In the recent election there was a proposition on the California ballots that was a bit unusual. One of the stated purposes of this proposition was to hold the executives of failed corporations liable for the losses of investors.
One of the biggest examples shown in the ads for this measure was to hold executives of software corporations liable for the losses suffered by retired people who invested all their money in such corporations.
Now, it's true that such a law might have protected Commodore's stockholders from what happened to the value of their stock. On the other hand investment in any startup computer related corporation is a real gamble. Some, like Apple, IBM and Microsoft make it past the first few years. Probably ten times as many fail in the first few years. Designing a new computer or totally new software is a big gamble. Many Great programs and great computers never did make it in the market place. Anyone who invests in these is gambling as much as someone who lays their money out on the crap tables. Just because stock brokers or individual investors are foolish enough to take a big gamble and put all their eggs in such a basket is no reason to penalize the executives of such a corporation. The ballot measure was defeated.
However, we do encourage gambling on small computer companies and corporations. We just don't encourage anyone to invest their last dollar or all the money they have to live on in such a venture. CMD was a gamble when it started out. If it wasn't for the investments of a few individuals the company would have never gotten to where it is today. It continues to gamble slightly with new products that may or may not ever gain a foothold in the marketplace.
I can think of many companies that came out with products for the Commodore computers that were quite good but for one reason or another have either never grown or the original companies went on to market other things and dropped the Commodore products. Most of the problem for the smaller innovators is the lack of sufficient funding. It's a fact of life that we have to eat and provide homes for our families. The money necessary to start producing Commodore products has to come from spare funds and be done in spare time. A company has to grow to a certain point before it can support the originator or his family. Until it reaches that point it is a drain on his time and resources.
In the magazine publishing end of this market we have seen many fail because of other reasons. Some because the magazine was successful but the advertising revenue was not large enough to show a percentage of profit that the publishing company found acceptable. Another reason in some cases was that the magazine was successful but funds were poorly managed and the original publisher went broke. Most of the rest started on a shoestring and never grew enough to stay in business.
We fall somewhere in that last category but we keep plugging along and try to stay in business one way or another. Short of winning the state lottery we will never have enough capital behind us to do all the things we want to do. There are several hardware items we would love to market for the 64, 128 and plus/4 but they are items that will never have a large market and require a bit of startup funding to get off the ground.
A couple of years ago we investigated incorporation. Again, the problem is funding. We could incorporate in Delaware or Nevada but then would have to register in California as an out of state corporation and that again means a large sum of money. At least, large to us. California itself has added all sorts of things to the corporation laws that would mean it would cost even more to incorporate here. So, for now at least, we have abandoned that idea.
So, we will keep stumbling along and try to produce what we can. Some times we will bite off more than we can chew. It has already happened several times. Then we are stuck with trying to reimburse customers for their money. We will do our best to not let that happen in the future but can never make a complete guarantee that it will never happen again. We can only promise to be as careful as we can be.
This brings us to another point of this editorial. I read a piece a while back in another magazine urging people not to subscribe to or order from small or new businesses because there is a chance they will loose their money. Let's face it. Big established corporations are not going to invest in products for the old eight bit Commodores. That's a fact of life. There is, however, a small market for the fellow who wants to produce something in his or her spare time and with spare funds. If no one ever takes a chance on them the only new products you will see are from CMD and a couple of the other larger remaining companies. And, these companies will only commit to things that they feel have a large market potential. So, there will be many small home based businesses started up for the Commodore market. Most will be underfunded, and maybe they will grow large enough to make it or maybe they won't. But, if we don't take a chance on at least some of them I think you will see the Commodore computers slowly slide out of view.
