Ralph Redington and the ones left behind

Ralph Redington died suddenly on Monday in Southern California of a heart attack. He was 58. I met him only once. But his wife, Sue Redington, was a colleague of mine at Draft FCB. She is as kind, warm and genuine a woman as one could hope to meet. She and three boys–Bryan, Kyle and Brady–now face life without a husband, without a father.

This is heartbreaking stuff. If you can take a second to go to the Ralph Redington Memorial page on Facebook, I know Sue, her family and all the people who care about them would appreciate the show of support. And if you can find it in your heart to make a donation of any kind to the scholarship fund that has been established, so much the better.  You may send a check to:

The Ralph Redington Memorial Scholarship Fund
17600 Gillette Ave.
Irvine, CA 92614

You may also donate via PayPal – RedingtonMemorial@gmail.com

Thanks for anything you can do for the family during this difficult time.

In the online world, the money isn’t always where you think it’s going to be.

Consider Ebay. It belongs among the giants of the online space. Yet if you believe what Jeff Segal says at breakingviews.com, (and I do) the real value in Ebay going forward is going to be its Paypal subsidiary. Ebay’s auction business is going nowhere; growth was at just 1% last year and lagged the online commerce industry as a whole. Paypal grew at a 26% clip in 2008. By 2011, Paypal will in all likelihood be worth more than its parent company (if you use the same earnings multiples as a competitor, Visa, though it is arguably worth of a higher multiplier). 

Think about Steve Jobs. He fouled out, struck out, and was caught looking at quite a few called third strikes before he got on a product development hot streak that lifted the company out of the doldrums. I think we can all agree that the Lisa and the Newton came up a little short.

Maybe it will work out the same way for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg had better hope so, anyway. His company is struggling mightily to find a profitable business model. Yet as we speak, some tiny shops are clearing $700,000 a month based on the Facebook apps they have created. Maybe one of them will be the magic bullet. Or perhaps, before he figures out what the magic bullet is, Zuckerberg will quit and run against Meg Whitman for governor of California. Stranger things have happened. Look who the governor is now.