I camped, hiked and went white-water rafting during this long Memorial Day weekend.

I drove to Cuyahoga Valley National Park (the only National Park in the state of Ohio, and about 10 hours of continuous drive from Washington DC) and spent the weekend there. I also took a brief detour on Saturday morning and spent sometime in Ohiopyle State Park in Pennsylvania. I kayaked and white-water rafted in the Youghiogheny River. I camped overnight in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. I also explored some small caves in Cuyahoga.

I also went to Pittsburgh on my way back. All in all, it was a wonderful weekend.

Next weekend, I plan to spend time in Shenandoah National Park.

SPAM TRENDS

40% is healthcare related

37.8% is financial

12.8% is direct products

4.8% is pornography

Source: Clearswift

Junk e-mails now account for nearly 70% of all messages, despite efforts to reduce spam.

Yak farmers in Nepal are using wireless internet technology to keep in touch with their families.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0.91/public/-/2/hi/technology/3744075.stm

According to BBC, special hardware can help firms overcome some of the internet’s speed limits. Well, as an engineer, I would disagree on the exact connotation under which “speed” is used. Maybe they are referring to ‘bandwidth’.

The article says, “NetScaler founder B V Jagadeesh said the net’s core protocol, called HTTP, is responsible for introducing the delays”.

I’ve known the founder of the company for many years now. I knew Jagadeesh even before he became famous during Exodus.net’s IPO. He gave a lecture at IIT Bombay on my invitation, was a judge during one of the entrepreneurship competitions, and I have even pitched my business plans to him many times. He has also referred me to other angel investors from the valley.

NY Times talks about the impending clash between the business models of two big companies in the printer business. I interviewed with Dell in November 2003 for an electronic packaging engineer position with their printer development division. Though they didn’t select me, I had done some research on their business models in the printer business before the interview. We need to take a step back to understand how the printer (or for that matter, all assembled electronic products) business works.

The ‘electronic components’ within an fully assembled electronic device (e.g., televisions, printers, digital camera) are made my different manufacturers. Then there are companies that assemble them (typically in Far East), and then distributors sell them. ‘Technology’ per se is quite mature in the printer industry. I don’t see how cost-cutting (or undercutting the competitors) cannot give Dell an edge over HP. I would like to see data on the relative drop of the price of a PC and a Printer over the last two decades. If the rate of drop is higher for PC, I would say the printer business is ripe for a new era of lower costs to the consumer. A printer is inexorably linked with the PC. Dell’s model will be successful if it can leverage its existing expertise in PCs. The indutry is the same, the consumers are similar, and product technology is comparable.

Images in books are becoming much more interactive. However, whether it will remain just a curiosity or a mass-market product will depend on the relative cost structure between, say a interactive DVD and an interactive book.

Strategy+Business has a an article on Japanese resurgence in innovation of both technology and business models.

“Has Japan really lost its competitive edge?

No. The Japanese have long shown an innate ability to reinvent themselves, in ways that often embrace painful changes. We believe there is compelling evidence that they are in the process of doing that now, leveraging many of the nation’s existing skills and advantages to enable their companies to take on leading roles in the New Economy emerging from the tangle of postindustrialization. While investors and competitors remain riveted by the ongoing travails of such internationally recognized corporate brands as Sony and Daiwa, other large Japanese companies have managed to keep or regain their global stature. Japan is also witnessing the rise of a breed of newer innovators, companies that have bucked the downturn to establish leading positions in their industries. With healthy balance sheets, focused strategies, creativity, speed, and flexibility on their side, these companies — they include the Kao Corporation, Nidec, Hoya, Bandai, and NTT DoCoMo — are spearheading Japan’s new growth and global outreach.

Contrary to the argument that the Japanese have been left far behind in the Internet revolution, these innovative companies are, to a great extent, making use of rapid advances in network, digital, and information technologies. They are building new business models and organizational forms for the 21st century, laying a competitive foundation for the Japanese economy to reassert its former dominance.

In particular, three clusters of Japanese companies — the large multinational kaisha, the keiretsu alliances, and the newer net-batsu — are starting to leverage their strengths and core capabilities to outmaneuver Western competitors and show how certain age-old Japanese practices are readily adaptable to the New Economy and still very relevant to business”.

Nicholas Carr has some inights into the business models in IT industry, especially the interplay between the hardware and software in enterprise markets.

“‘IT Doesn’t Matter.’ That was the title of an article I wrote for the Harvard Business Review about a year ago. In it I argued that information technology, like rail lines, electric power, and the telephone, would inevitably turn into a commodity input – a cost of doing business that all companies have to pay but that provides little in the way of competitive advantage. I went on to say that the commoditization of IT was already well under way.”

