Before you think that I’m taking sides on the EIB issue, know that I define a scandal as “talk that is damaging to one's character; malicious gossip.” by this definition, EIB may or may not be a scam, but recent events are certainly a scandal.

This is not meant as a criticism of EIB specifically, it is not meant to make anyone look bad or look good. If it does that, then it is only a side-effect. My intentions in writing this were to offer advice as an experienced player, in a business world that is becoming ever more untrusting with each passing day.

This advice is meant for those of you who are running legitimate businesses and wish to avoid the pitfalls of distrust and forum-meltdowns which can make even the most sound corporations crack and crumble under the weight of public opinion. I supposed that this information could be used to help mask a real scam, but I belive this is unlikely and will explain why later.

Nevertheless there are many ways for a legitimate business to avoid the perils of being accused of being scams or running into credibility problems. I don’t want to claim I’m an absolute authority on the subject, that is something that is up to you to decide. I’m not offering any of this as fact; I’m only trying to help.

This guide is only one perspective, there are many ways to run a business, and this is simply the one that works well for us. It is by no means perfect or definitive. It might not even mirror what you've seen BIG do in the past, that is because this is a culmination of my experiences in BIG, which includes some low points in which i learned some things. Take it for what it is, the opinion and advice of an experienced veteran player based on his personal experiences with his corporation in the cut-throat business world of EVE.

I realize that someone else, Pang Grohl, has already posted a similar guide, so I want to also point out that I'm not out to say he's wrong :P I wrote this about 5 days before he posted anyway, It has gone through several drafts since then. Alot of good suggestions on his post, definately worth the read.

I’ve been present for most of BIG’s long career in EVE, and I’ve played witness to almost all of the ups and downs of our business. I’ve not been much of a public figure, which is why most of you probably have never heard of me. Unless of course I’m somehow underestimating my own notoriety *shrugs* I’ve done that before. Nevertheless, I was always behind the scenes, giving my opinions and advice when crises broke out.

We have also had our share of scandals, we’ve had two minor corp thefts, we’ve had one of our members scam us and fail after causing considerable public outcry. But every time BIG has come out on top, which is what I believe that thus far we are one of them most successful businesses in the game.

Granted, if success is measured in profits, then there are many other companies out there that have achieved much more than we have. But profit is not how I measure success; success is having a long-standing reputation, having loyal customers and hard-working employees. BIG itself tends to deal with a remarkably humble wallet for all of it’s programs and successes.

But our income is also constant and predictable, unaffected by wars or other interferences, and seldom adversely affected by outside criticism. I think it is safe to say that we are quite financially secure, even if we don’t have they most money of any corporation in the game.

If you still don't agree with what I have to say, please be polite if you must say so, or contact me privately if you think i've left somthing out or are mistaken about somthing.

I have written a large ammount about our corp for its front pages, but it has yet to be posted. If you would like to know more about us, please visit one of the following pages:
Voltaire's New Intro Pages for the BIG Website
www.big-eve.com, The BIG Website

So as yet another chapter in BIG’s long-standing tradition of service to the EVE community, I offer the following article and advice.

It’s not overall a bad idea to get inspiration from how real companies work, or emulating the types of services they provide, but be careful what you choose to borrow from real life. Our limitations are different in games, trust plays a larger part because you can’t sue people, you can’t file complaints, people can’t get arrested for embezzlement, and in general, EVE Business is far more cut-throat that real life.

But once there is a hiccup in your books, or some claims that you’re a scam; people will start to think twice. And no matter how transparent your multi-billion isk establishment is, people will always distrust you in the end, unless you start small.

Many IPO’s that end up being accused of being scams are services that promise to run indefinitely. This is tough to gauge as a scam because it only ends if it actually is a scam. So unfortunately it is near impossible for such a program to actually earn you a good reputation. So create some smaller projects first, ones that have a limited duration, maybe even small returns, maybe even no profit at all to you personally. Have the operations start, work, and end in a timely manner.

Run operations that are only meant to help people, non-profit projects to benefit the community are PR gold mines. Non-profits can be great for your image, but it’s best to only do them if you mean it. Don’t just start some projects with greed in mind or people will sense that, be a true philanthropist.

