Imagespot: Business

Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Dong Rule

Presenting At The Dot Com Hatchery

This was a time in my life when I did not have the option to accept investment money.

My Non Personhood Of 2009, 2010

But I ended up with five minutes at the Hatchery. After I was through the Hatchery came up with a new rule called The Dong Rule. That rule would now on allow the organizers to ask a presenter to get off the stage even if their alloted time was not up yet.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Organic Growth

Image via WikipediaMy Cofounder Anuj is really something. He grew from one engineer to 50 engineers over five years completely organically. They don't do angel investing in Kathmandu. Venture capitalists live on Mars, not in Kathmandu. But so far the team has worked like hired guns for clients across the world. They have done some pretty sophisticated work on top of the regular web design and development they do on an ongoing basis.

Now that we have teamed up to do a tech startup, it is quite something to watch Anuj's thought processes. He is Mr. Organic Growth. Even for the tech startup what he has in mind is organic growth. His gameplan is sound. He is not opposed to me raising money on behalf of the company. It is just that he does not see raising money as do or die. We might as well not do it. The idea of raising money is not in his universe.

BusiCopy is a social network for businesses. No, we are not a Facebook imitator. If it is just about creating a simple page for your business, you can do that either place. But BusiCopy is more. If you are a business in NYC, and you want to list yourself on BusiCopy and also need web design, development work done, BusiCopy can help you, Facebook does not do that. If you are a business in Kathmandu, and you want to go global without getting on the plane, without getting a business visa, we will have the platform for you. We don't have it yet. But we are working towards it.

My 50 Strong Tech Team Ranked 17 Globally On Vworker
My BusiCopy Cofounder Anuj Bikram Thapa
Just Became A Cofounder

Monday, May 2, 2011

Facebook Valuation: Up And Up

Source: TechCrunch: The Rise Of Facebook’s Valuation From 2004-2011 [Graphic]

Quora: How did Mark Zuckerberg retain 26% of equity after so many rounds of financing?

Sep 04 -- 10% sold for $500k. ($5mm valuation -- Peter Thiel, Angels)

May 05 -- 12.7% sold for $12.7mm. ($100mm valuation -- Accel)

Apr 06 -- 5% sold for $27.5mm. ($550mm valuation -- Greylock, Meritech, Founders Fund)

Oct 07 -- 1.6% sold for $240mm. ($15b valuation -- Microsoft)

Nov 07 thru Apr 08 -- 0.9% sold for $135mm ($15b valuation -- Li Ka-shing and European Founders Fund)

May 08 -- no dilution; took $100mm in venture debt from Triple Point Capital

May 09 -- 1.3% sold for $200mm. ($15b valuation -- Digital Sky Technologies)

Jun 10 -- 0.8% sold for $120mm (a blended $14b valuation -- Elevation)

Jan 11 -- 3% sold for $1.5b ($50b valuation -- thank you Goldman Sachs!)

Feb 11 -- 0.1% sold for $38mm ($52b valuation -- really, KPCB?!)

The Next Web: So Who Really Owns Facebook? [Chart]

Friday, April 29, 2011

Doing Two Tech Startups

What is better than doing one tech startup? Doing two tech startups.

So I am doing two tech startups. And the newer startup is actually moving faster. But there is symbiosis.

My new startup is B2B social networking. We have global ambitions, but for now we are thinking Kathmandu and NYC. You do well small, and then you can scale. Part of the plan is to help globally minded companies in Nepal to match up with global investors. And take a cut.

So this is still finance, just not microfinance.

Stone carvings, called Chaityas, seen even in ...

Image via Wikipedia
But my microfinance outfit remains my primary occupation. I feel passionate about the poverty issue. I firmly believe poverty can be cured. Like polio could be cured. And I am not taking my eyes off.

But with this second startup I already have a 50 strong tech team in Kathmandu. And I can tap into that pool for my microfinance startup any time I want. Technically speaking I can get tech work done on my microfinance startup for, literally, free.