The reaction was swift and hot. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer dismissed my argument as “hogwash,” HP CEO Carly Fiorina said I was “dead wrong,” and Intel CEO Craig Barrett seemed compelled to rebut my thesis every time he went out in public. In surveying the responses to my piece, National Public Radio reported that the industry wanted, “metaphorically at least,” to burn me at the stake.

But the CEO rhetoric is just that: rhetoric. And it belies what’s really going on. The way big IT companies are acting in the marketplace is actually accelerating the commoditization of their products and services. Commoditization lies at the very heart of their competitive strategies.

Look at Intel. According to The Wall Street Journal, Intel is selling its Centrino Wi-Fi chips for its cost to fabricate them. Why? For one thing, turning Wi-Fi technology into a cheap commodity is a good way to crush would-be competitors. More important, making Wi-Fi chips broadly affordable encourages people to buy laptops, and selling laptop chipsets is far more lucrative for Intel than selling desktop chipsets. It’s in Intel’s interest to commoditize Wi-Fi as quickly as possible.

Other companies are finding that commoditization is a great weapon to use against an archenemy. Sun Microsystems, for instance, is heavily promoting StarOffice, its inexpensive open source alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office. Sun knows that if it can commoditize basic business apps, it can begin to break Redmond’s stranglehold on the PC desktop. On a larger scale, IBM is also attacking Microsoft by spending billions to promote the adoption of Linux, rather than Windows, for PCs and servers.

Before you start feeling sorry for Gates & Co., remember that they are the masters of the commoditize-thine-enemy’s-product strategy. By giving away Explorer, Microsoft destroyed potential rival Netscape. It’s been trying to do the same to RealNetworks by bundling Windows Media Player with its operating system. Its next target is Google.

The same thing’s happening on the enterprise side. SAP is aggressively promoting the open source database MySQL as a way to break Oracle’s franchise. Sun is talking up Salesforce.com’s customer relationship management software as a cheap substitute for Siebel’s dominant CRM suite. And Dell has built its entire business around the commoditization of computer hardware.

There’s nothing strange about what’s going on here. It’s typical when industries mature and buyers start focusing on prices rather than features. Unable to distinguish their goods, vendors begin to compete ruthlessly for market share, often by trying to undermine the distinctiveness and importance of rivals’ products.

But because every company is some other company’s rival, this kind of infighting just adds fuel to the general commoditization fire. It’s great for buyers – the intense competition slashes prices and increases choices – but not great for those sellers who fail to win the war.

The IT industry is looking more and more like a traditional, mature manufacturing business. Plagued by undifferentiated products, global overcapacity, and falling prices, hardware and software companies are consolidating, shifting production offshore, and making money on maintenance and other fee-based services. They’re competing on cost rather than innovation and features.

In public, industry CEOs may continue to exercise their Peter Pan complexes, pretending that the IT business will never grow up. But behind the scenes they’re dismantling Neverland piece by piece.

I have not one but THREE Gmail accounts. Ha…ha…ha.

Musings of a VC http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2004/05/phone_email_blo.html

This is a brilliant insight which frustrates ‘inside the box thinkers’ no end. After you’ve written a dozen business plans and pitched a hundred venture capitaliists, you quickly discover the conribution of ‘dumb luck’ in getting a company funded and through a liquidity event. The hubris which generally accompanies fast millions blinds most people to the mere veneer of control they exert on the destiny of a business

A good article to understand the “real” India.

For these kids, Indian education rolls along too slowly India boasts first-rate places of learning, but how are its teeming millions faring? Asad Latif looks for an answer

AS INDIANS wait to hear details of the new government’s vision for their country, here are some chilling statistics to contemplate. They come courtesy of chemical engineer R.A. Mashelkar, one of India’s foremost scientists.

Only 50 per cent of India’s children go to school, of which only 30 per cent make it to the 10th year. Of these, only 40 per cent actually pass. This means that only 6 per cent of India’s future is passing out of its schools.

Compare this with the more than 65 per cent in South Korea, which was at roughly the same development stage as India 40 years ago and is far ahead today in GDP per capita.

Dr Mashelkar, who is director-general of India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, is on the line from New Delhi. He still believes that India is a land of opportunity – for its 600,000 software professionals, for example.

But he adds that they make up only 0.06 per cent of the population. What about the rest, he asks ruefully.

