April Fool A Few Weeks Early?

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TechCrunch: ‘Rachel Sequoia’ And ‘Share The Air’ Were A Prank, But The Pitch Event Wasn’t: 5-6 real start-ups pitched there, hoping to practice in front of an audience of 80 people before they pitched VCs. ..... The whole thing was orchestrated by Trademarkia founder Raj Abhyankar and Spiralmoon’s Dan Carlson for two purposes, a) To give young startups a place to practice their pitches b) To add some levity to the mix with Rachel Sequoia/’Share The Air’ parody of Silicon Valley. ...... Actress Rachel Cherones was paid a $100 for the unorthodox gig and was given two hours to come up with the character after being given slides created by Carlson. She too was surprised by how much pickup the YouTube video, initially uploaded as a personal record of the presentation, received...... The fake Rachel Sequoia account now has over 2,000 followers on Twitter, the video has over 200,000 views on YouTube and people have approached SpiralMoon, who is now working on a feature length film, with acquisition offers.

What I have to say is her $100 pay was too low. She should have been paid $1,000. And she deserves a great acting gig after this. And thanks for the Nepal mentions. Mount Everest rules. It is the background image of this blog.

How To Pitch: The Rachel Sequoia Way

Grameen Miracles

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

New York Times: Grameen Bank and the Public Good: it’s important to protect successful social institutions from political maneuvers that could be damaging to them, and that an abrupt and forced removal of Yunus could damage confidence in the bank, which has 8.4 million mostly women borrowers and holds $1.5 billion in villagers’ savings. ...... Yunus was being targeted for political reasons. ....... others said that there were people within the government, as well as across Bangladeshi society, who opposed the work of the Grameen Bank on principled, if ideological, grounds. Simply put, many people don’t think that microfinance helps the poor and they believe that socially-minded businesses, like the Grameen Bank, undermine the work of government. ....... The question: ‘Does microfinance work?’ has been posed increasingly in recent years — sometimes in accusatory tones because microfinance, and its leading practitioner, Grameen, have received so much praise. ....... microfinance — including both loans and savings services — is, in fact, good for microbusinesses ....... microfinance is not, itself, one simple thing. It may involve loans, or savings, or a combination of the two, plus training, insurance or other services ...... the way poor people manage their households is far more complex than anyone had previously understood. ........ If microfinance doesn’t accomplish anything positive, then why are 128 million poor families busy taking loans? ....... what it really means for most people to be poor: to live with perpetual uncertainty. ....... the problem of living on $1 or $2 a day is that you don’t actually earn $1 or $2 every day ...... Some days you receive $5 and then nothing for two weeks. Life is unreliable ...... what we saw microfinance was doing for people was offering them a reliable source of money. With microfinance, you get a sum of money that’s promised on the day it’s promised in the amount that’s promised. It’s often the only reliable service that poor people have — and that’s incredibly powerful. ........ contrary to the depiction of poor people as passive victims of microlenders — as the field is often portrayed by its critics — Morduch and his colleagues found that the families they followed were “strategic” in their use of credit, often mingling a variety of formal and informal sources. “They weren’t always making the best choices — some did well, some didn’t — but they were very actively managing their affairs,” he said. “Our view is that there’s a lot more going on with microfinance — that it’s helping people keep an income flow, deal with health problems, keep their kids in school, get food on the table every day, and perhaps invest in businesses.” .......... self-employed women in Kenya were able to invest more in their businesses and increase household spending when they had access to savings accounts ...... “extending basic banking services could have large effects at relatively small cost.” ....... a middle path: the social business — the business that seeks not to maximize profits but to maximize some form of social impact. ...... Social businesses seek to harness market forces to provide essential goods and services to people who are typically underserved. ...... social businesses provide things like loans to small farmers, rural electricity and access to potable water. They also supply health services like ambulance care or cataract surgery. In addition to microfinance, Grameen has helped establish an array of for- and not-for-profit companies such as Grameen Danone, a joint venture with Danone (known to us as Dannon), which markets an affordable fortified yogurt product to address micronutrient deficiencies among the poor and Grameen Shakti, a renewable energy company. ....... Social businesses have evolved to address both the operational weaknesses of many government agencies and the lack of affordable products and services available to the poor through the market. By and large, they are a new invention .......... , it appears that social businesses can bring things like renewable energy, mobile technologies and affordable housing to poor people faster and more efficiently than governments ...... However, ongoing access to safe water for all is not something that can be guaranteed without the leadership of governments.