Keep it simple. The point is you’ll build up a resume of successful projects that have all paid out and were proven not to be scams, because they ended and people got what was promised. Even if the project fails, and people get back less money than they put in, they’re not going to be inclined to claim you’re a scam, just a bad businessman. Which is worse, being a bad businessman or a thief?

Have patience. Don’t expect to have everything all at once, or run a multi-billion isk financial institution right off the bat. Having an old character does not do a whole lot for you if all you did was run missions and mine before you decided to run a huge business.

You need to have a resume; it’s the classic ‘catch 22.’ I know, you need experience in order to work the business, which you can’t get if you don’t work the business. So the key is getting your foot in the door, starting small and working your way up. You might want to work for an already successful business, learn from their mistakes, make some contacts in that company and in others, when you move on you’ll know the key players and they’ll know you. Make friends in that business and leave on good terms, and you’ll find they’ll be the first ones lined up to buy shares.

Don’t discriminate amongst investors or customers, even if the investor is currently podding you, when it comes to the board room, or the cash register, he is your best friend.

If even your enemies come to trust you, that says something about what kind of business you run. In fact, everything says what kind of business you run, so its doubly important that even people you’re at war with see you as a reasonable businessman.

Keep politics and business completely separate. As long as you maintain neutrality effectively, when questions arise as to whether or not you are being unfair to a particular person, you’ll have even your enemies to vouch for you.

A strange side-effect of this stance is that business and politics sometimes mix anyway. By this I mean that corps and alliances that are indifferent or hostile to you may warm up to you if you treat them as equals in business. Economics draw societies closer together in real life, and the same happens in EVE as well.

But don’t start your business with the purpose of making friends in politics, this is deliberately mixing the two and will violate your neutrality. Any benefit you gain in politics due to your business will be because you are being fair in your business, not because you are being ‘nice’ to your enemies. Treat such benefits as exactly what they are, side-effects.

By consistency, I mean that your investors or customers should not often be “on the edge of their seats.” Having completed several projects in the past in consistent and reliable ways will make being consistent easy, you want your investors to see you as predictable, they should be able to guess what your next move is.

Find a set of principles by which to govern your operation and stick to them. This does not prevent you from changing how your project is actually administered, but the style of the changes you make should always reflect those core values. Once you’ve established your style with smaller projects, people will either take it or leave it.

Those who take it will trust you with their money, those who don’t, won’t. You don’t need to make everyone in EVE happy with your style, just enough people that you can create and run your project, and most importantly, you need to be happy with it yourself. Don’t let the fickle tastes and trends of the market dictate how you run your business, run it how you think you should, learn from others, observe other businesses, and adapt as you see fit.

If you want communication channels to investors, start up a website and have a forum for them to talk in, make it accessible only by actual investors. Have a newsletter for those investors. Have public discussion forums on your own website instead of using the eve-o forum.

This is done to limit the power of people who just want to post wild theories, who don’t have all the facts (because all the facts are usually not all in one place on the eve-o forums), or who just want to start trouble. They won’t go through the hassle of going to your website, sign up for a forum account, maybe setup a fake hotmail account, activate their account via email, log into the website, and start spouting BS.

Most of these people will look at your forums, see that they have to register to post, and return to browsing the eve-o forums. The people who really have something to say will endure the hassle, and might actually make some sense or be constructive. Regardless of their views these people should be treated with some respect, they’ve taken their time out to try and interpret things their own way.

Don’t try too hard to convince them of anything they don’t already believe, it will probably be wasted effort, and only make you angry. Smile, nod, take notes, learn, digest and don’t work against them. If you fight them too hard, you’ll never win, it’ll only make them stronger. They are very unlikely to admit they are wrong, even if they start to think they are, hence it is usually best to leave them be.

People are a lot of the times only weekend-forum-warriors, don’t expect them to have seen every one of your announcements, they may have never heard about you or your company until they saw some scandal involving you, so they’ll already have a negative outlook on you.

This information they get is often incomplete or poorly stated, or poorly organized or a million other things that could mislead them into making some very harmful conclusions, that might be way off the mark.

If the argument is good, if they’ve used a spell-checker, if they’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what they are writing, then any post can be very convincing. But that does not mean that people posting negative things are always deliberately deceiving others, or trying to rally against you. It may seem that way, but people aren’t that organized. You won’t find an angry mob outside your door, even if there are 100 people claiming you’re a fraud.