Kiva Is In Nepal
Just Became A Cofounder

With the new startup I am much more open to giving away equity, although I personally start with 50% ownership. I am much more open to taking in investments the traditional way. But with my microfinance startup I intend to invent the very idea of what a corporation is. There the idea of giving away equity makes me sick in the stomach. I am going to keep a big chunk of equity for the team, as it gels over years. The day the company goes IPO I would want to still be able to offer equity to top talent like we were a startup just starting out.

For me equity is about power more than wealth. Ultimately I intend to give away most of my wealth. But equity gives me power to run the company, to grow the company, to do good work, to reinvent the very idea of a corporation. In keeping equity I am laying claim to my workspace. My workspace is mine.

It is exciting. My second startup has quickened the pace for me. Work is on. Stay tuned. We have put out a very basic product. But much work is being done as we speak.

Nepal is also going to be the first country I go into with my microfinance startup. So having Kathmandu as my base for my second startup helps me cultivate the terrain further.

But with microfinance I am going to start in Janakpur, my hometown, not Kathmandu.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Jeff Bezos: Still Innovating

Image representing Jeff Bezos as depicted in C...

Image via CrunchBaseJeff Bezos was not having the greatest of time when the dot com collapse happened in 2000. The guy still had a lot of money in the bank, but the press was full of critics who said Bezos has never made a dime for his investors, it was only a matter of time before his money runs out also. Bezos proves the bozos wrong. Not only that, Amazon grew like crazy through the Great Recession. And somewhere along the way he gave the world the cloud: Amazon Web Services. He suggested servers were like electricity. Don't buy your own little generator.

The dude is a visionary, sure.

San Francisco Chronicle: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D: Random forests, naïve Bayesian estimators, RESTful services, gossip protocols, eventual consistency, data sharding, anti-entropy, Byzantine quorum, erasure coding, vector clocks … walk into certain Amazon meetings, and you may momentarily think you’ve stumbled into a computer science lecture...... Look inside a current textbook on software architecture, and you’ll find few patterns that we don’t apply at Amazon. We use high-performance transactions systems, complex rendering and object caching, workflow and queuing systems, business intelligence and data analytics, machine learning and pattern recognition, neural networks and probabilistic decision making, and a wide variety of other techniques ..... our architects and engineers have had to advance research in directions that no academic had yet taken ...... Service-oriented architecture -- or SOA -- is the fundamental building abstraction for Amazon technologies. ...... Our e-commerce platform is composed of a federation of hundreds of software services that work in concert to deliver functionality ranging from recommendations to order fulfillment to inventory tracking. ...... to construct a product detail page for a customer visiting Amazon.com, our software calls on between 200 and 300 services to present a highly personalized experience for that customer .... our key data services store many petabytes of data and handle millions of requests per second ...... The storage systems we’ve pioneered demonstrate extreme scalability while maintaining tight control over performance, availability, and cost. To achieve their ultra-scale properties these systems take a novel approach to data update management: by relaxing the synchronization requirements of updates that need to be disseminated to large numbers of replicas, these systems are able to survive under the harshest performance and availability conditions. These implementations are based on the concept of eventual consistency. The advances in data management developed by Amazon engineers have been the starting point for the architectures underneath the cloud storage and data management services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS)...... our Simple Storage Service, Elastic Block Store, and SimpleDB all derive their basic architecture from unique Amazon technologies ..... product data ingestion and categorization, demand forecasting, inventory allocation, and fraud detection ....... advanced machine learning techniques provide more accurate classification and can self-heal to adapt to changing conditions .... The diversity of products demands that we employ modern regression techniques like trained random forests of decision trees to flexibly incorporate thousands of product attributes at rank time...... Technology infuses all of our teams, all of our processes, our decision-making, and our approach to innovation in each of our businesses. It is deeply integrated into everything we do. ...... Whispersync, our Kindle service designed to ensure that everywhere you go, no matter what devices you have with you, you can access your reading library and all of your highlights, notes, and bookmarks, all in sync across your Kindle devices and mobile apps. The technical challenge is making this a reality for millions of Kindle owners, with hundreds of millions of books, and hundreds of device types, living in over 100 countries around the world—at 24x7 reliability. At the heart of Whispersync is an eventually consistent replicated data store, with application defined conflict resolution that must and can deal with device isolation lasting weeks or longer.... We live in an era of extraordinary increases in available bandwidth, disk space, and processing power, all of which continue to get cheap fast..... we have unshakeable conviction that the long-term interests of shareowners are perfectly aligned with the interests of customers...... As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1.

