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Having finished my first set of midterm exams at business school, it's a good time to reflect on what I've learned so far. Some of these things are reinforcements of things I once knew, but others reflect a new way of looking at the world:

1) Net Present Value is often an easy calculation, but no better than the underlying assumptions.
2) Business leaders realize that too few people know how to think (e.g., knowing when an NPV calculation even makes sense).
3) No one has yet solved the principal-agent problem.
4) Accounting is truly important, especially with regard to cash flows. Not sexy, but particularly critical to young companies.
5) In the wake of my first set of exams, it's clear that what's outside of the classroom is more important than homework and grades, as that's where people actually live, dream, and work.

Now this may not seem to be a lot of bang for the buck (12.5%*$120k equals roughly $12k), but I'd wager that it's a positive NPV transaction for me on many levels. The final point above has a lot to with that, and it's something I'll return to in the future.

Posted by complexify at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of the many qualities that make a successful entrepreneur, persistence is one of the most underrated. The web is full of good examples, but allow me to repeat and expand upon two metaphors I head recently:

Watch a cat slowly slinking across the yard, creeping towards a bird, inch by painstaking inch. When he gets within a few inches from his prey, the bird takes flight and slips out of his reach.

Yet does the cat stop being a cat? No, he tries again with no less energy, even if he catches the bird only once out of a hundred times. Similarly, if grass is mowed every week, it gets cut off before it reaches its full height. But does the grass stop growing?

Now a cat and a blade of grass are unusual metaphors for an entrepreneur (and not entirely flattering!), but I doubt I'm alone in feeling them hit close to home. Success may seem elusive, dangling tantalizingly, just out of reach. An entrepreneur is someone who can wake up energized each day, knowing that today may be the day when the grass grows tall and the bird is snatched.

Related reading:

• Entrepreneurs: Born or made? A conversation with Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines
  
• The Entrepreneur's Checklist
  
• Bnoopy: Persistence Pays, Part 2
  

Posted by complexify at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of us unable to attend the Web 2.0 conference in SF last week, bloggers' debriefings are the next best thing. So feel good about the $2800 you saved, and instead read a roundup of the highlights, as seen by one non-attending observer:

• Products with short, uniformly weird names (Squidoo, Zimbra, Rollyo, Joyent, Flock, ...)
  
• Company presentations that came off (to some) as mere "feature demos for ideas [...] to incorporate into future products"
  
• Feverish "innovation, enthusiasm and optimism" that felt like 1995-1996
  
• The "triumphant" (or ominous) return of Mary Meeker and Henry Blodget
  
• Rumblings of Bubble 2.0 (deja vu all over again?)
  
• What Fred Wilson has labeled second derivatives (e.g., "Google Maps meets delicious," "Skype meets MySpace")
  
• As with any conference, much was learned outside of the panels (Steve Hall saw a few interesting things on people's laptop screens)

Where does this leave us? Certainly the hype is building to a troubling level, particularly in cases where business models are de-emphasized (again). Some people are already mourning the death of Web 2.0, but I'm inclined to be a little more optimistic. The rapid technology growth is compelling, but investors need to remember the lessons of Bubble 1.0. I'm heartened to read VCs like Fred Wilson (who sits on the board of del.icio.us) expressing caution:

It doesn't mean we are going to stop investing. But it does mean we are going to be more careful. We have to raise our hurdles when others are lowering them.

If other investors share this cautious optimism, funding only companies that have a chance of actually making money, Web 2.0 may yet prove naysayers wrong. If not, we'll look back incredulously at Bubble 2.0 someday. We're still getting over the hangover of Web 1.0; there's no need to bring the punch bowl back just yet.

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[For visuals, Flickr has photos from the conference, as well as from the tongue-in-cheek "blink tag worshiping" rival Web 1.0 summit.]

Related reading:

• Infectious Greed: Web 2.0 Conf as Feature Demo
  
• Northwest VC: YAW20CP - "Yet another Web 2.0 conference post."
  
• A VC: Web 2.0 Reactions
  
• Fractals of Change: Bubble 2.0 – Introduction
  
• Om Malik’s Broadband Blog - And 5 More Things About Web 2.0 conference
  
• Feld Thoughts: Web 2.0 - Building Features or Value?
  
• Laughing Squid - Web 1.0 Summit
  

Posted by complexify at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I noticed this banner on Yahoo! Mail yesterday:

Clicking on it brought me to an error page, unfortunately...

Posted by complexify at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bill Gates is reputed to have said that "Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana." At least one company appears to be taking that message quite literally.

It sounds almost like a joke, but today an executive of a consulting firm mentioned to me that the head of Hewlett-Packard's PC division took his managers to visit Dole. He figured they could learn something about inventory management, given that PCs have the same shelf life as bananas.

The metaphor only goes so far, however, since bananas are only bundled with other bananas. HP, on the other hand, was considering bundling PCs with printers at no additional cost, hoping to make up for the cost through the future sale of consumables. As a printer manufacturer, HP has as much in common with Gilette's razor blades as it does with Dole's bananas.

Posted by complexify at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)