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Tyll Hertsens

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Posts posted by Tyll Hertsens

  1. Looks sensible to me that they keep their plans secret until they've recovered all they invested into the HD800 R+D.

    You know, Sennheiser is a killer company, the kind of company I'd love HeadRoom to become in my wildest wet dream.

    They invest in R&D as a strategic line item, and while accountants may measure R&D payback by product after the fact, those guys know shit because they've decided to stay on the cutting edge of knowing it. They'll get measured by accountants but they're driven by a passion for being the best in their chosen field. There are far too few companies I could say the same about.

    The 800 sounded great, and if they don't manage to make the technological breakthroughs of the 800 trickle down in a timely manner (meaning 2-5 years) I'd be very surprised.

    In the mean time, you can bet your sweet bippy they're going to ride this long and strong (I predict) wave of applause in the most profitable manner possible.

    I'll bet anybody a six-pack of Belgian beer that this is not a FOTM type incident. What you're hearing in the voice of the folks that have heard it is not hype, but admiration.

    Somebody hand me a Kool-Aid, I'm parched.

  2. No, I didn't! Who'd want to divorce you? Who'd let you divorce them?

    Actooly, it's gotta be one of the world's best divorces. It was a four year marriage. (I've been married once before for 20 years.) We remain quite friendly, and getting friendlier. I wouldn't be surprised to date her again someday.

    We both just realized that we want to do our child raising alone with our kids. Raising someone else' kids is hard; and it went both ways, it wasn't easy for either of us.

    I think we figured out that we wanted to raise our kids, which is a full time job, with out the difficulties of figuring out a relatively new relationship. Both our kids are middle and high school age, so they'll be gone in 5 years.

    It's that first fuckin' marriage that haunts me! That one I still pay lawers about.

  3. Some companies are run by selfless, fearless, morons in birthday suits.

    Or at least barely fitting underwear.

    A master of analytical aplomb, you are.

    Well, a plum anyway.

    Really, put on a purple jumpsuit and go look in a mirror.

    ImaPoser.gif

    Beat you to it i did :D

    early retirement in just over 4 months... (if i wanna)

    bluduh.gif

    Alright, now I'm getting mad.

    See that kids, stay in school ... for your whole life!

    (Hi Kev! wave.gif and you know I'm green with envy over the toys you've gotten to play with in your lab. Do you really wanna give them up yet?)

    How much ingratiation would be needed for a Portable Micro?

    You know I got divorced a year ago right?

    One of these would be fine. (NSFW)

    'Corse you could get a lot more than a Portable Micro for one of them.

  4. Ooo eee, ooo ah ah,

    bing, bang, walla-walla bing-bang.

    One more, a good one.

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aksce4oJsU]YouTube - OOP BOP SH' BAM.Dizzy Gillespie.[/ame]

    Tyll, I noticed that you said that HeadRoom 'needs' to grow to 5 times its current size. What is your thinking behind that, other than 'wouldn't it be nice'?

    If we get to $25 mil I might not have to draw much of a salary, and live on the dividends work part time, and just ride around on my bike mostly. It's also the satisfactory point in terms od dividend distribution as ROI for the investors.

    I'd say it's 15-20 years away. I better be healthy at 70; and I'll be riding a big trike.

    Geebus, I just summed up my life.

    Take heed youngins, life goes by quick. Stay in school and work hard because the chances of having some time to have fun at the end is a tricky sumbitch.

  5. I'll just repost a comment here that I posted in our forum area.

    I'll downgrade from a "Buy" to a "Hold Long Term".

    Given the state of the economy, I'd say a 'hold' recommendation is pretty good.

    Okay, seriously, great question, let me do you the honor of a serious answer. There are a number of issues here, and I'll address them in brief from an 'outside looking in' point of view, but I'll add there are numerous internal resource management issues, I won't bore you with, that adds various weights to the scale.

    Discontinuing the Max and Home. We feel that a statement product isn't of too much use once the statement has been fully made and the technologies therein have been moved to lower cost products. It's now time for us to do a fairly long development project to make the next statement.

    This is something we were going to do more in the early 09 time frame, but due to the economy and soft sales in Oct/Nov we took the opportunity to 'cash out' the remaining inventory of Max and Homes in order to finance our Christmas season without tapping our credit line, and to reduce the inventory future labor requirements to support the line in order to enter next year---which is very likely to continue to be economically soft---a little leaner and meaner.

