Who Hired You?

Image via WikipediaSam Walton is an inspiration of mine. I find Walmart, Dell and the dollar pizza places fascinating. I admire those who can keep the costs down.

Sam Walton had plastic chairs at his Arkansas headquarters. And this was after Walmart had gone public, and Sam Walton was a billionaire already. His logic was obvious. If we buy expensive chairs, the costs get passed on to the customers. It made perfect sense to buy plastic chairs. When he traveled for business, he made a point to stay in cheap motels.

I read his autobiography a long time ago. It is a slim book, a great read.

We Are Not Trying To Solve All The World's Problems

People talked of me as a future Prime Minister of Nepal when I was at high school. They were perhaps not off the mark, because a guy who was junior to me politically before I came to America - I was too young to be running for office legally, but I was Vice General Secretary to a political party with two MPs - has been a cabinet minister in Nepal for years now. I have sharp political instincts, as sharp as anyone on the planet. Like Marlon Brando says, I could have been somebody.



My point being, what I have is not a political organization. We are not in the good governance business. Good governance is basic to poverty elimination. But if a people have an illegitimate, shady, corrupt, oppressive government, it is their responsibility to rise up and throw that government out. My company is not in the political revolution business, although I don't see how I can stay away from Iran myself personally.

A FinTech StartUp With An Edge

Image via WikipediaWhat I have is a FinTech startup. It is a tech startup. But it is not a tech startup that is trying to come up with the next big thing in tech. That we will leave to the companies that are first and foremost web tech companies.

But we a-r-e going to stay on a constant lookout for developments in tech to see what new developments we can put to the use of microfinance. So we are going to keep our antenna up. But then that is not true only of web tech. We are also interested in the developments in clean tech, bio tech, nano tech. If there will be developments in those sectors that we can possibly put to the service of our microfinance efforts, we will go in with both hands.

Mock Pitching Brad

Tomorrow, Friday, at noon I will be mock pitching my friend Brad Hargreaves at General Assembly: five slides, five minutes. I am going to conclude by yelling, "Brad, show me the moneeeeeey!" Or maybe I will not yell, he is a friend, but I w-i-l-l deliver the line.



Why did I pick Brad? Well, he is a friend. He is an amazing blogger. He "gets" tech. He is an entrepreneur at heart, although he has worn a few different hats along the way. When I first met him he was an Entrepreneur In Residence at a VC firm.

The Best Way To Deal With Venture Capitalists

Image via WikipediaVCs are money people. And many entrepreneurs fall for that stereotype. VCs are not rich people - well, many are - but my point is VCs are not big money people who are itching to get rid of the money that is, oh, such a burden on them. VCs are entrepreneurs themselves. They go raise money. They raise money promising to grow that money. The good ones do. The best ones grow the money like money were raining from trees. If you put that first 100K into a company like Google, you see a growth that is better than any winning lottery ticket ever.

There are many, many VCs out there. There are many, many, many would be tech entrepreneurs out there. As an entrepreneur you should not need money. You should be able to generate revenues and profits.

Top VC Bloggers: The Numbers Don't Look Right

TechCrunch has an interesting post: The Top 20 VC Power Bloggers Of 2010.

It's good to see Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Chris Dixon, Charlie O'Donnell, and Albert Wenger on the list. These are people I have met in person or, in Brad Feld's case, interacted online. Of all the people on the list, I personally know Fred Wilson best, either in terms of how often I visit their blog and leave comments at their blog, or in terms of how many times I have met in person.

Kiva And My Outfit: Three Major Departure Points

Image via CrunchBaseI am a huge fan of Kiva. They went from raising $5 million five years ago to raising over $100 million last year and are projected to raise close to a billion dollars in five years. But that would still be a drop in the ocean. Global poverty is no small challenge.

There are more than 10,000 MFIs - microfinance institutions - in the world today. But global poverty is as big as ever. It looks like a virgin terrain to me. There is so much work to do.

Going For Profit

Yunus is the father of non profit microfinance. When the white people in the Arctic Zone of Scandinavia awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize, he made a little over a million dollars.

My FoodSpotting Day Hangover

Image via CrunchBaseFoodSpotting Day was January 15, and granted I celebrated it in two different cities, the celebrations have to stop at some point. But looks like my FoodSpotting Day hangover goes on. It is not like I have a new idea to share, but I do feel the urge to flesh out a few things I have suggested before.

The Most Popular Dish In New York: Shake Shack Burger, Madison Square Park
World FoodSpotting Day 2011: January 15: Photos

I am not the best person to talk about the food recommendations business, but I don't get the impression FoodSpotting is lacking for direction on that front. It is moving full speed ahead there.

Catchafire

My two tech partners and me were at this event earlier in the evening. I got to meet and get to know the entire Catchafire team, it felt like. And this entire time I have been thinking of them as a non profit. They are a for profit like my outfit. And they cater not only to non profits. It felt to me like I could find some part time consultants through them.

Intrepid Woman Rachel Cook

Last night I was at Gizzi's Coffee for a screening of the MicroLending Film by my colleague Rachel Cook. Later we went to a birthday party of a friend to our tech partners Sunil Madhu and Marty Monaco. That was at Draft Bar in Brooklyn. Sunil was at the screening too. He left for the party early.

The Glass Hammer: Intrepid Woman: From Futures Trader to Microfinance Film Maker: I was working as a Futures Trader on the European shift – in the middle of the night, Chicago time – in September 2009 when I first came across an op-ed in The New York Times written by Nick Kristof the month before, “The Women’s Crusade.” I was completely floored by the article – it told the stories of women in the developing world, facing terrifying, seemingly insurmountable odds. And some of these women were able to overcome these odds using a development tool I’d heard little about – microfinance. I was intrigued. Microlending seemed to help women, and it seemed to be a high-return financial investment – both topics of high interest to me...... While maintaining my trading job, the crew and I traveled to South America and filmed in Paraguay in 2010, and we’re only getting started – we’ll continue filming throughout this year...... I love trading. I wasn’t a superstar, but I was profitable over the course of my career when trading a variety of products, including during the financial collapse in 2008. I made more money than I had expected to see at 25 ..... But over the course of my trading career it became increasingly evident that much of the criticism about the trading world was all too true – particularly in its attitude toward women. ...... During my tenure at this first shop, the 2008 presidential elections were happening, and I’d hear these macho frat guy-types yelling at the TV, telling Palin to “go back in the kitchen” after Senator McCain first announced her as his VP pick. ...... we’re planning to shoot in Bangladesh and India in late February, and will also film in Kenya and in New York, in the interest of making this a truly comprehensive project about microfinance and how it impacts women

Rachel's Microlending Film was the best of the three movies shown for the evening. The other clips had too much forced violence. It was like, okay, time to end the 15 minute movie, let's kill a character.