Sage advice from Spain’s ‘mastermind of startups’

Antai Venture Builder nurtures startups. Photo by Caterina Barjau, in El Pais. Miguel Vicente was an industrial engineer with a hefty salary when he decided to throw it all overboard nine years ago and launch a coupon site. He gave some memorable quotes that should be heeded by any entrepreneur during an interview with Daniel Verdu of Spain’s […]

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Newsstand owner adapts to survive media crisis

Newsstand owner Jesus Erro: Publishers are fudging their sales numbers. PAMPLONA, Spain – Those who study the business of media tend to look at it from the perspective of journalists and publishers. But the owner of a newsstand in the heart of this provincial capital has a different point of view. Jesus Erro, 56, has […]

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‘Take risks, learn from mistakes,’ says film-maker

Joffé spoke to several hundred students at the University of Navarra on Thursday. Film-maker Roland Joffé has a way of leading people on a mystical meditation to find out who they are and how they will communicate with the world. “The truth is that no one in this room actually knows where we are,” he told about […]

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How a musician views piracy and streaming

In May I was in New York at an academic conference and had time to spend with my son, Patrick Breiner, a jazz saxophonist. I wanted to hear what he had to say about the economics of the music business from his perspective. He ended up talking more about relationships than economics. Patrick says that […]

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Forget about the big numbers; go for loyalty, trust

Anyone who has studied the metrics of the internet in any detail knows about the Big Lie: those big numbers of total users and page views that everyone relies on are practically meaningless. More than half of the visitors to websites stay for less than 15 seconds.  Three-fourths of the users of the most important […]

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