Grameen Under Attack At Home

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New York Times: Opinionator: Microfinance Under Fire: Both the bank and Yunus, have come under attack by the government of Bangladesh and its prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wazed. It has taken 35 years of painstaking effort to build Grameen into a world-class institution that serves millions of poor people. That progress could be lost if the country’s leaders fail to appreciate what makes the Grameen Bank work........ The Grameen Bank is not just the largest microlender in the world, with 8.4 million borrowers (most of them women villagers) who received more than $1 billion in loans last year, it is the flagship enterprise in an industry that, in 2009, served 128 million of the world’s poorest families. ...... Yunus, the founder of the bank, is an entrepreneurial figure cut from the same cloth as Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. He has devoted himself since the 1970s to demonstrating, institutionalizing and spreading microfinance. ...... Legally, the government owns 25 percent of Grameen and has the right to appoint a quarter of its board members, including its chairperson. In practical terms, however, the government has little justification to intercede in the bank’s operations. Today, of the Grameen Bank’s paid-up share capital, only 3.5 percent comes from the Bangladeshi government. It is the bank’s borrowers who are its majority owners. They control 75 percent of the board seats and they have supplied 96.5 percent of the paid up share capital. And it’s the savings of villagers — about $1.5 billion — that now finances the bank’s activities and growth. ......... Nevertheless, the government is proceeding to remove Yunus against the objections of its majority owners and will probably succeed. ...... Yunus is being punished for criticizing the government and making a bid to start a political party in 2007. ......... The Grameen Bank is a strong, well-managed institution with 25,000 employees. It could probably withstand his departure. Indeed, given Yunus’s age, it’s critical to pave the way for a successor. But if he is replaced in a manner that diminishes confidence, the bank could face problems. ........ the Grameen Bank depends on unusually high levels of motivation among its staff and high levels of trust among its borrowers. A forced removal of Yunus that is seen as illegitimate, politically-motivated, or vindictive could alienate thousands of employees and trigger a run on savings or loan defaults. ......... The state-owned banks have regularly extended loans to elite borrowers (who default at high rates) as a form of patronage. Unlike Grameen, which is financially self-sufficient, the state banks are perpetually in need of cash infusions from the government. ........ The Prime Minister has made it clear that she believes the interest rates are too high. ...... if the government installed a bureaucratic manager who failed to appreciate the bank’s 
Image via Wikipediaentrepreneurial culture, it could suck the life out of the bank. ....... Before Grameen Bank workers get hired, for example, they spend close to a year demonstrating their interest in serving the poor. They have to do things like write detailed case studies about the lives of village women to show that they genuinely care about, and understand, their clients. Managing this workforce is nothing like managing a run-of-the-mill bank. ........ Over the past few months, officials have sought to damage Yunus’s reputation, claiming without evidence that he has enriched himself at the expense of the poor, intentionally harmed borrowers, and engaged in fraud. The prime minister has called microlenders loan sharks “sucking the blood of the poor.” Her son circulated a letter which contained a litany of unfounded accusations against Yunus — the most outrageous being that the government created the Grameen Bank, not Yunus. ......... It’s not as if Bangladesh is lacking real problems that require government attention. There can be no sense in destabilizing the leading institution in an industry that provides financing to more than half of the households in the country. ........ On March 15, the Bangladeshi Supreme Court postponed ruling on Yunus’s case for two weeks........ Given that Yunus understands Grameen’s culture better than anyone, he should have a key say in any leadership change. ........ Wise governments should view microfinance programs not as adversaries, but as partners in furthering public goals — organizations that need to be regulated, but not controlled. ...... Foreign governments and multi-lateral institutions have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Grameen Bank and other large microfinance organizations in Bangladesh, and elsewhere, with the goal of alleviating poverty. They also need to remember that it’s not enough to finance development organizations. They need to protect them, too.

Snow

(Via Giant Robot Lasers)

Online Personal Branding: A Prezi Presentation

Online Personal Branding on Prezi

How to create a great prezi on Prezi

Google Is Messing Up Google With Social

Image via CrunchBaseI don't want to get into the details. But I liked it much better that Google dealt with the content farms than I am liking Google's clumsy efforts to add social to search. Those two don't go together. The best information, by definition, will be with people I don't know.

Facebook has not grown at Google's expense. Facebook's rise has been to fill the social void. Most people most of the time just want to talk soap. They don't want to be educating themselves all day. And that's Facebook.