    Desktop Audiophile. First, I'll make a little argument that stretching a product line is a good thing: When we introduced the first BlockHead and the concept of balanced amps, there was ZERO demand for such a product as there were ZERO people who had balanced headphones. Well, long story short, that turned out pretty good and today I'd guess at least 10% of our dollar sales are attributable to balanced headphone related products.

    The link to the Desktop Audiophile, I would argue, may be more direct. Once you make something like the current Desktop Amp you realize that you've made a promise to customers. The Desktop Amp is---and eventually will be---better called something like a Desktop Preamp. As we struggled to convey all the versatility to customers we found ourselves up against a conceptual wall: people just didn't understand what it does. (I'm not talking about you guys, but about the average audiophile who is savvy about normal audio gear but not about headphone gear.) If you tell someone, "this gizmo is the center of a desktop audio system, well, you've got to show them a desktop audio system someway or another.

    Now, here's the tricky bit: We could either spend a whole lot of time slapping people upside the head with a whole bunch of words (which mostly don't get read in an ad) and get them to understand that a Desktop Amp is basically a preamp on your desk, or we could simply show them a picture that made it possible to make some assumptions based on their understanding of big stereo systems.

    Show audiophiles this picture:

    audiophile400.jpg

    and they 'get it.'

    Then there's the fact as mentioned above, that technically, it was a fairly easy development.

    Then there's this little slap of reality: HeadRoom has to continue to grow to at least five times it current size. There are enough audiophiles to support that, but they DON'T LIKE HEADPHONES, they like speakers. You can scream and shout all you want (and I have) but you can't escape that fact. Doing the Audiophile Desktop is a broadening of the brand that allows audiophiles to identify with our products much more strongly.

    Lastly, this is important but a bit too complex to go into in any depth, HeadRoom is a bootstrap operation. It is hard as hell to get the wiggle room needed to finance furthering developments. If I had a big wad of cash in my pocket, sure, I'd keep the Max for longer and I'd discontinue it only six months before the introduction of the next flagship. (It's important that there be that time off with the flagship product so you don't piss of recent purchasers.) But I don't, so I can't.

    You see, your initial premise is wrong right from the start: HeadRoom is not a vehicle for outside investors. It's a bootstrap development for a couple of VC guys who invested a very small amount to see if it could turn into an "American Dream" project with a long term cash cow payoff. The goal is to get there from here eventually and with no addition need for cash. And that, amazingly and slowly, we're doing.

    Now for Head-Case let me add:

    headroom beta 22s? who doesnt want a beta?

    That's an option. Shhh.

    I was thinking VDA, vague disclosure agreement.

    After talking with our team of lawyers at the NY branch office, the wording is that you can say anything you want as long as you have six ping-pong balls in your mouth and only say things once. No limitations on how slowly you talk.

  6. I highly doubt that you have the skill to fix Dan.

    Actooly, we've got these big fat hypodermic needle looking things up here called a "cow trocar." You just punch it into the side of a bloated cow to let the gas out.

    Whaddaya think? Just lift your shirt a little there, Dan.

    canular-prods.jpg

    (Sometimes I think I'm too gross for my own good.)

  7. Sorry guys, we did sell more than we expected. We're working on an accounting system that will attach the web with the accounting and inventory systems to prevent this type of thing, but at the moment it's manual, and everybody was eating turkey while the site was getting hammered for K601 sales.

    Lame? Maybe. It's costing about $50,000 to upgrade our accounting software so it could easily be compared to a medical issue.

    Personally, I'd prefer, "fucking bummer" but it's your keyboard.

  8. I'm a total dumbshit about where this needs to go here on HeadCase, so please feel free to move it.

    Let's celebrate with an even better HR sale, desktop amps and preamps on sale.:)

    Okie Dokie, Tyrion, we're putting our amps and speaker stands on sale!

    Buy either the Desktop Stereo Amp or the Desktop MonoBlock Amps and a pair of Desktop Speaker Stands and get 25% off!

    Just put the products in the shopping cart and use the coupon code "mydesk"

    P.S. Sorry, Mike, I just figure out since you already have the stands this doesn't help you much.

    ImaPoser.gif

    (Call me, Mike, I'll do sumpin' for you. thumb.gif )

  9. Meh. Not going to read the thread. No need to go over the last fucking two year yet again. just going to say:

    Fuck yeah!

    Now, let's get back to innovation and productivity, and get this fucking economy back on its feet.

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