Amazon's 1997 Letter To Shareholders: Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets. ...... We see substantial opportunity in the large markets we are targeting. This strategy is not without risk: it requires serious investment and crisp execution against established franchise leaders. ..... Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital. ...... We first measure ourselves in terms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand. ...... We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers. ...... We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions. ..... our lean culture. We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture ..... At this stage, we choose to prioritize growth because we believe that scale is central to achieving the potential of our business model. ...... hiring and retaining versatile and talented employees, and continue to weight their compensation to stock options rather than cash. We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner. ...... Obsess Over Customers ..... the Web was, and still is, the World Wide Wait. ...... we set out to offer customers something they simply could not get any other way, and began serving them with books. We brought them much more selection than was possible in a physical store (our store would now occupy 6 football fields), and presented it in a useful, easy-to-search, and easy-to-browse format in a store open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. We maintained a dogged focus on improving the shopping experience ...... We dramatically lowered prices ..... Word of mouth remains the most powerful customer acquisition tool we have ..... Repeat purchases and word of mouth have combined to make Amazon.com the market leader in online bookselling. ...... Sales grew from $15.7 million in 1996 to $147.8 million – an 838% increase. ...... In terms of audience reach, per Media Metrix, our Web site went from a rank of 90th to within the top 20. ..... We established long-term relationships with many important strategic partners, including America Online, Yahoo!, Excite, Netscape, GeoCities, AltaVista, @Home, and Prodigy. ...... Amazon.com’s employee base grew from 158 to 614, and we significantly strengthened our management team. ....... Distribution center capacity grew from 50,000 to 285,000 square feet, including a 70% expansion of our Seattle facilities and the launch of our second distribution center in Delaware in November. ...... over 200,000 titles at year-end ..... Our cash and investment balances at year-end were $125 million, thanks to our initial public offering in May 1997 and our $75 million loan ...... Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success. ..... I tell them, “You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three” .... we are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren’t meant to be easy. ...... 1997 was indeed an incredible year.

The Cloud Outage
Tony Tsieh Could Have Been Richard Branson
No, Biz, Twitter Has Real Issues

Image representing Amazon as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Sunday, April 10, 2011

The First Walmart Store

So Sam Walton decides he wants to take his company public. Although the company was in debt, its fundamentals were looking really strong. Besides he figured he could use the money generated from the IPO for the company's future growth.

So he shows up in New York, shows up at an investment bank.

"Hi. I am Sam Walton from Arkansas. I need to take my company public. Who do I talk to?"

The receptionist takes her to see that lone soul from Arkansas who happens to be working at that bank.

How Wal-Mart Got Started
More Sam Walton Than Bill Gates
GroupOn Did Not Launch At South By South West
Who Hired You?
Ageism And Entrepreneurship
Engineering, Creativity, Sector Reform, Sector Revolution
That StartUp Mentality (2)