People who seem to be rally against you probably mean no harm. In fact, I believe that most of them probably think they are doing everyone a favor by protecting them from your fiendish plots. They aren’t out to get you, and they aren’t bad people or ignorant, it may seem odd, but they just want to help everyone. Of course, that doesn’t make them right, but it does mean that you shouldn’t necessarily take them seriously while at the same time showing them some respect. As with many things, this is a balancing act.

Let them start trouble, but don’t acknowledge them or you only encourage them. Reacting to fallacious accusations on the forums only makes people think that you’re actually nervous about what they are saying. If what they are saying isn’t true, just ignore it and it will go away.

If people are posting ridiculous theories about you, your post endorses them; it is a mark that says “I’m paying attention to you.” This is why it encourages them; attention from you puts up a big red flag for people to start speculating.

If you think someone is posting ridiculous things that they can’t possibly hope to prove, they aren’t worth of your attention. If you’ve done your homework and you’ve got your reputation, keep your head high, and have faith in yourself.

Let the forums alone without any response from you – It is up to your investors to decide if they trust you or not. If you have any integrity at all, your investors will also ignore the criticism. If you feel the need to post simply post that you deny the claims of the poster, and leave it at that.

Try not to say things you will regret. You may wish later that you hadn’t said something, and try to ‘take it back’. But you can’t, it’s been said, the damage is done, best not to call attention to it. Deleting it will only make things much worse, it makes you look like you have something to hide. The last thing you want to do in a legitimate business is look as if you have something to hide.

It’s generally a bad idea to delete posts you have made, it is better to apologize and explain briefly why you said what you did, without giving too much of a song and dance or people won’t believe you. Many people will save posts that you’ve made that are ‘incriminating’ so that you can’t take back your words. Just be careful what you say and you shouldn’t need to recant your position often or delete any posts.

In a nutshell: Give statements and facts, not arguments or speculation.
If you don’t have statements or facts yet, hold your tongue until you do.
Take a deep breath, stand back.
Keep your mouth shut as much as possible.

People will either sell their shares or they’ll applaud you. Barking on the forums, trying to argue your side won’t do you much good. Eventually the problem will blow over and people will trust you again. Let them decide this on their own, the more help you try to give them, the more attention you attract to the problem, fabricated or not.

Don’t be overly concerned with non-investors. Treat your clients with respect and courtesy and the rest of the community will see it. The best kind of publicity is word-of-mouth, friends encouraging friends to invest. Direct advertisement only has a limited effect in a game where you can’t sue for false advertisement.

Even if it’s true, people don’t see it that way, and the higher ranking you are in your organization, the more potent your opinion becomes, personal or otherwise. If you are a part of an organization, your perspective is skewed and shaped by the views of that organization and the views of those in it. You just can’t claim to make objective comments, because there is no such thing as an objective view on anything.

I’m of course a fan of Perspectivism (though I don’t go to Perspectivism concerts or wear Perspectivism t-shirts or buy Perspectivism albums…:P). The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said that every view is an interpretation, that there are only perspectives, and thus no objective views. Consequently, every views is a perspective, even the view that all views are perspectives.

Stick to facts and statements, and avoid giving opinions, analysis and speculation.

Remember that you don’t owe the entire community of EVE anything. You owe it to your investors; they are your only real concern. So keep them informed, calm and willing to work with you on difficult issues as they arise.

Don’t tell complicated stories, even if the story is actually complicated, water it down. The more complex a story gets the fuller of holes it can get, even if the story is 100% true. There is no way for you to write something that won’t be picked apart so you’re better off not giving them much to pick at. A simple “We’ve had a problem, we’re taking care of it.” will due for initial public statements, most of the time.

Keep good records and be prepared to make them available to your investors if they require confirmation of anything. As long as you don’t do anything suspicious or draw a lot of attention, this probably won’t be necessary. Those investors that request documents should be given documents but keep it on the down-low. If they feel the need to go public, they will. If they had respect for you to begin with, they won’t, so long as you take good care of them.

