Becoming Antipreneur
Bill Goldsmith has always been a maverick. As a radio disc jockey and program director in the 1970s and ’80s, he loved creating his own mixes of modern rock and introducing listeners to cutting-edge musicians. But in the ’90s, as large corporations bought up the stations he worked for, Goldsmith began to feel increasingly choked by the demands of commercial radio.
Programming was becoming too formulaic; he was given less leeway. Working in radio just wasn’t fun anymore.
In 2000, with the rise of the Internet and streaming media, Goldsmith had an idea: Why not start his own station, one that would buck the constraints of corporate radio with innovative programming and no ads? Today, Radioparadise.com, which broadcasts an eclectic mix of modern, classic, and alternative rock, is commercial-free. It’s supported entirely by donations from its listeners, 15,000 of whom are logged onto the site at any given time. Goldsmith’s company, based in Paradise, Calif., has three employees and about $1 million in annual revenues. Rebecca Goldsmith, Bill’s wife, is the CFO and new music reviewer. Says Bill: “I hate advertising. There is this kind of organic sense of community that develops here that could not happen if this radio station’s sole reason for existence was to increase shareholder value for a large corporation.”
Meet the antipreneurs. Goldsmith is one of perhaps a few thousand business owners who have won both notice and profits by being overtly or covertly anti-big business and anti-advertising. Antipreneurs frequently choose each other as suppliers because they share similar philosophies. Their marketing strategy is targeted toward consumers who have grown cynical about buying products and services from larger companies, whose methods they deem irresponsible. “Cynical consumers perceive that most of the marketplace is bad, lacking in integrity, or not trustworthy, except for a few [often small or local] companies,” says Amanda Helm, a professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. “But once they find a company they can trust, they are very motivated to stick with [it].”
Antipreneurs are quick to differentiate their efforts to reform capitalism from social entrepreneurs’ attempts to harness business for philanthropic ends…
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