Walmart - Wikipedia The company was the world's largest public corporation in 2010 by revenue..... The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. ..... the largest majority private employer ...... the largest grocery retailer in the United States ..... In 2009, it generated 51% of its US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from grocery business ...... has 8,500 stores in 15 countries, under 55 different names ..... operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the United Kingdom as Asda, in Japan as Seiyu, and in India as Best Price. It has wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada ....... began his retail career when he started work on June 3, 1940, at a J. C. Penney store in Des Moines, Iowa where he remained for 18 months. In 1945, he met Butler Brothers, a regional retailer that owned a chain of variety stores called Ben Franklin and that offered him one in Newport, Arkansas ...... Walton was extremely successful in running the store in Newport, far exceeding expectations.[8] However, when the lease came up for renewal, Walton could neither come to agreement on the existing store's lease renewal nor find a new location in Newport. Instead, he opened a new Ben Franklin franchise in Bentonville, Arkansas, but called it "Walton's Five and Dime." There, he achieved higher sales volume by marking up slightly less than most competitors ....... Within five years, the company expanded to 24 stores across Arkansas and reached $12.6 million in sales ...... The company was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. on October 31, 1969. ...... 38 stores operating with 1,500 employees and sales of $44.2 million. It began trading stock as a publicly held company on October 1, 1970, and was soon listed on the New York Stock Exchange. ...... In the 1980s, Walmart continued to grow rapidly, and by its 25th anniversary in 1987 there were 1,198 stores with sales of $15.9 billion and 200,000 associates ...... This year also marked the completion of the company's satellite network, a $24 million investment linking all operating units of the company with its Bentonville office via two-way voice and data transmission and one-way video communication. At the time, it was the largest private satellite network, allowing the corporate office to track inventory and sales and to instantly communicate to stores ...... In 1988, Sam Walton stepped down as CEO and was replaced by David Glass. Walton remained as Chairman of the Board, and the company also rearranged other people in senior positions. ..... By 2005, estimates indicate that the company controlled about 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business ...... In 2002, it was listed for the first time as America's largest corporation on the Fortune 500 list, with revenues of $219.8 billion and profits of $6.7 billion. It has remained there every year, except for 2006 ...... employing more than 1.6 million "associates" worldwide. Its U.S. presence grew so rapidly that only small pockets of the country remained further than 60 miles (100 km) from the nearest Wal-Mart ......... the world's largest corporation ...... compared the changes to what small town shops had faced in the past — including the development of the railroads, the advent of the Sears Roebuck catalog, as well as the arrival of shopping malls — and concluded that shop owners who adapt to changes in the retail market can thrive after Wal-Mart arrives ..... In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, Walmart was able to use its logistical efficiency in organizing a rapid response to the disaster, donating $20 million in cash, 1,500 truckloads of free merchandise, food for 100,000 meals, as well as the promise of a job for every one of its displaced workers. An independent study by Steven Horwitz of St. Lawrence University found that Walmart, The Home Depot and Lowe's made use of their local knowledge about supply chains, infrastructure, decision makers and other resources to provide emergency supplies and reopen stores well before FEMA began its response ....... Walmart's goal was to be a "good steward for the environment" and ultimately use only renewable energy sources and produce zero waste ...... designed three new experimental stores in McKinney, Texas, Aurora, Colorado, and Las Vegas, Nevada. with wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels, biofuel-capable boilers, water-cooled refrigerators, and xeriscape gardens ....... the biggest seller of organic milk and the biggest buyer of organic cotton in the world ...... The new store has wood floors, wider aisles, a sushi bar, a coffee/sandwich shop with free Wi-Fi Internet access, and more expensive beers, wines, electronics, and other goods. The exterior has a hunter green background behind the Walmart letters, similar to Neighborhood Market by Walmarts, instead of the blue previously used at its supercenters. ...... On September 12, 2007, Walmart introduced new advertising with the slogan, "Save Money Live Better," replacing the "Always Low Prices, Always" slogan, which it had used for the previous 19 years. ....... Walmart's price level reduction resulted in savings for consumers of $287 billion in 2006, which equated to $957 per person or $2,500 per household ........ On March 20, 2009, Walmart announced that it is paying a combined $933.6 million in bonuses to every full and part time hourly worker of the company. An additional $788.8 million in profit sharing, 401(k) contributions, and hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandise discounts and contributions to the employees' stock purchase plan is also included in this plan. While the economy at large was in an ongoing recession, the largest retailer in the U.S. reported solid financial figures for the most recent fiscal year (ending January 31, 2009), with $401.2 billion in net sales, a gain of 7.2% from the prior year. ..... All Wal-Mart stores in the US and Canada also have designated "greeters", who welcome shoppers at the store entrance ...... governed by a fifteen-member Board of Directors, which is elected annually by shareholders. ....... Sam Walton died in 1992. After Walton's death, Don Soderquist, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice Chairman, became known as the "Keeper of the Culture." ......... Notable former members of the board include Hillary Clinton (1985–1992) ....... Each week, about 100 million customers, nearly one-third of the U.S. population, visit Walmart's U.S. stores. ....... The average US Wal-Mart customer's income is below the national average, and analysts recently estimated that more than one-fifth of them lack a bank account, twice the national rate. ....... Wal-Mart customers are sensitive to higher utility costs and gas prices ....... after 2004 US Presidential Election 76% of voters who shopped at Wal-Mart once a week voted for George W. Bush, while only 23% supported senator John Kerry ....... frequent Wal-Mart shoppers were rated the most politically conservative ........ six demographic groups – African-Americans, the affluent, empty-nesters, Hispanics, suburbanites and rural residents." ..... "brand aspirationals" (people with low incomes who are obsessed with names like KitchenAid), "price-sensitive affluents" (wealthier shoppers who love deals), and "value-price shoppers" (people who like low prices and cannot afford much more) ....... while Wal-Mart's low prices caused some existing businesses to close, the chain also created new opportunities for other small business, and so "the process of creative destruction unleashed by Wal-Mart has no statistically significant impact on the overall size of the small business sector in the United States." ....... When a Wal-Mart opens in a new market, median sales drop 40% at similar high-volume stores, 17% at supermarkets and 6% at drugstores ....... its stores' presence saves working families more than US$2,500 per year, while creating more than 210,000 jobs in the U.S. ......... Wal-Mart's growth between 1985 and 2004 resulted in food-at-home prices that were 9.1% lower and overall prices (as measured by the Consumer Price Index) that were 3.1% lower than they would otherwise have been ....... a new store increases net retail employment in the county by 100 jobs in the short term, half of which disappear over five years as other retail establishments close ..... "Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion per year." ..... the poorest segment of the population benefits the most from the existence of discount retailers ...... two different Wal-Marts, the first of which had just arrived and "was in the process of driving everyone else out of business but, to do that, they cut their prices to the bone, very, very low prices". In the other Wal-Mart, "they had successfully destroyed the local economy, there was a sort of economic crater with Wal-Mart in the middle; and, in that community, the prices were 17 per cent higher"