Indeed, this could be the central question about India’s future. Some 31 per cent of Indians are under 15, precisely the people who will build what Indians have lately taken to calling their future ‘golden age’ of growth. Only education can guarantee their chances of fulfilling this vision.

India’s educational profile reflects broadly what the Strategic Foresight Group, a Mumbai-based think-tank, calls the nation’s three economies:

The Business class economy, which carries 2 per cent of the population, exists in only 15 cities. It has access to luxuries like cars, computers and air travel.

The Bike economy, which transports 15 per cent of the population, is located in vibrant states such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and West Bengal. It enjoys the benefits of television, water and gas connections and, yes, motorbikes.

The Bullock-cart economy, which serves a whopping 83 per cent of Indians, labours on in populous or large states such as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh or in the insurgency-wracked north-east.

The familiar story of Indian education – the narrative of success which weaves together the achievements of the Business class and the aspirations of the Biking class – revolves around the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM).

Along with leading humanities and science colleges in cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, they produce a substantial part of the country’s technological, managerial and governing elite, its consummate literati and its vocal opinion-makers.

The elite deserves its keep. Among observers who fete Indian education at its best is Dr Sunrit Mullick, Regional Officer and Educational Adviser for Eastern India at the United States Educational Foundation in India, which administers the Fulbright Educational Exchange Programme for Indian and American scholars.

Dr Mullick, a scholar of comparative religion who has studied at Harvard Divinity School, says from Kolkata that the IIT and IIM model appears to be based on the American educational system, which emphasises flexibility in course curriculum, an analytical and critical approach to learning, rapid modernisation of the curricula, and shifting from examinations to writing research papers.

But India at large is another matter.

Although literacy rates have risen from 18 per cent in 1951 to 65 per cent, and although the government has been active in education, large swathes of children still live outside the culture of expectations that propels their better-to-do counterparts to seek the best in life.

In the Bullock-cart class, literacy is nothing less than the enchantment of empowerment, particularly for women.

Womankind Worldwide, a British charity, gives a moving example of what even a little education can mean to someone in this class.

‘For me, the most important skill has been learning to sign my name,’ one woman told the charity. ‘This is something I have waited for all my life. Before, when our sangham (village group) tried to open a bank account, we were refused because none of us could sign our names.’

Vehicle of change

EDUCATIONAL limitations have economic consequences. A recent Goldman Sachs report suggests that one additional year of schooling for the workforce would increase the annual growth rate by 0.03 per cent over the next 30 years.

If India is to move ahead as one economy, education is the natural vehicle of change.

Writer Geeta Dharmarajan, 55, recognised this truth when she decided to start the Katha educational organisation 16 years ago. She had great difficulty bringing just five children in.

‘Their mothers wanted it but said that their children had to work and support their families,’ she recalls.

She persisted and, today, Katha works with about 2,000 children living in the slums and on the streets of Delhi, and elsewhere.

The result: Students of Kathashala, whose name means ’story school’ in Hindi, have higher expectations of life than their parents do.

Take 12-year-old Pushpa Biswas, whose father works in a furniture factory. She loves mathematics and would like to teach it when she grows up. ‘But with so many maths teachers in India, how can I become famous?’ she asks with a sigh. ‘So, I want to be a reporter.’

Mohammad Kamaal Quadri, 15, whose father is a shopkeeper, enjoys tapping the keyboard that lets him into the fascinating world of the Internet, but what he really wants to be is an artist.

These two children are not constrained by the past.

A debate is raging on the Internet over that past. Referring to the legacy of former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, one participant bemoans what he calls the ‘Nehruvian penalty’ of an education system that created the IITs and the IIMs as finishing schools for the middle classes instead of concentrating on primary and secondary education, as was the case in economically successful East Asia.

Whatever the truth of that assertion, the changing times are throwing up new opportunities.

With the Indian economy improving now, the link between education and advancement will become more transparent, Dr Arvind Subramanian of the International Monetary Fund tells The Sunday Times.

Rising returns on education have already led to greater demand.

India turned a page in 2002, when it legislated free and compulsory education for all children from six to 14.

Dr Prabhudev Konana, associate professor of management information systems at the University of Texas at Austin, says that if India really wants to move ahead, it should focus on employment opportunities for all types of workers, including the unskilled, who account for almost 70 per cent of the labour force.

Indians need an education that helps them to create services, start small businesses in manufacturing, and exploit tourism opportunities, he thinks.

