Lovefilm and Chutzpah

Now, according to media reports following the latest consumer pricing index release by the Office of National Statistics, certain things are doing well in recession. Yesterday I mentioned Agent Provocateur, today I learn that Lovefilm is bucking the downward trend. Slightly ironic for me in that when my biz partner and I first started down the road of setting up what we run today, our initial idea was to bring a postal DVD service to the UK. We wrote the biz plan based on what we'd learnt about a company called NetFlix in the US. Having thought long and hard we decided that if we went down this road, as soon as the idea took off we'd get blown out of the water by someone like HMV who had a ready supply of product, relationships and infrastructure. How wrong we were. Lovefilm must have started from the same(ish) base as we were planning to and look them. What seemed to be the difference was they had the balls, bravery, chutzpah and we didn't. It's all too easy in retrospect to see this and we all know that it's easier to get stuff wrong, and go bust, than to hit the big one. But each time I notice stories like Lovefilm I get a little braver inside. Fortune is supposed to favour the brave. But it ain't half scary.