Notes from the Nexus

Entrepreneurial Environment

Intriguing article in yesterday's Wall St. Journal (subscription required) on the barriers to entrepreneurship in many countries. What we take for granted as straightforward tasks here in the US are difficult and costly in other locales.  An example cited (below) is that in the Philippines it takes 11 days to go through the 50 procedures to legally start a business, at a cost equal to 19.5% of the average annual income.  Here in California it takes less than a day, and that includes dealing with both the Secretary of State and the Federal tax authorities.

The concept of the article is reminiscent of Hernando de Soto's great book:  The Mystery of Capital, where he explains in great detail the difficulty in most of the world (outside of Western Europe and the US) in creating a legal status for ownership of capital.

Makes one realize how lucky we are to be residents of a society with a deep network of laws supporting capital and easy processes to being an entrepreneur.

Innovation is Alive and Well!

I had the pleasure and honor last week of serving as a judge for the University of San Francisco International Business Plan Competition.  This is truly an international competition, with over 100 submissions from around the world.  All twenty of the teams selected came to San Francisco, from Singapore, the UK, the Philippines, India and all over the US.

The first event was the classic "elevator pitch" competition, where each team had 90 seconds to explain their business to the judges.  The San Francisco Chronicle had a great article on this part of the competition.  The next day the teams were split into groups of five and gave a much longer presentation, with a Q&A session with the judges.  The top teams from this stage, along with the highest ranked team from the elevator pitch, competed for the top prize on Saturday morning at USF's beautiful Lone Mountain campus. 

The creativity, energy and intelligence of the competitors was fantastic.  The experience was invigorating for me, and shows that there continues to be a strong entrepreneurial spirit  - not just here in the Bay area, but worldwide.

Congratulations to the winners, Harmonic Devices from UC Berkeley  who have developed the technology to allow a number of components cell phones to be made smaller and more cheaply.  Some other exciting submissions were an RFID-based toll system for parking lots (Spark Parking from  Northwestern), an "almost forever" battery replacement (Perpetua from University of Oregon, and the audience's favorite demo - the hibernating fish (Buhi Marine Supply from Silliman University, in the Philippines).

Actually, all the competitors warrant a hearty congratulations!

Happy 10th Birthday, Yahoo!

Hard to believe that Yahoo! is ten years old.

It doesn't seem that long ago that Jerry was putting kazoos on the chairs before his talk at the first Red Herring conference...

In typical fashion, Yahoo! wants all of us to celebrate with them - they're giving everyone a scoop of Baskin Robbins ice cream.

The Gigapxl Project

What an amazing use of technology!
 

 

 

 

From the Gigapxl Project's website:

Our Vision

Defining the upper limits of large-format photography, digital scanning and image processing, custom-built Gigapxl™ cameras capture images with unprecedented resolution.

It would take a video wall of 10,000 television screens or 600 prints from a professional digital SLR camera to capture as much information as that contained in a single Gigapxl™ exposure.

The Project's near-term goal is to compile a coast-to-coast portrait of America; photographing her cities, parks and monuments in exquisite detail.

A longer term goal is to create for future generations a world-wide archive of vanishing cultural and archaeological sites.

Thanks to my friend Art (who just won't blog!) for pointing this out!

Christo's Central Park Gates and Yosemite

I've not yet mastered blogging while on the road, but wanted to share some of what I've been lucky to see these past weeks.  Was in NYC for a client, and succeeded in finding time between meetings to get to Central Park and walk through some of The Gates - Christo's (and Jeanne-Claude's) most recent public art project.  As is usual with Christo's projects, there is some debate about whether the work is, in fact, art.  Watching the faces of the crowds of people strolling through Central Park on a very cold day it was apparent to me that many people were transformed.  They were seeing the Park, the city and their surroundings in general in new way.  To me, this is a not only an endorsement of the positive value of Christo's contribution to NY, but a clear indication that he created a work of art.  By the way, this was a contribution in the true sense - Christo and Jeanne-Claude not only paid for the materials and the staff to install and maintain the installation, but they received nothing from the sales of all the related merchandise - they donated all merchandising rights to two non-profits who support NY's parks and public art.  Kudos to Christo and Jeanne-Claude for a wonderful gift to the people of NYC, and to all of us lucky enough to have visited the Gates.

