quickly debunked by Willis’ wife. But the tale still raises an important point: how do you leave digital books and music to your loved ones?

The Problem

Last week, a Wall Street Journal story called attention to a long-standing issue that many people are just beginning to discover: we don’t own our iTunes songs, Kindle books and other digital debris.

Here’s why: When you click “I agree,” you don’t receive a piece of property but instead get a license from Apple, Amazon or whoever. And the terms of the license say the media in question is just for you. Unlike a book or a record, digital media can’t be transferred to your friends or, say, to your beloved grandson on your death.

Professor Richard Gold, an intellectual property expert at McGill University, summed up the legal implications of iTunes after death in an email to GigaOM:

Apple presumably has a license to distribute music and it then sublicenses to customers. Licences provide them more control on our use — the number of computers, sharing, etc. The benefit of the contract (licence) should become part of the estate but this would depend on the wording of the licence. This would not necessarily permit a transfer — you cannot force Apple to agree to an assignment of the contract — so would not be of much use. The only way I could imagine around this would be to say that a property right of some sort was transferred through the contract but I can’t think of an example that would work.

The upshot is that you can’t leave iTunes as property in your will because it’s not your property in the first place. State legislatures are beginning to take up the issue but it will be years (if at all) before we have a “who gets your iTunes” law. But don’t fret. Despite the weird licensing rules, you still have options to ensure Junior gets your digital Beatles collection:

Option 1:  Create a fancy legal trust

The original U.K. news story reported that Bruce Willis was asking his lawyers to create “family trusts” to hold his digital music. Since then, others have reported on fancy legal tools like “DAP Trust” to circumvent the iTunes rules. David Goldman, the man behind the DAP trust, says he is working on software that will let estate lawyers offer digital inheritance to their clients.

The problem here is that there is no guarantee a trust will work. After you die, the benefit of the trust would transfer to someone else — which appears off limits under Apple’s rules. “I would want to see the contract,” says Gregg Weiss, a New York estate lawyer. “You can’t change a policy in a license through a trust.”

Option 2: Burn your media onto a device and put the device in your will

Apple, Amazon and other retailers permit users to download digital books or music to multiple devices. This means that Bruce Willis and the rest of us can load up an e-reader or an MP3 player with content and then bequeath the device. Unlike the digital media, you do have a property right in the device.

Sticklers might note that Apple or Amazon have the right to take the digital content away from your chosen heir or heiress, leaving them with a barren Kindle or iPod. But we’re betting the lawyers for those companies have better things to do than crash wakes and inspect devices.

Option 3: Write down the darn password

This is the simplest and most obvious answer — simply provide your media passwords to your loved ones. Weiss, the estate lawyer, says it’s already common practice for attorneys to advise their clients to prepare a list of banking passwords. Simply add your iTunes account to the list and place it an envelope or an email to be sent when you die.

If you want to be technical, you could also provide the password in your will. Your digital songs and e-books are not your property — but your password is. Handing it over will let your digital media live on.

(Image by Chris Harvey via Shutterstock)

Yesterday at its Google I/O event, the company announced more content options, so I decided to compare Google Play against the two incumbents. So how does Google now fare, considering it introduced the Nexus 7; an Android 4.1 tablet that’s optimized for Google Play?

I did a similar analysis in October, only then it was to see how Samsung fared against Apple and Amazon, and decided to take the same approach here with Google. Here’s what I found when looking at the most popular movies, TV shows, music albums, starting first with music.

Amazon sounds cheaper while Google Play has some dead air

Amazon offers the most “bang for buck” here, although prices can vary by the day. Just this morning, a George Harrison album on my wish list, for example, dropped from $9.99 to $2.99 and I bought it. In terms of the top 10 — again, using iTunes as a baseline — Amazon has 9 of 10 while Google is batting .600 with four strikes. Of course, this is just a narrow view; when casually browsing all three stores for music that I like, they’re generally equal although Google is still either missing a few.

Google at the movies isn’t bad

Google fares a little better here although it still lacks the breadth of content provided by iTunes and Amazon when looking at the current top 10. But like Amazon, Google Play offers lower prices than those found in the iTunes store. When the family wants to watch a movie, I’ve turned to iTunes in the past — mainly because we have an Apple TV. For my own consumption on a tablet or phone, however, I’ve been fine with Google Play. Amazon doesn’t support movie playback on any phones or tablets save its own Kindle Fire, so I rarely look there. Update: The original comparison showed Amazon with SD movie rental pricing, which was incorrect as pointed out by readers. The current table shows the HD movie rentals.