History of Walmart - Wikipedia In 1962 Walton invested 95% of the capital to open the first Walmart store. ...... Responsible for the purchase and maintenance of signage, Walton's assistant, Bob Bogle, came up with the name "Wal-Mart" for the new chain. ...... By 1977, Wal-Mart made its first corporate acquisition, assuming ownership and operation of the Mohr-Value stores in Michigan and Illinois. This was followed by the acquisition of the Hutcheson Shoe Company in 1978. In the same year Walmart also branched out into several new markets, launching its pharmacy, auto service center, and jewelry divisions. ...... The 1990s saw an era of furious growth on an unprecedented scale and the incorporation of several new ideas and technology into the business. ....... On March 17, 1992 U.S. President George H. W. Bush presents Sam Walton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sam Walton passes away on April 5, 1992. ..... In 1997, Walmart replaced Woolworth on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. ...... in 2000, Walmart was ranked fifth by Fortune magazine on its Global Most Admired All-Stars list, and in 2003 and 2004, as the most admired company in America. ....... In 2006, on 26 July Walmart announced its complete pull-out of the German market. All existing 85 stores were sold to the Metro Group ...... In response to the popularity of organic food supermarkets, such as Whole Foods and Wild Oats, Walmart announced plans in May 2006, to increase the amount of organic food available in its stores. They announced that both conventionally grown and organic versions of certain products would be available, and the price of organic versions would not be more than 10% over the price of conventionally-grown products. ....... $351 billion in revenue ($11 billion in profit) in 2007, a new high for the corporation ..... As of October 2009, Walmart stores operate in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Pakistan,and the United States

