i can't remember

the last time i benefited from the kindness of a stranger, but i won't soon forget what happened this afternoon. i was riding my bike - it was a beautiful day out, if not a bit cold - and got a flat at around the 100 north block of chicago. i was coming back having gone up from hyde park into lakeview, but noticed that the bike was getting harder to ride. well, it was clear that my rear tire was losing air, so i started walking. i didn't realize how long it would take, because after about an hour, i was only at the 2500 south block. fortunately, there was an old guy on the side of the trail with a bike and a toolbox and a sign that proclaimed "TIRE FLAT? I'LL FIX IT FOR A TIP" unfortunately, i didn't have any money with me, but i asked him if i could just mail him something. he said that i could just get him the next time i see him, as he's on the trail quite frequently. well, mike fixed my flat - no telling how i got it - apparently, the inner tube is too big for my wheel, and whoever installed it didn't pre-inflate it, causing a bunch of wrinkles to develop in the tube, which rubbed against each other and eventually resulted in the flat. well, mike took the tube out, patched it, inflated it a bit, put the tube back in, and inflated it the rest of the way. what should have been a 1:45 hour ride turned out to be more like 2:45 hours, but it would have been four hours, at least, if i hadn't met my personal good samaritan this afternoon. if i do see him again, i hope i have at least a few bucks on me to thank him with. he was an older guy (late 50s/early 60s), talkative, if not a little bit crazy. he is a bike messenger downtown, which i thought was kinda crazy because most bike messengers are young and punk/hipster. regardless of what or who he is, i appreciated his help this afternoon, when it looked like the rest of my day was ruined.

as a self-professed

smart person, i found this essay about why smart people defend bad ideas, to be very...convincing. perhaps more relevant to most people, who are neither smart nor dumb, is his essay about why i left microsoft.

in fact, the latter resonated with me: i'm not where he was when he decided to leave msft, but i will be there some day; i just know it. he joined msft to escape his fear of post-college emptiness, but he left msft to define his own idea of success. i can appreciate that sort of risk-taking, and wish him the best.

one thing that

bothers me about google personal is that, sometimes, the gmail window will say "temporarily unavailable". all i have to do is just go straight to gmail to see my inbox, however; still, this is annoying, and should be (and most likely will be) addressed by google before personal goes off of beta.

seth levine recently posted his thoughts on how to become a venture capitalist; not a very long read, but chock-full of good advice. the more i see things like this, and the more people i run into in business school who dream of going into venture capital, the more i realize that i was just plain lucky to get not one, but two jobs in the venture industry. the thing is, like most desirable jobs, a lot of people want to be venture capitalists, but lack the requisite skills and experience. for those who are serious about pursuing vc, i would pay special attention to seth's first point of advice: Assume you will not be able to land a job as a venture capitalist.

phil kaplan, of

fc fame, has persuaded some vcs, including the mighty sequoia, to give him capital to build his online ad placement company, adbrite. perhaps the ultimate disgrace, then, would be for adbrite to some day end up on fc. i personally couldn't care less, but i'm sure there are one or two former ceos (of defunct companies) out there who would love to see adbrite go down in flames.

my one observation

of donald trump is that he is a brilliant self-promoter. despite the fact that he's not been nearly as successful as some of his peers in the actual business world, i would bet that the majority of america (idiots) think him to be some sort of business god; what else could explain his success with the apprentice and other media-related exploits? despite the fact that his company, trump enterprises, went bankrupt (made a bad call on atlantic city being the next vegas, haha), and the fact that he started out WITH money (trump's father was one of the wealthiest and most connected men in new york) , he has managed to get his art of the deal on best-seller lists and continues to do well with the apprentice. but a little diligence will reveal that, far from being a self-made man, trump's fortune was his to lose, from birth.

well, america's favorite and arguably most successful self-promoter has announced that he will be starting trump university. unlike other online institutions of learning, however, trump university will offer no grades or degrees, which makes me wonder how learning and achievement will be measured at the school. but then i think about things for a minute more, and realize that learning, achievement, and educating the american public have nothing to do with trump's obvious intention: to further capitalize by pimping his personal "brand" under the guise of higher learning. this should be laughable.

i recently learned

in international commercial policy that up to $0.40 of every Chinese FDI $1.00 is fabricated; that is, chinese investors, using vehicles based in hong kong, are investing in china (thus, in themselves), pumping up FDI figures, and capturing the incentives that the chinese government is offering to attract FDI e.g., tax holidays, etc.

