Know your audience

So in trying to get corporate sponsors for the table tennis team's trip to our national championships, we tried to sell the sponsorship as a good business decision and an opportunity to gain a stronger foothold in a fast-growing market. Well, one response went something like, "This idea has merit, but it'll have to be approved by marketing. [Therefore] We won't fund this."

The lesson of the day (I've been bad about keeping this updated) is that the paid philanthropists in a corporation don't care about marketing. They want to know why you are a good cause and not why you'll make them money. Now, this might vary from company to company, but generally, super-large ones are more horizonatally structured (?) and focused on accomplishing their purpose, not some other department's purpose. This is sad, because we had what I thought was a pretty compelling case.

You gotta play the game...

I made a pretty big mistake in finding out about Sony's flash new line of flash players and still not selling. This was about 9:00 AM on Tuesday morning, me having gotten about 3 hours of sleep the day before. AAPL was trading a dollar lower than the previous day in extended-hours trading. Fast forward one day, AAPL is down 3-4 dollars a share. Well, it's not the end of the world.

The other big mistake is overestimating the value of "the webcast" that was aired yesterday and not today as I had expected. Probably the combination of none-too interesting news, combined with the flash announcement lifted any pressure to boost the stock price.

I'm not worried that the price will go back up, just that I didn't capitalize from this significant dip that could have netted more shares. And I really like Sony's players, too. Shoud've stayed out, but now that I'm back in the game... AHHHH this is disastrous. It's like Apple's price dropped 14 dollars had it not split (remember the whole naptersnapster announcement). END DISORGANIZED RANTING.