After returning from NY I spent last week with my family in Yosemite National Park, one of my favorite places.  It was an interesting contrast with my experience in Central Park.  The scale and the beauty of Yosemite is beyond words.  We had the luck to be in the Valley during a full moon; the view of the cliffs in the moonlight, with the snow on the peaks was utterly astounding.  Yosemite is beautiful any time, there is a special beauty right now with the snow highlighting the amazing geography.  We're going back in a few weeks for the annual spring conference held by the Yosemite Association, an organization devoted to supporting the Park. 

Sony wades into the blogosphere

Article on AdAge about Sony's deal with Gawker Media, with Sony being the sponsor of their newest blog, Lifehacker, for $25,000 a month.  Gawker is a publisher of professional blogs, including the eponymous Gawker of course, as well as Gizmodo, Wonkette, and others.

It will be interesting to see how members of the blogosphere view this latest evolution - a "bespoke" blog, as it were.  I believe that this is a notable step in the maturation and mainstreaming of blogs - a major brand putting a fairly reasonable sum behind a blog.  While it's a drop in the bucket for their ad expenses, even in the online world, it bodes well for those who are looking to create viable business models in the blogging world.

Two btw's:

• Today's lead posting on Lifehacker is How to Cut Vegetables. Not an especially insightful post, and definitely not about gadgetry.  I'm still looking for the Sony connection.
• The entire AdAge article had not one link.  Not to Lifehacker, the topic of the article, not to Gawker, nada. Do these guys get blogs, or just write about them for ad types?

Happy Birthday, Don Quixote!

" Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."

This past month marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote."  Widely considered the first modern novel, this is one of my all time favorite books.

The story is wonderful, following a man who sets out to right wrongs and to help the oppressed.  The book, unlike the Broadway version "Man of La Mancha" which seems to drive our current cultural concept of Don Quixote, is a paean to a person on a mission.  It is also a wonderful description of a man who leads by his actions, and engenders total loyalty by his commitment.  Granted, many consider his actions, and he himself, to be crazy, but this does not sway him.  An apt description of many entrepreneurs and leaders that I've worked with.

Worth (re)reading, and worth considering as we go about our lives.

Turnaround in Ohio voting systems

Ohio, the center of much controversy in November's voting, has made an announcement that the State will implement paper-based optical scan systems for subsequent elections.  Instead of the DRE (Direct Recording Electronic - good FAQ here) voting machines that had previously been mandated, there must now be systems in every precinct in the state with a paper trail!  While there are numerous benefits to electronic voting systems, creating a voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) is impossible on nearly all electronic systems in the market.  And with no paper audit trail, there is no possibility of a true recount.

This is good news for democracy.  If Secretary of State Blackwell of Ohio realizes that every vote must be counted, there is hope that all fifty states will implement systems that provide this assurance to every voter.

But we're not quite there...

My seven-year old seems to be thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. the most.  A while ago she mentioned "if it wasn't for Martin Luther King, Jr., I wouldn't be here!"  (My wife is Asian, I am Caucasian - our daughter had learned about the miscegenation laws in school.)

This morning at breakfast she asked "why haven't we had a black President?"  I did not have a good answer for her.  I hope that in my lifetime we do have an African-American President, I hope that we soon have a female President.

Thank you, Martin Luther King, Jr.

It struck me today that while ostensibly we have holidays to honor important people, groups or events, we rarely take the time on these holidays to reflect on the impact these people have had on our lives.  For too many of us, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day becomes just another three-day weekend, a good occasion to go skiing.  Independence Day, Memorial Day, Presidents' Day - how often do we take these days to truly honor those before us who have sacrificed immensely, so that we can enjoy our freedoms?

I include myself in this group, I did not set aside much of today to reflect on a great man who did much to improve our lives.  Luckily, our kids' curriculum included lessons on Dr. King, and that led to some meaningful conversations between my wife and I and our children.  About segregation, about miscegenation laws.  About how blessed we were to have had Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in the civil rights movement take up a cause and effect changes in our country.

Thank you, Dr. King, for the wonderful and necessary changes you helped bring about in our society.  The US, and the world, is a better place for the work you did.