this was news to me, and pretty interesting light of csfb's announcement that it is going to be an anchor investor in the first china-only buyout fund.

while there is plenty of opportunity in china, there is plenty of risk as well (even chinese opportunities obey the law of risk/reward, after all), but i think that private equity has a place in thye chinese economy. to the extent that many chinese companies companies are still largely state-owned, pe investors may be able to get in on some of the privatization deals. these companies, based on my research, are inefficiently run (and can't get much worse), so i think that the discipline demanded by pe investors will largely have a positive impact on the governance and operations of chinese companies, as long as government meddling it not involved, and market mechanisms are allowed to act.

still, there are substantial risks, not the least of which is the fact that property rights are non-existent, the legal framework is deeply in need of overhaul, and financial transparency is still much of a pipe dream. pe investors will need to build long-term relationships in china (much like anywhere else), but will have to have especially large appetitites for risk as well as nerves of steel to make money in china.

caspian networks,

a company that i worked with (i helped to close a follow-on round while i was at abn) has just announced that it's raised $55M in its 5th round, pushing total venture funding to $317M. i wonder what ROIs will be like for initial investors who've kept getting squeezed, each successive round!

why is wired

my favorite magazine to read? because they consistently tell me about the coolest shit. as well, they're very liberal about releasing content into internet-space, for free, which ultimately drives subscriptions to the print version, i'd like to think, and also produces ad-revenue based on traffic. when i get that shiny new issue in the mail, i am absolutely giddy with anticipation to open it up and see what the folks at wired think is cool.

in the most recent issue:

i'm not very materialistic, but a cool t-shirt is one thing that can make me want to covet. accordingly, threadless.com is a cool t-shirt paradise as well as an interesting company with an interesting business model. check it out to see what makes this company different.

puma partnered with biomega to come up with a new bike that has the most curious (and useful feature): not only is the bike foldable (which is nothing new), a heavy-guage cable is built into the bike to not only provide security, but also actual support for the frame! should the cord be cut, the frame won't stay in riding position. of course, a stolen bike could be used for parts, the wire could possibly be sautered back together, or a new wire could just be made. but it's still a pretty good idea, i think, and very original. i wonder if puma patented the method. well, the bike retails for $775, which i think is pretty steep (especially since it looks like the bike is not exactly a performance vehicle - one gear only i.e., no shifting) but it's still a neat bike. check it out.

the most recent

issue of wired talks about keystroke biometrics: rather than just using a password for authentication, keystroke biometrics also factor in speed and rhythm, which is brilliant. each of us probably uses the same few passwords for all of our sites, and we probably type the characters for each password in a habitual way i.e., with the same speed and rhythm. keystroke biometrics can use this as a basis for authentication, thus preventing bots and hackers from being able to use ill-gotten passwords to commit crime, since it would add an additional level of security based on information that's hard to steal without visual observation.

i see keystroke biometrics being useful, however, only in the short-run, for the following reasons. first, i don't know how one would implement this as an on-line service; i'm sure it can be done, but at what cost? second, it will only be a matter of time before someone comes out with software that is able to mimic the most efficient keystroke patterns for any given password: given the spacing between characters on a qwerty keyboard, one could imagine that it wouldn't be too difficult to figure out what the most efficient way to type the password is. this, of course, relies on the assumption that most people typing on qwerty keyboards do so efficiently. another possibility is that keystroke loggers, which are currently used to steal passwords and other sensitive information, could have built-in capability to record legitimate users' speed and rhythm, using the same software that prevents this from happening.

accordingly, keystroke biometrics are an interesting development, but i don't see a lot of long-term potential, at least in the current incarnation of the technology.

kellogg made a

very poor showing today. someone told me that they were going to bring 200 people; well, it was more like 20, if that. the gsb may have brought about 50 or 60, which isn't much better, given the size of the full-time mba program, but it was enough to stomp them in most sports. i played kickball and wiffleball, and managed to skin my knee pretty badly. i did a fair amount of drinking, though, so it was all good. today was beautiful; i don't know what google weather was thinking but it predicted 50/50 chance of thunderstorms. except for some ominous clouds in the am, it was pretty much a perfect day.

last night, after the house-warming party, i went over to emily's. i stayed the night, despite the fact that she was recovering from whatever sickness she has. i woke up this morning with a sore throat, but after eating a little breakfast, i went back to my apartment for a nap. when i woke up, the sore throat was pretty much gone, and i headed out to the olympics. i felt pretty good for most of the day, so i'm wondering if my body just beat whatever emily had, or whether the worst is yet to come. i hope it's not my latter because i need all of my energy for the home stretch.

