Thursday, November 18, 2010

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: Robin Li


Robin Li has been caricatured, and he continues to be caricatured. But his is a true success story. Not all of the difficulties associated with doing business in China can be attributed to China being a one party state. The Chinese are like the Jewish people. They both have 5,000 years of non stop history. The Hindus have 10,000 years of non stop history, but that is another story.

John Battelle's Search Hangover


I think this interview of Mark Zuckerberg by primarily John Battelle is on the lame side. It is out and out hostile. And there is a reason for that.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: Mark Zuckerberg



TechCrunch: LinkedIn CEO On Why We Need More Than Facebook: Keg Stands
Now Over 200 Million Users A Month, Disqus Gets A New Look, Premium Add-Ons, New API
Twitter Raising New Venture Round at $3 Billion Valuation
Twitter’s Williams On Facebook Relationship: We’re Talking To Them Often — So Far, Nada
Will China’s 1999 Moment Bail-Out Some Valley VCs? You think China is still a “communist” country? Get. On. A. Plane. .... those bumper stickers spotted in the early 2000s that read “Please, Lord, Give Me One More Bubble” .... several firms have told me their China funds might out-perform their US funds
FCC Head: The Google/Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal Slowed Us Down

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Dogpatch Labs: Demystifying PR For Startups

So I was at this event earlier. Dogpatch Labs is an incubator. It is not that far from Union Square. Good thing because L is my line.

I have to do some out of the box thinking here. Why would you go to a cramped office when you can work from home? My hero Larry Ellison has a huge company - Oracle - and he is not a regular at the office. That is more along the lines of what I think.

Brazil: Economic Turnaround


I grew up in Nepal being told Nepal was second only to Brazil when it came to hydropower potential. But what made news year after year was not yet another hydel power plant that was put up, but monsoon floods and landslides. Potential is one thing. Deed is another. Brazil has had the potential. And this past decade it seems to have put its house in basic order. But there is so much that remains to be done. A 6% growth rate is not 10%. Lifting tens of millions out of abject poverty still leaves tens of millions more to be lifted. Brazil could be but still is not a world power.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The China Debate: The Other Angle


I think China should teach Africa how to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, fast. I think China should teach America the art of total campaign finance reform. I think China should teach America fast trains and clean tech. Those are not new thoughts on my part. And China is right in wanting a new global currency. The American dollar is specific to a country. A lot of the American fiscal recklessness this past decade was due to the fact that the dollar is the de facto global currency.

Data Explosion, Data Curation And Grassroots Governance


Barack Obama in power - in terms of grassroots involvement - feels to me like Howard Dean running for president. It's not there yet. And data is the reason why. Too much of the data is locked up. What data have been liberated have not been made visually appealing and presentable yet. Those are bottlenecks.