Sam Walton - Wikipedia lived with his parents on their farm until 1923. ..... Growing up during the Great Depression, Walton had numerous chores to help make financial ends meet for his family as was common at the time. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus, and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver newspapers on a paper route. In addition, he also sold magazine subscriptions. Upon graduating, he was voted "Most Versatile Boy". ....... attended the University of Missouri as an ROTC cadet. During this time, he worked various odd jobs, including waiting tables in exchange for meals. Also during his time in college, Walton joined the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He was also tapped by QEBH, the well-known secret society on campus honoring the top senior men. Upon graduating in 1940 with a B.A. in economics, he was voted "permanent president" of the class. ...... This position earned him $75 a month. ..... With the help of a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, plus $5,000 he had saved from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas ...... It was here that Walton pioneered many concepts that would prove to be crucial to his success. ..... When Walton bought the franchise from the previous owner in 1945, the store was doing $72,000 in sales annually. By 1950, the store was doing $250,000 in sales annually, due to Walton's ideas and practices ...... Because of the variety store's enormous success, the landlord, P.K. Holmes, refused to renew the lease when it expired, desiring to pass the store onto his son. The lack of a renewal option, together with the outrageous rent of 5% of sales, were early business lessons to Walton. Despite forcing Walton out, Holmes bought the store's inventory and fixtures for $50,000, which Walton called "a fair price". ...... Walton offered managers the opportunity to become limited partners if they would invest in the store they oversaw and then invest a maximum of $1,000 in new outlets as they opened. This motivated the managers to always try to maximize profits and improve their managerial skills. ...... Helen and Sam did the best they could do to promote a sense of togetherness in the family, and they made sure their children to had a chance to participate in the some sorts of things as they did as kids. ...... The Walton family held five spots in the top ten richest people in the United States until 2005. ...... In 1998, Walton was included in Time's list of 100 most influential people of the 20th Century..... Forbes ranked Sam Walton as the richest man in the United States from 1982 to 1988, ceding the top spot to John Kluge in 1989 when the editors began to credit Walton's fortune jointly to him and his four children. ...... (Bill Gates first headed the list in 1992, the year Walton died).... Walton was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1992.

Time: A Visit to India's First Walmart (a.k.a. Best Price): Amritsar lives in many centuries at once. This holiest city of the Sikhs is home to their most revered shrine, the mystical and awe-inspiring Golden Temple, where nihangs — members of an armed Sikh order — live on in traditions dating back centuries, sporting distinctive electric-blue tunics and a panoply of weapons, even speaking a unique martial dialect of the Punjabi language. Other parts of this prosperous merchant city wear Levis, hang out at cafés, follow the latest diet fad or carry the latest iPod. And since May this year, Amritsar has also been home to India's first Walmart..... called Best Price Modern Wholesale, in collaboration with Walmart's Indian partner Bharti Enterprises, in order to get around the country's rigid foreign-investment restrictions ..... All sales are in cash...... "This store has certainly expanded my range of choice," he says. "But it's just one more store where I buy supplies from. I still get better prices and more convenience shopping at my usual suppliers." He is cut short by a commotion — the appearance of a forklift has created a stir. Children are gazing, enchanted, while adults look on with barely concealed curiosity. The store staff quickly rush in to cordon off the aisles that are being restocked, and gradually it's back to business as usual...... "I have shopped at the same kiryana shop for 18 years." There are many reasons customers like Kaur prefer their kiryana shops: they deliver for free, even for small orders; they allow regular customers credit; and they are close by and personal. "He knows us so well," she says. "When my daughter went to America to study, he called to ask, 'Madam, is your daughter not home? You haven't been ordering cheese singles!' If I run out of shampoo or detergent, I can just phone him, and he'll send a boy with the stuff, free of charge." ...... "In a country where half the economy is a black economy, how do they expect a shopkeeper to give checks and put all transactions on record?"