among the worst

hot dogs i've ever eaten are oscar meyer's low-fat wieners. although fat content has been halved, the taste and texture has been negatively affected by more than 50%. unfortunately, i purchased two packs as they were on sale, but after i eat them, i will never buy them again.

i've been eating

the same thing for the past several months. except for the food i eat when i go out, my apartment-cooked fare has been:

1. rice and mixed vegetables
2. cheese
3. a fried egg
4. two hot dogs
5. spaghetti sauce

i stack the items on top of each other, cut it up and mix it well. it sounds like something a recent widower would cook because he just doesn't know any better, but i find it highly satisfying. if it isn't this, it's:

1. a fried porkchop
2. cheese
3. a fried egg
4. tomato sauce

a variation on the same theme, i think it delicious and easy-to-make. plus, i think i touch on most of the major food groups with every meal. other than ice cream and pie, it gets to what i like: meat, cheese, eggs, and tomatoes. the tomato sauce is really important, because i regularly read that tomatoes do all kinds of good things to your body.

other than my homemade burrito kick three years ago, when i lived in lakeview, and my intermittent canned chinese food with rice kicks, it seems like i've been eating the same thing for the past five years, almost every day. i know what i like.

you may not know

but my taste in music has trended towards the independent, and experimental, in recent years. i'm listening to a band called cocorosie, composed of two sisters - sierra and bianca cassady - right now. their recent release is called "la maison de mon reve", and i've heard nothing like it, ever. the following review at epitonic describes cocorosie's music as folk, indie rock, and experimental. while i wouldn't describe the sound as rock, it certainly is indie. the album is infused with a dreamy quality; when i hear it, i feel nostalgic, as if i was a little child. throughout the album, you hear ambient squeeks, hisses, bleeps, wheezing, and the like: it comes off as highly eclectic, but beautiful and compelling. i would describe cocorosie as the perfect rainy-afternoon-drinking-tea-and-flipping-through-an-old-yearbook kind of music, so if this is what you're looking for, you should give it a listen.

my absolute favorite

flaming lips song is "fight test", from their most recent release, "yoshimi battles the pink robots". i liked the album so much that i got the deluxe edition, which includes a bonus dvd which plays the album in 5.1 stereo surround-sound, and has some funky graphics as well.

the first time i heard it, i recognized that it sounded a lot like cat stevens' "father and son", which is what i'm listening to right now. someone told me that cat actually sued the flaming lips over the similarity; i have no idea what happened but i would guess the parties settled.

i'm no ip lawyer, so i have to wonder: what is it about a song that can be copyrighted? is it the lyrics, the melody...what? i can't imagine it's the latter, as the music is composed of "notes" that are public domain, although i could understand an argument for the copyright of the tune in its entirety (despite the fact that it would be difficult to prove no prior art, which has relevance to a patent, but possibly not to a copyright - i just don't know)

regardless, "fight test" is a stupendous achievement in songwriting, and ranks as one of my favorite ten songs, ever. a friend and i were discussing the lyrics the other day, and now i think it appropriate for me to expound further:

"I don't know where the sunbeams end
And the starlights begin
It's all a mystery"

this, life, whatever - it's all a mystery. we spend our whole lives trying to figure out what life is about, when we find out (some of us earlier than others, some of us: never) that it's just a mytery; life is meant to unravel this mystery which i suppose means that the point of life is to unravel itself. this may sound stupid, initially, but i think it's a rather elegant explanation for the fact that life is merely meant to be lived.

"For to lose I could accept
But to surrender I just wept
And regretted this moment"

this means a lot to me, because it gets at my very essence: as much as i hate losing, i can accept loss; it's the surrendering that i will never tolerate.

