retrocomputing

In 2014, some of us at a small company with disposable income discovered that Winamp was on the market for a relatively small amount of money (as compared to our profits). We all had fond memories of it and we had a team capable of doing something interesting with it.

The problem was we couldn't figure out anything interesting to do with it. We could think of a ton of things we could do, but we couldn't think of a good business model around any of them—by which I mean profitable, not just eking by.

In the end, it just wasn't worth our time. We were better off having half the company prototype new product ideas than sink our resources into this one.

The company that did eventually buy Winamp added an NFT marketplace to it.

It seems like Frantic got stuck at the step of nostalgia plus things he could do and didn't think too hard about business models and profitability. Leveraging his house is a bad sign, because it implies he lacks the financial resources to do much with Commodore beyond buying the brand.

My guess? He'll try to put together a new computer aimed at nostalgia seekers, it will underperform, and he'll pivot to selling branded merchandise for a while until he eventually sells the brand at a loss.