The National: Fashion Coat

(Via Rachel Sklar)

Scaling Instagram Out Of A Coworking Space

Instagram Magic
Instagram Wave
Twitter ---> Instagram ---> FoodSpotting

Image by exoskeletoncabaret via FlickrI was reading this story on Mashable, and the paragraph that most got my attention was this one:

So, Krieger, a former UX designer at Meebo with admittedly no experience scaling a startup, walked around the Dogpatch Labs coworking space in San Francisco — the locale of Instagram’s first office — and queried other startup founders about what to do. Officemates suggested that Instagram move its service to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Instagram was in a General Assembly like place. Wow. That should not surprise me. But that part of the story is really inspiring. All those startup folks laboring in all those many coworking spaces should take heart. Big things are possible out of crowded coworking spaces.

Arugula

Image via WikipediaArugula has knocked off Brazil as the top searched term at this blog. As in most people who search for something and end up at this blog search for the wonderful "arugula."

When "Brazil" took the crown I am like, wait a minute, I love soccer, but this is not a sports blog. Now I am alarmed all over again. I don't want this to end up a food blog.

This is a tech blog. Technology and business. How do I steer it back in that direction?

In Brazil's case I took care of the "problem" by writing many many posts about Brazil's economy. And I did some country study posts on Brazil as a potential country to go into for my microfinance venture.

But I don't know what to do with arugula. Houston, we have a problem.

Arugula And Location Patents
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Photos

I think I need to blog about FoodSpotting less often. Google by now thinks I have a food blog.

Is Square A Microfinance Company?

I am watching this video and I am thinking, is Square a microfinance company? Is Square like microfinance for white people?

Think about it. People use Square for micro transactions. I have lost count of how many times I have heard Jack Dorsey make his cappuccino example.

Square just made my list of Stuff White People Like.



Jack Dorsey And I Were At Columbia Yesterday Evening
Jack Dorsey Also Has A FinTech StartUp

Jack Dorsey And I Were At Columbia Yesterday Evening

I did not even realize until after my event was over. We were at two separate events. I was at the Eric Ries event. I spotted Sree while I was there.

To You I Offer Buddhism And Yoga

Image via WikipediaMinority Majority Nation?
Gender Talk And Pragmatism

TechCrunch: What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology.: By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it, and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown. ....... this is the most personal and important battle that any CEO will face. ..... no CEO ever has a smooth path to a great company. Along the way, many things go wrong and all of them could have and should have been avoided. ..... If CEOs were graded on a curve, the mean on the test would be 22 out of a 100. This kind of mean can be psychologically challenging for a straight A student. It is particularly challenging, because nobody tells you that the mean is 22. ...... At a certain size, your company will do things that are so bad that you never imagined that you’d be associated with that kind of incompetence. Seeing people fritter away money, waste each other’s time, and do sloppy work can make you feel bad. If you are the CEO, it may well make you sick. ....... Every problem in the company was indeed my fault. ....... Being responsible for everything and getting a 22 on the test starts to weigh on your consciousness. ....... CEOs often make the one of the following two mistakes: 1. They take things too personally 2. They do not take things personally enough ...... Ideally, the CEO will be urgent yet not insane. She will move aggressively and decisively without feeling emotionally culpable. If she can separate the importance of the issues from how she feels about them, she will avoid demonizing her employees or herself. ...... In your darkest moments as CEO, discussing fundamental questions about the viability of your company with your employees can have obvious negative consequences. On the other hand, talking to your board and outside advisors can be fruitless. The knowledge gap between you and them is so vast that you cannot actually bring them fully up to speed in a manner that’s useful in making the decision. You are all alone. ....... asking oneself anything 3,000 times turns out to be a bad idea ...... if you don’t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don’t become CEO ...... Make some friends ..... it is extremely useful from a psychological perspective to talk to people who have been through similarly challenging decisions. ...... Get it out of your head and onto paper ..... I wrote down a detailed explanation of my logic ...... Focus on the road not the wall—When they train racecar drivers, one of the first lessons is when you are going around a curve at 200 MPH, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road. ........ A Final Word of Advice – Don’t Punk Out and Don’t Quit As CEO, there will be many times when you feel like quitting. I have seen CEOs try to cope with the stress by drinking heavily, checking out, and even quitting. In each case, the CEO has a marvelous rationalization why it was OK for him to punk out or quit, but none them will every be great CEOs. Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweat, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary founder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: “I didn’t quit.”

To Catch A Dollar