The Indian government could help by encouraging more private initiatives, suggests Chennai-based Mr K. Satyanarayan, an alumnus of IIT Chennai and Cornell University in the US, who has a website on education. Specifically, he says, ‘it should provide parents with vouchers that would be valid in any private school of their choice’.

What matters is the quality of education. Mr Sridhar Rajagopalan, an alumnus of IIT Chennai and IIM Ahmedabad who has worked for IBM India, is keen on ensuring that educational standards are just that – standards.

Mr Rajagopalan is managing director of Ahmedabad-based Educational Initiatives, a firm that develops research-based products that help to quantify the learning of children in grades 3 to 9. Detailed diagnostic feedback and benchmark data from all over India are then provided to students, parents and schools.

The firm’s Assessment of Scholastic Skills through Educational Testing (ASSET test) has been adopted by about 400 schools in India, 15 Indian schools in the Gulf, and Bhavan’s Indian International School in Singapore.

‘What we are trying to do is basically bring the quality-of-education issue into the national debate, not only as an issue, but also with detailed data, including comparative benchmarks,’ he says.

As these efforts take off, some see a real transformation of society under way. ‘Citizens are beginning to believe that we are intelligent, capable, competent,’ Professor Indira Parikh, Dean of IIM Ahmedabad, told this newspaper during a recent visit to Singapore. ‘This mindset, that ‘I can make a difference’, is beginning to emerge.’

Pushpa, the journalist-in-the-making, and Kamaal, the artist-to-be, are proof of that new culture of ambition.

If schools like Kathashala find a home for their children’s expectations in print or on canvas, Dr Mashelkar will have a brighter story to tell in the coming years.

Once upon a time I used to network a lot. I was a regular in “entrepreneur” parties in south Bombay. I was found in many entrepreneur ‘conferences’ in the mid-Atlantic region. I find some truth in the following article when compared to my experiences.

Practical Networking: Make Your Own Luck

By Kevin Laws

Last night, I spoke to a young entrepreneur who described a nice evening having drinks with a famous VC. The entrepreneur sent email the next day asking for positions at any of his portfolio companies. Much to his disappointment, the VC didn’t respond. My friend wanted to know what he did wrong.

Contrary to my friend’s expectations, networking is not about finding somebody who is going to take time and interest to promote your career. That’s a friend or a mentor, but you come across those few and far between.

Networking is about serendipity: making your own luck. We’ve all heard of some guy who just happened to have a friend starting a business and brought them in — only to make a million dollars later. The reason the story is not uncommon is because that’s how most positions are filled. I once saw a statistic that over 92% of positions are filled through extended networks rather than traditional means (classifieds, resume sites, recruiters).

This doesn’t happen when you find one person and are persistent with them, however. Networking is more about finding the person who already needs your skills, or your company, or your money. It’s about being in the right place at the right time. The more places and times you are meeting people, the more likely it is that you’ll find what you’re looking for. It’s about making your interests and needs widely known (a new job, companies to invest in, people to hire, money to raise) and listening to the interests and needs of others. Because of the FOAF concept (”friend-of-a-friend”), you are likely to run across somebody who needs what somebody else you know is offering. Eventually, that person will be you. My friend should be looking for the right person who is already seeking his skills rather than expecting somebody he met will work to help him.

It is a process, not a goal, and should be done constantly rather than only when you have a specific need. Eventually, you will be surprised at the opportunities that appear when you least expect them.

There are some very practical aspects to networking that some people do by second nature and others (like myself) need to constantly relearn.

Just Do It. With all due respect to Nike, their slogan applies to networking. How often have you been to an event where people are chatting with each other and you feel that you really don’t have much to say? I always feel that way, since I’m not really an extrovert. What surprises me is that nearly everybody else at the event seems to feel that way too. Find somebody else who looks a little uncomfortable and talk to them — they’ll feel so grateful you approached them that the conversation becomes easy. “What brings you here?” is often a good icebreaker. Whatever you do, don’t waste the opportunity by seeking out the people you already know well or spending your time at the drink counter.

Card anyone over 21 (or under for that matter). Carry your business card with you wherever you go. If you are a student or “between positions”, then carry a card that just has your contact info or your school’s information on it. When I first started in this business, it seemed crass to always include a card with every introduction. Since then, however, I’ve learned the value of business cards the hard way. Several weeks after an event, I come across a good connection to make, but don’t have enough information to track the contact down. Forgetting cards is a cardinal sin.

Be brief. People at networking events are often there to meet others, plural, not just one person. They want to pay attention to you briefly then move on to meeting somebody else. In venture capital, we often use the term “elevator pitch” to explain how every entrepreneur should describe their company. The saying comes from the idea that you may find yourself in an elevator with a potential investor. You should be able to introduce yourself and what your company does in a memorable, concise way before the end of the elevator ride.