Sunday, April 3, 2011

A Surprising Blog Post From Fred Wilson

Warren Buffett speaking to a group of students...

Image via Wikipedia

Fred 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.

LCD SoundSystem: Losing My Edge

He picked a lazy Sunday to put it out. Apt.

It is not about money no more. He has enough hits under his belt - think Zynga, think Twitter, think Tumblr - that he is set for life in the money department. Fred came of age in the VC game when the world was still trying to figure out what this internet thing was all about. One of my favorite stories about Fred is that he envisioned something like Twitter before he actually came across the real thing and he said it was better than what he had imagined. This was at a point when 500K was a lot of money to the Twitter people.

He is too young to retire. I for one think he is too good to retire from the game. In some ways he is the most visible VC on the planet to those who breathe tech, in no small part due to his blog. It has been my long held fantasy to come across similar blogs by tech entrepreneurs.

He is too good at what he does to retire. But then maybe that is what he means by going out on "top." He is at the top of his game.

I did not see it but the first warning sign might have been when he started talking in terms of a bubble.

The super angel churn is also something that Fred at some level has struggled with.

There is no next Google. There is no next Facebook. There is no next Twitter. Has web tech become saturated? Web tech has been Fred's domain.

I think not. I think mobile tech has a serious five year run, if not more. And the app movement, if it can be called that, is real. I am a browser bigot, and that is a one app for all screen sizes kind of promise, but that asks for globally universal wireless broadband, something we don't even have in New York City, let alone across America and the world.

Fred "gets" the mobile web thing. I mean, he "got" Twitter and FourSquare, he is on to Kik. He has been strong on Android. Then what gives?

At some level Fred continues to be a web tech guy. Maybe he has not fully converted to the mobile space, spiritually speaking. Like me he talks in terms of the browser also ruling the mobile web. Bill Gates talked in terms of a tablet and a smart TV more than 10 years ago. He has been proven right. But back then those ideas of his were business failures. The browser will rule the mobile web as well, but that might not happen for a while. And at some level Fred perhaps is uncomfortable with the transition period, the apps period.

And Fred, by definition, is missing in action in clean tech, in bio tech, in nano tech and fin tech. Mobile tech is the most fertile subcategory in web tech, microfinance is the most fertile subcategory in fin tech. But then Michael Jordan did not play baseball, or soccer either. Wait, I did not mean to compare Fred to Jordan, although I do think he has been one of the very best in the business.

Apple Refuses To Get Categorized

Fred's domain has been early stage web tech. He wants to be the first to spot a Twitter or a Tumblr or a Zynga. He does not do a good job of "following." And there's no next Twitter, Tumblr or Zynga out there. What's there to spot?

Fred has "struggled" with high valuations of recent. I'd love to see Chris Dixon and Fred Wilson debate this topic for 90 minutes in video. That is an open topic. No one really has answers for a few more years.

Maybe this is just a passing thought. I sure hope he does not act on it. But if he does, I hope he stays active. He is too young to retire. Maybe he will launch a foundation to help women entrepreneurs. I know he sure is passionate about the topic.

I come from quite another angle. Fred mentions Warren Buffet and Rupert Murdoch. They have been working into their 80s. And that appeals to me. My contribution to Nepal's political revolution in 2006 was my "foundation work." My contribution to Obama 08 was my "foundation work." I already did my part.

I am pre-launch, early stage, bootstrapped. All I have to do is think about all those dollar a day people and I get reminded of the ocean of work for an industry, not just one company. At some level it feels to me like I just finished college and am trying to figure out what to do. I see decades of work ahead of me.

I have the perfect weight for my height. I am thin. But I still watch my weight. One reason is I wish to work long decades.

Faith, Family, Work.

A sabbatical would make sense. A foundation would make sense. Staying in the game would make sense. But retiring is not an option. My two cents.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

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