The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Technology And Social Justice
Technology, on its own, ends up magnifying the status quo of social inequality. That was a comment I made to a post by The Gotham Gal a few days back.
Owning Equity, Owning House
Image via CrunchBaseChris Dixon: Eric Ries: a downturn will come in the next few years (most likely not a true revenue/profit downturn but early stage valuation + coolness downturn) ..... one of the worst things happening now is that companies lie to employees and only tell them the # of shares they own and not the % they own ...... the 21st century will be about convincing people that they should think about owning part of their employer the same way people in the 20th century wanted to own their house ...... the idea of creating a stock exchange where when you bought stocks you were force to hold them 4-5 years ...... he was probably the smartest and most interesting person I've heard in years ...... us "liberals" (me, Eric, Fred Wilson) who believe that hedge fund managers should pay the same tax rate as firefighters who run into burning buildings are in radical agreement about increasing the carried interest tax. Unfortunately every other VC seems to disagree with us. Looks like we lost this one and so need to move on. +1 for aristocrats. ..... ) being more scientific about how to help these companies succeed on less capitalChris Dixon does not think we are in a bubble. Neither do I. But I was surprised to learn he also thinks we are a few years from a downturn, what I have called a mini bubble burst. It will not be like 2000 when it looked like the entire industry collapsed. But there will be plenty of winnowing out.
A Surprising Blog Post From Fred Wilson
Image via WikipediaFred Wilson: Going Out On Top: Then, at the top of their game, LCD decided to call it quits. They played four shows this past week at Terminal 5, and then played their last show ever at The Garden last night. It's over now. As we watched the band put on a fantastic show last night, I was thinking about going out on top. So few manage to do it. Shaq is warming the bench in Boston. ..... The money and the burning desire to "win another one" drives the great ones to stick around too long. ..... I look at Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch and I see individuals still enjoying the work and delivering for their shareholders and investors into their 80s. ..... But I also look around the venture capital business and I see investors who were at the top of their games in the 90s struggling to remain relevant. ...... How do you know when you've done your last great startup? How do you know when you've done your last great investment? How do you know when you don't have the drive, hunger, and insights to keep delivering top performance? ...... Right now, coming off two weeks of totally relaxing vacation with my family, I find myself up early, thinking, writing, and planning. I don't sense it is yet time to hang up my cleats or walk of the stage like James Murphy did last night. But the thought is in my mind and I want it to stay there. The investment business is not easy. You are only as good as your last trade, fund, or year. And the venture capital business is particulary tricky. All the returns in the business accrue to the top ten or, at best, twenty percent of investors. When you lose your edge, your performance suffers, often badly. But it can take a decade for the rest of the world to notice because there is so much latency in the venture capital business.My favorite solo blogger just surprised me like never before. The thought of "going out on top" seems to have crossed his mind.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup
In India everything has a tendency to get mixed up with Bollywood. Sachin was named after a Bollywood musician. That should tell you.
One way you know I grew up in Nepal and not India is I don't "get" cricket. I tend to only watch the highlights. Even then I pay as much attention to the background music as to the game. But I hear cricket has also taken over Nepal since I left. My thing is soccer. Note Sachin's Maradona hair. Sachin wears the number 10 shirt, just like Pele and Maradona.
Cricket is to India what soccer is to Brazil. I grew up watching people glued to their radio sets following audio commentaries of ongoing cricket matches.
StartUp Week At NYU April 6-15
April 6, Wed, Mark Suster (@msuster) NYU 6-9 PM
April 7, Thu, Brad Feld (@bfeld), Adam Rich, and Nate Westheimer (@innonate) 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM NYU Law School (Vanderbilt Hall), Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South
Monday, 4/11: Develop, Design, Pitch Series mongoDB (@mongodb) Kevin Kearney (@kkearney) and Courtney Lewis of Hard Candy Shell Eric Friedman (@EricFriedman) 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM Kaufman Management Center Room M1-100 44 W 4th St
Tuesday, 4/12: Variety of Tech Entrepreneurs Panel 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM Room M1-100 Spencer Fry (@spencerfry), Carbonmade Hilary Mason (@hmason) bit.ly Vin Vacanti (@vacanti), Yipit Yasser Ansari (@trisomy21), Project Noah Seth Frader-Thompson (@fraderT), EnergyHub Colin Freund (@Swimmingloaf), Agennix AG James McChullouhgh, Exosome Diagnostics
Wednesday, 4/13: Online Communities 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM The Courant Institute 251 Mercer Street, Room 109 Kyle Bragger (@kylebragger), Forrst Chris Maguire (@revolvingdork), Postling Joe Alminawi, OMGPOP Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa), Neighborhoodr Vanessa Bertozzi (@Van_Bertozzi), Etsy Peter Rojas (@peterrojas), gdgt
Thursday, 4/14: Fundraising: VCs, Angels and Accelerators Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Albert Wenger (@albertwenger), Lawrence Lenihan (@lawrencelenihan), Firstmark Capital, Hilary Gosher (@hilbil175), Insite Venture Partners, David Tisch (@davetisch), TechStars
The Organizers of StartUp Week
Friday, April 01, 2011
April Fool A Few Weeks Early?
Image via WikipediaTechCrunch: ‘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 @daylifeNew 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.
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