Be specific. When you are in the position of needing something, be very specific about what it is. I often meet people at functions who are between jobs and are looking for a position. “What do you do?” I ask. Most smart people answer with some form of “well, I’ve done a variety of things and am pretty flexible”. Well, good — next time I hear of a position where somebody says “well, I don’t really care what the person I hire does, we’ll figure it out when they arrive” I’ll put them in touch. Others you meet are looking for something specific, and it is more likely to come up. A young woman I met at one event was finishing a marketing program and really wanted an entry level job in the area. That stuck in my head next time one of our companies needed to fill out its marketing department. She’s now working full time there.

Don’t ask for anything but advice. There’s an old truism in this business: if you want advice, ask for money; if you want money, ask for advice. This applies to job seekers as well. When you ask somebody to help you find funding or find a job, it’s very blunt and implies a lot of invested time. Try a much softer method: “I’m looking to move from engineering into product management and would love to get your opinion sometime on how I should approach that”. People love to hear themselves talk, and in the course of the discussion, they may think of a few people that need product managers (plus the advice may actually be good, though it’ll get repetitive after awhile…). The same applies to financing, and the softer approach changes the nature of the conversation.

Follow up…selectively. You won’t be able to follow up with everybody at an event, but there will be a few that you feel a particular connection with (or that may have what you need at the time). You can follow up with an individual “nice to meet you” email to a few contacts. The follow-up can be as simple as the email itself, or perhaps a suggested meeting for coffee. Some people won’t respond at all, but that’s just the nature of networking — until you know them better, you will always be their lowest priority. Don’t get overly hung up on any particular contact. Remember, networking is about serendipity not persistence.

As with any soft skills, there are exceptions to every rule and the rules change as you get more senior. However, these principles of basic networking will help you make your own luck.

It was informative to read about Rajat Gupta, McKinsey’s former head.

I am amazed by this story about JetBlue’s CEO serving as a flight attendant regularly in his airline. I have flown JetBlue many times and always felt they were quick and efficient. Its refreshing to note that executives of atleast some companies do not live in ivory towers. What is probably important to note is that he is actually the founder of the airline. That explains his dedication to the business.

Its 11:18 PM now and I am just back from Richmond after a long drive for more than four hours. I went to DC on my back with a friend and later was caught in a traffic jam before I was finally able to make it back to Greenbelt, Maryland. Its been a really long day today, the work was hectic but I enjoyed it. Its great to play a key part in process in which billions of dollars are decided.

It was a really long day at work today. I was at my desk from 8:10 AM to 8:10 PM with less than half an hour of total time off in the whole day. Due to looming deadlines, I need to be up at 5:00 AM tomorrow and leave for work at 6:00 AM. I will drive to Richmond (3 hours south of DC) and will be back only on Wednesday night.

This is real exciting stuff. How a MIT team won millions in Las vegas through sheer brain power and team work. A must read.

“For six years in the 1990s, Lewis was a principal member of the MIT Blackjack Team, an infamous cabal of hyper-geniuses and anarchistic whiz kids who devised a method of card counting that took the gaming world completely by surprise. Funded, in part, by shadowy investors and trained in mock casinos set up in classrooms, dingy apartments, and underground warehouses across Boston, Lewis and his gang used their smarts to give themselves an incredible advantage at the only truly beatable game in the pit. A baby-faced card-counting team possessed with impressive mathematical skills — here was a novelty that turned blackjack into an arbitrage opportunity. Their system was so successful, it took nearly two years before the casinos began to catch on — engaging in a cat-and-mouse war with the well-trained MIT conspirators.”

I think I will go ahead and read the book on this some time soon. “Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions”

I liked this idea of matching my wits against the world in being able to predict future events. This is a quasi-market in some sense. If markets are better at allocation of scarce resources (as free-markets advocates would like me to believe) then ideally the collective power of thinking of every individual should be able to predict stuff.

Foresight Exchange combines the real-time interactive potential of the World Wide Web with a game of predictive skill. The basic idea behind the Foresight Exchange(FX) is making bets. The purpose in FX is to bet wisely on future events and place your bets to achieve the highest score. At the Foresight Exchange you bet against the other players.”

Warren Buffet said the following in a news article today that made me pause and think.

‘If every shot was a hole in one it wouldn’t make the game very interesting,’ Buffett said. ‘You have to hit balls in the woods a few times.’