Kiva Is In Nepal

I have been looking for that first country to go into with my microfinance startup, and it is amazing how I have gone all over the world. And now I am thinking Nepal, the country where I grew up.

Having Kenya And Chinatown Thoughts

Just Became A Cofounder

I just became a Cofounder. What the heck. No, this is not my microfinance game. That is my primary focus. But one Skype call with a friend in Kathmandu who runs a software shop, 50 strong, and next thing you know I am a Cofounder. Details to follow in a few weeks.

This is way better than consulting. Suits my style.
Image via Wikipedia
The basic product is already out. The idea is to grow the user base, and go raise some money down the line.

People talk of a shortage of engineers. I have no clue what they are talking about. I have a limitless supply of them. I retain my tech consultant title. Holler if you need help. I am scalable.

Meeting Brad Feld
A Boulder Invitation From Brad Feld Himself

How To Pitch: The Rachel Sequoia Way

This three minute video has been making the rounds. It is a great video, and a great pitch. This actually fits my idea of a pitch. A pitch should be a video clip. "Passionate and irreverent, she presented her concept entitled Share The Air in bare-feet and using hand drawn illustrations to articulate her points. She was looking for $500,000 to help get her idea off the ground....." You can see her lift the energy in the room as she wades through. "I am not a fighter." I like that line. "I am a lover, not a fighter." "Air is at least 6% energy." Great. I have been wanting to say that the longest time. I said something similar in a blog post on January 29. You pack the revolution into the air. Bare feet. I like that. Awesome.

A Life Of Poverty

Image via WikipediaI have had my double cheese burger super sized. It was like a six month disappearance - they had Wael Ghonim disappear for 12 days in Egypt, they had me disappear for six months in America, cost me two major victory parties, I guess it is a bigger deal to put a black man into a White (WHITE) House than it is to kick an Arab out - plus the Great Recession - all my investors walked away - plus the Great Immigration Humiliation. But I have not so much as flinched.

My Failures

Image via WikipediaMy first step into tech entrepreneurship was in the late 90s. I was not the leader of the team, but I was a founding member of a team, lead by an Indian American woman out of Philadelphia, that was trying to build the top South Asian community online.

The company raised 25 million dollars round two and dutifully succumbed to the dot com bubble burst. What ensued was a nuclear winter.

She suggested I drop out of college. I should have. It is not like I was having fun in Kentucky: I hated the place after my first year. Over a year after I left promising to come back after graduation, the thing had already disappeared.

Social Media Is For Real

I am not getting this. I think you have to be global at many levels to truly appreciate social media. I don't feel any kind of a "multiple edentity disorder." Social media makes me whole. Minus social media I feel all too fragmented.

I was born in India. I grew up in Nepal next door, attended high school in Kathmandu, not my hometown, came to America for college at a time when I could not have told you the cultural differences between Kentucky and California. A one year crash course in Kentucky's social conservatism cured me of that fast.

Cultural differences are for real. As of today I don't give two hoots - absolutely don't care - about anybody's birthday, not mine, not anyone else's. That does not make me an uncaring person. That means I grew up in a culture that celebrates festivals, not birthdays. They say every single day in Nepal somewhere a festival is being celebrated.

Rootlessness And The City

Image by joiseyshowaa via FlickrI was born in India. I grew up in Nepal next door. I came to America for college. When I was applying for colleges while in Nepal, I did not have a favorite college in mind. I liked all sorts of colleges. Every prospectus I picked up I absolutely fell in love with. Now I realize what I was really applying for back then was to get into New York City. People who go to all those colleges all end up in New York City.

I have something akin to a PhD in race relations. There is the conscious level of the mind, the subconscious level, and there's deeper stuff. Racial identity can inhabit the mind at several levels. That's what makes a white guy high school drop out detain the top movie star in India for an hour at the New Jersey airport. Your name is Khan? You must be a terrorist.

Social Is A Pendulum Swing

Image via WikipediaThis tumblog post got me thinking about a theme I have thought about for a while now and have been meaning to blog about.

Social that is all the rage is a pendulum swing. The pendulum will inevitably swing the other way. That does not mean we will all go back to doing Google searches, if we ever stopped doing that. The pendulum swing is going to mean that there is going to be a renewed focus on the individual at some point down the line.

Bowling Alone: Another Look At Rajeev Matwani's Death

Remembering Rajeev It is with great sadness that I write about the passing of my teacher and good friend Professor Rajeev Motwani. But I would rather not dwell on the sorrow of his death and instead celebrate his life. ........ When my interest turned to data mining, Rajeev helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. ...... Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational. ..... Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly.

Rajeev Motwani's death has made me think about a few things at a very fundamental level. I did not know the guy, although I had read about him a few times in passing, had taken pride in an Indian's involvement with something as fundamental as Google: I am half Indian, born in India, grew up next door in Nepal, the poorest country outside of Africa. But had forgotten his name.

Why was he alone? That was the question that struck me, echoed in my mind.

Growing up it was hard if not impossible for me to be alone. There were always people around. The first American city I got to see was Indianapolis. I was taken downtown. My first question was, but where are the people?

At a gut level I always thought of the phrase Third World to be racist. The suggestion is that the so-called Third World is two steps behind the First World on everything. And that simply put is not true.

I went to a school in Kathmandu founded by the British. Every year they would bring along two high school graduates from Britain. They would teach for a year and then go back to college in Britain. I asked one of them after they had been in Nepal a month. So what's the difference? He said he had been in Nepal a month, and he had yet to meet someone who was depressed. That was his tribute to the emotional infrastructure he witnessed.

A few years in America I read online somewhere that Nepal has been the top choice among Peace Corps volunteers during the entire half century of that program's existence.

I once read in an anthropological journal article somewhere that some "tribes" - another racist term - in Africa handled adolescence better than the American society did.

I am

Image via Wikipedia

pretty hard nosed about where I come from. I don't glamorize poverty, I don't glamorize children dying from petty diseases. There is much sexism where I come from. Complaining of ethnic prejudice is almost second nature to me. I wish wealth and broadband upon my peoples.

But Global South is the term to use. Otherwise the same white people who have destroyed the environment over 500 years are turning around to lecture you on the environment. What's wrong in the picture?

Why was Rajeev Motwani alone? Why was Ramanujan lonely in England?

Motwani was in the prime of his life, both personally and professionally.

These questions also tie into my recurring theme at this blog, that the human element is central to the web as technology.

Each Snowflake Is Unique
Hunger, Vision, Money
Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing

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