Free is Alive and Well

Tony Perkins: So just on the iPhone platform itself, there’s a whole... Tim Draper: New marketplace. Tony Perkins: ...new marketplace of brands waiting to happen and get Draper money and take off. Tim Draper: Yeah. Make it different enough. Make it something that the iPhone's never been used for. And that's something that we might consider. Tony Perkins: It was interesting, I just had dinner in Tahoe with a guy who worked as the head of the iPhone group for several years. And was known as being the father of the iPod. That was his idea, so he says. Anyway, he was just talking about what even Apple... Tim Draper: His name was Steve Jobs. Tony Perkins: No, it's not Steve. Michael Moe: Success has made much a failure as an orphan. Tony Perkins: It just shows you that one man doesn't necessarily think of all the good ideas, although we all love Steve. But what he was saying is Steve is really a PC generation guy. He is the father of the PC generation. And even he, when you look at the stages of the iPhone, had to be dragged kicking and pushing to open up the iPhone to new apps. So think about it. The most fun that you have on your iPhone today is finding cool new apps that radically change your life. And make them better and make you find things quicker and entertain you and the whole thing. So I thought that was an interesting anecdote but again, it plays back to this idea that there's a generational change here. And "open" seems to be the operative world. Now, "free" is also in there somewhere and for guys that want to make money, "free" is a scary word. But viral marketing is free marketing which is good because it means lower expenses. But are you guys worried about free and open hurting the top line at all? Tim Draper: I think free is a great way of marketing your product. You have to get it passed a certain point before you are a valuable commodity in general. In general, people don't really want to pay a lot more for those little iPhone g...