Don’t look for recent TV shows on Google

If you want to watch current HD episodes of TV shows, Google store isn’t playing. The company announced TV show support yesterday, but it’s like looking through an old Netflix catalog as current hot shows aren’t there. Even Amazon falls a little short: When looking for the most recent episodes of popular shows on iTunes, Amazon lacked one and had another in standard definition only.

Magazines are magazines are magazines

Google also added magazine support in Google Play this week and rather than be methodical about the comparison, I spent about 20 minutes browsing the digital newsstands. The main reason why is because the top magazines were available among all three at the same price. Checking the breadth of titles showed the same: Google is at least on even par with Amazon and Apple here. The experience of reading magazines may vary by device — small tablets and phones vs the 9.7-inch iPad, for example — but there’s little differentiation in content here.

Conclusion

Apple’s iTunes Store and Amazon’s market are a close one and two while Google is still playing catch up. Yes, the company has improved digital media offerings in Google Play of late, but there’s still work to be done. I recently said that consumers aren’t buying products anymore; they’re investing in platforms instead. Android as a platform may be the best seller, but Google needs to keep negotiating content deals to strengthen its ecosystem and give consumers a reason to shop in Google Play instead of Amazon or iTunes.

At the time, he worked at investment bank GCA Savvian and wanted a way to wrap his head around the mushrooming digital-media industry. As he updated and augmented the chart, he said, his colleagues would just roll their eyes.

“Especially when I said this is going to be really, really important for us. They didn’t agree with that,” said Kawaja, who now advises digital media executives and brokers deals through his own company Luma Partners (when he isn’t lampooning the industry with funny videos and commentary at conferences). “I was like the crazy guy with the slide.”

Three years later, he’s still the guy with the slide. But it would be hard to argue that his pursuit was a crazy one. In fact, just this week he introduced a similar slide on the exploding gaming industry.

Since unveiling his chart of the online advertising landscape at a conference in 2010, it has flown around the Web, ending up in powerpoint presentations, business school case studies, and cubicles industrywide. And Kawaja, himself, has brokered some of the biggest deals in the digital ad business in the past couple of years, including Yahoo’s purchase of InterClick and Google’s Admeld acquisition.

To date, versions of his slide have received more than 350,000 views online, from people in 116 countries. Sure, compared to YouTube videos of cute babies and cats that rack up millions of views in a matter of days, 350,000 is quite small. But given the obscure nature of the material (a chart full of ad tech acronyms “SSPs,” “DSPs” and “DMPs”) it’s a fairly impressive number.

The slides have also prompted “hundreds, if not thousands” of requests from marketing and PR departments that their companies be included in the slide or given a different location on the slide, he said. Fitting an industry of more than 400 companies on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper means that by default it’s wrong, he said, acknowledging that there are differences among companies in any given category, just as there are companies that operate across several categories. “[They] are merely snapshots of some version of the present,” Kawaja said. “Simply a conversation starter.”

When companies complain about their placement or absence on the slide, he tends not to adapt it (he just advises them to download it and annotate it for their own marketing materials). But he has tweaked the slide for another reason: copycats.

Catching the copycats

By December 2010, Kawaja had split with Savvian to create his own strategic advisory and investment banking shop Luma Partners. But he noticed that several rival investment banks were plainly taking his slide and passing it off as theirs. “I chuckled at that and said ‘I’m going to try something,’” he said.

Kawaja went to logomaker.com to create a logo for the fake company Ad Pro (“with a swish and everything,” he said) and added it to his slide. Then he sat back and waited to see who would take the bait. Sure enough, within a matter of months, at least three firms had attached their names to charts that included the non-existent company, he said.

When Luma Partners updated the online display slide in June 2011 — and added five more slides to the series for categories like social, search and mobile — Kawaja decided to solve the ownership issue for once and for all by calling the media landscapes “Lumascapes.”

The branding seems to have worked. The blatant copying has ceased and, as Ad Age has noted, the Lumascapes are recognized industrywide as Luma Partners’ “calling card.”

So how did Kawaja know that he might be onto something with the slide? In part because of how the investment bankers around him were reacting. “I’m of the view that, as you go through life, think about what an investment banker would do and do the opposite,” he said.