I just got back from the lake (and never had so many emails and PMs in a 24 hour period)
I have one small advantage, from a business model point-of-view, with RDSS and TrackMaster's data pricing, compared to Dave's approach with his collection of new video seminar-style products.
If I can create a software tool and if we all can foster a support and learning community valuable enough that people keep coming back year after year and paying the annual RDSS subscription (and keep buying TrackMaster data which I get a share of), then I can keep adding new things to RDSS or refine older ideas, and the repeating revenue stream from doing that (and the increasing interest from new folks, and from previous subscribers rejoining) makes it worthwhile to me to keep adding the new stuff and not charge extra for it. It also helps that folks can step in with a very small monthly commitment to TrackMaster data, while they decide if RDSS suits them and while they get up to speed with it and its history.
As I see it, Dave must also maintain a continual revenue stream to stay in business and keep innovating, but he can't re-license Newpace, or Improve/Decline or Basics of Winning, etc year after year. Instead, he must find alternate ways via new products and 'Part 2' of existing products. I'm sure HSH keeps ticking over regularly with HDW data sales and new licenses, but until or unless he publishes new software with a different data price point, a certain percentage of otherwise serious or interested horse players will prefer to purchase the small one-off products and try to implement the ideas themselves manually, via the spreadsheet tools, or via full blown software 'suites' like I am gradually positioning RDSS 2.0 to be.
I take the same view of incremental up-sales to NewPace, Improve/Decline, etc as I do to those who say $100/year and $2 a race card is too much money for RDSS - let the software pay for itself! Iif you can't find enough good ideas, and good hits from $77 for NewPace or $27 for NewPace Redux - whether or not you could also arrive at the same wagers by existing RDSS tools - well, I suggest you aren't trying hard enough, because the results certainly
seem to be there, at least in the short run so far. I dare say you can get lots of hits from standard and proper implementation of the
modern Sartin Methodology according to Doc's guidelines (yes, even 10-15 year old guidelines!) that you won't get from NewPace with its sometimes 'brute-force' approach. But at the same time you'll get a goodly number of hits from paying attention to and betting consistently the NewPace contenders that you would have to zig and zag through RDSS to attempt to capture. NewPace is a methodology which takes one type of path through the bewildering thicket of alternative analysis available - and RDSS takes another sometimes converging, sometimes diverging path through the same analysis if you make it your own and apply your method consistently. This has been true for what is largely a similar approach to the modern Methodology Doc Sartin evolved, for over 15 years now, so I know this is profitable. NewPace is in its early days and must still prove itself, and I am only privy to studies people are starting to post online here, some of them not real-time and back-fitted.
But how valuable is
one good idea to you? Now that we are starting to get some software tools to study this with (that is, other than Dave's HSH software, which I know people are indeed doing lots of studies with) - if anyone who bought NewPace on faith or on Dave's salesmanship is having trouble implementing it or finding a profitable way to bet it, well that's why we have the NewPace Discussion forum, and the input of the author. We can grill it, make it prove itself. My programming may be at fault sometimes, or TrackMaster or our other Speed Ratings and variants may produce different results to HDW or BRIS or DRF data - and I am not shy to accept responsability for my mistakes or lack of understanding of Daves instructions - and I look forward to his critiques - but I say
let him make money from his creative effort. Everyone who has the time and diligence should be able to go out and make as much money as Dave does by betting his ideas. And if the smart people here can't do that, and their documented failed attempts survive a peer review, then NewPace will not have succeeded and I think Dave (and a number of others) will be quite surprised. As will I.
The
real interesting thing I am looking forward to (and since the very beginning when I grasped the NewPace ideas) is folks examining the components of NewPace and
cross-mixing the ideas with what they get now from the Methodology and the Matchup tools. I have seen half a dozen different approaches to this in the past few months, not all public yet, since up until this weekend only 5 or 6 peeple have been even able to do that. Stay tuned for some interesting ideas and I suspect many more longitudinal studies as the initial 50 or so Beta testers start to report back.
BTW, I made back many times my price for NewPace, after I had programmed it initially in RDSS2, the first week I took it for a spin with real money, bugs and all. And Beth Schwartz told me Friday that I was the first one to sign up for the NewPace follow up seminar.
Also, FWIW, I don't make any money on NewPace from Dave nor does Dave from RDSS. As I mentioned at the top, my aim is to add value to the fantastic set of tools Doc originated, within a consistent philosophical framework: call it Pace if you must (I don't like to), call it the
Matchup of Early versus Late. And then have people use (and pay ongoing for) the tools for years -
but only if they carry their weight. That's fair, and a synergy I think can work. I'd like to think Doc would have contemplated such a collaboration.
Cheers,
Ted