Posting your records on public forums or websites will guarantee that someone will misinterpret them. If they are good records, they will be detailed; they might be hard to understand if you’re not familiar with the system, which means that people will punch all kinds of holes in it, even if the holes aren’t there.

You’re probably the only one, who understands fully how the system works. Your investors should be informed as much as possible, but the public community won’t be familiar with you or your project, and will be unlikely to have all the information they need to form an intelligent opinion.

Remember: you are not a journalist, you are a businessman, so keep cool and don't feel the urge to expose anything that isn't ready to be exposed yet.

By publishing half-done reports, public audits, and explanations of minor hiccups before the hiccup is done hiccupping, you’ll only make your investors skittish and ready to sell their shares at the drop of a hat. Your investors might not all be as bright as you hope and the comments left on your announcements might not be flattering or even remotely accurate. But people read these comments, your investors will read them, and they might believe them too.

And of course, you shouldn’t dissuade them from doing so, it is up to them to decide if their money is in good hands, you cannot force them to trust you. Just make sure that they have all the facts in their grasp from the beginning, before any uproar can start. You don’t want people selling their shares because some joe-shmoe commentator on the forums made a convincing argument against your project. They’ll see that argument for what it’s worth if you’ve told them what they need to know, and you’ve been honest and consistant in the past.

It boils down to; don’t tell everyone everything you know as soon as you know it. Step back, think of the repercussions, possible alternative scenarios, and think about what your post might inadvertently lead people to believe.

When situations have boiled down, when all the facts and investigations are done, then publish your findings, and resist the urge argue for them.

In the end your principles and integrity are all you have, cherish it and protect it by all means necessary, even if it means sacrificing your own projects. With a good reputation, new projects can always come along, the public opinion will eventually cool down and people will remember the success of your other projects. You’ll always be able to rebuild what you have lost.

This article itself is not meant to be objective at all, most of my corp mates probably agree with the advice that I’m giving, BIG is a tight group of like-minded individuals. This is not to say that my corp mates will agree with everything I say. But they probably will, and I don’t claim to be objective or independent.

I cannot stress enough that this post is only one perspective, my perspective, which happens to be from inside the BIG corporation, as a loyal member and strong supporter of its methods and values.

I might have a rather closed-minded view on things, I tend to play the game as an introvert, concerned only with the internal problems of BIG and prefer to watch everything else from the sidelines. But it also gives me a clear view of the business world, even if it is skewed heavily towards how we conduct ourselves.

But keep in mind that all the preparation adds up to a company that is more prepared to deal with a crisis and more resistant to attacks on it’s integrity. You're free to do as much or as little of the prep work as you like, I'm not telling you how to run your business, just what has worked for us all these years.

On that note, every business will have its up’s and it’s downs. Every successful business will rise to the spotlight, and in that spotlight there are scandals to be found. And you will likely have to deal with scandals if you get anywhere in this game as a business. But if you’ve prepared properly, built and maintained a reputation, kept your investors happy and informed, those scandals will blow over and turn to dust.

A lot of this article is garnered from things I’ve learned by watching TornSoul operate, succeed and struggle. But TornSoul did not write this, so this is not his perspective either. However, I’m sure its pretty close.

Me and Torn actually clash on basically every issue, and sometimes those arguments can get pretty nasty, but in the end we both want the same things, its actually pretty fascinating how people who have such different views on how to achieve things can work together as a team to get the job done, and done properly.

Thank you for spending the time to read my experiences, and good luck on all of your business adventures in EVE!

Special Thanks to...

• TornSoul, the Chief Executive Officer of BIG, my friend and colleague, and the one who taught me the importance of the BIG picture.
• Renbo, Human Resources Director of BIG who taught me the importance of keeping cool in crises.
• nashi, 2nd in command of BIG who has shown me when it is a good time to break with convention, and forge on ahead.
• RaTTuS, Director of Research, Development & Industry for BIG, for always being level-headed and realistic.
• And thanks goes to everyone who I can’t think of at the moment and to all the members of BIG and ex-members who have made our corporation what it is, something to be endlessly proud of.

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© 2006, Steve Gais "Voltaire Leriel", President of Administration, BIG Corporation.
Use of this article or any part of it without the express permission of the author is prohibited. EVE Online: The Second Genesis™, Soon™, and EVE Imagery © 2006 Crowd Control Productions.