"...I'm a man, not a boy
And there are things you can't avoid
You have to face them
When you're not prepared to face them"

so much of life is about dealing with shit that you can't avoid and no matter how much you prepare, you'll never be ready for every little thing that life throws at you. but this is precisely what makes life enjoyable. all of the challenges, all of the pain: if i can adapt and persevere, these things will make be a better, stronger person. to what end, you may ask? i don't know. i just know that i will be happier on my deathbed knowing that i gave it all.

i have a habit of asking people: "what do you think is the point to life?" invariably, the answer is "to be happy." i don't think this is the point at all. the point to life, at least for me, is growth. every moment, i want to be growing, adapting, and improving physically, mentally, and spiritually. of course, this is not possible, except on a macro scale (months and years, not seconds and hours).

my point is that i want to be challenged. without struggle, without conflict, there is no growth, and there is no progress. this is what i mean when i say that "life is meant to be lived." living doesn't always mean being happy. if i wanted to be happy, i would just move to san diego, get a 9-to-5 job, and pig out on ice cream and chinese food every day. but this happiness would eventually lead to complacency, and to me, complacency is worse than death.

emily didn't get this, rachel didn't either, and this is why i'm single again, and may remain so for quite a long time.

howard anderson,

a founder of battery ventures and yankeetek ventures (which pulled the plug on its second fund), recently wrote the following goodbye to the vc industry in the mit enterprise technology review.

he makes the following points (followed by my take):

"Innovation is not dead, but demand for new technologies is moribund and will continue to be weak for at least the next five years."

yes, but early-stage vcs look at 7-10 year investment cycles for their companies, and so the it trough we're currently in is short-term; there's no telling what the technology landscape will look like ten years from now.

"...few software and communications companies will enjoy the double-digit growth that inflames company valuations and makes VCs rich."

also true, but this is what separates the successful vcs from the unsuccessful ones: the former will be able to identify, invest in, and exit those companies that will exhibit double-digit growth and deliver outrageous ROIs. this is why vcs get paid the big bucks. 1995 - 1999, the period when it seemed like every vc was minting money, was an anomaly. prior to that period, the environment was as it is now: very few winners, a lot of losers. this is just capitalism as it's supposed to be.

...the financial markets for technology companies are no longer exuberantly irrational. VCs hate rational markets..."

no, dumb vcs hate rational markets. good vcs anticipate the rationality, and only invest in companies that will create real value. those vcs that depend solely on the markets to behave irrationally are the ones that won't survive, in the long-run. the irrationality of financial markets is no thesis for investment.

"... these changes in venture funding are structural, not cyclical..."

wrong. as dan primack wrote in PE week wire, "Where Anderson crosses the line, however, is in his assertion that such changes are structural, rather than cyclical. In fact, the one flaming piece of information gleamed from the bubble inflation and collapse was that cycles are an ingrained part of capitalistic economics (at least the American version)."

"There's too much venture money pursuing too many deals. There's nowhere for all that money to go: we can't spend the money we've raised."

true, with the following caveat: there's too much dumb venture money chasing too many deals. the smart money will always find a way to make it into good companies. the guys at google, did they accept capital, willy-nilly, from any vc willing to listen to their pitch? not at all: they sought out the smart money, and the smart money made a bet. sometimes the smart money wins, sometimes it loses, but smart money, on average, will find better deals.

howard anderson has an enviable record of venture investing, and i can only hope to become as prominent as he was in the venture world. his post, however, smacks of resignation: howard, i don't think it's as bad as you want to think it is. i was just a junior guy at a small venture fund, but even i know that, in a healthy market-driven, capitalistic economy, there will always be opportunities for smart money to do its job: help good companies get better.

this should

be sick: google earth

the parking situation

in lincoln park is untenable, and worse than i remembered. i know because i just spent an hour looking for a spot around wrightwood and clark. i was supposed to meet vic and what i will now call the 'seattle crew' i.e., all the people from the gsb and kellogg going out to seattle, permanently and for the summer, for whatever reason, for dinner and drinks, but got so upset that i just abandoned my night and came back to hyde park, where the parking situation is much better but there is also much less to do.

wired recently

came out with an article about blogging in the porn industry. i don't know what i was expecting, but i was left underwhelmed. okay, maybe i was expecting some hot stories and salacious pictures, but blogging in the porn industry is blogging like everywhere else: most of what people have to say is pure shit.

i know that

google is supposed to be the enemy, but it's hard not to like it. today, the company released google personal, which is basically google's take on my.yahoo.com, except much better. i've already personalized my page with gmail, weather, stock market, slashdot, wired news, driving directions, and google news. as much as i would like to use exclusively msn stuff, google is constantly releasing kick-ass services. take blogger, for example - its integration with hello make blogging a snap. keyhole's integration with google maps, local search, scholar, froogle....the company just keeps rolling-out elegantly-designed, easy-to-use, online services. now i don't think google is going to be coming out with any OSes or server software any time soon (wouldn't count it out though, no matter how outrageous the idea is), but i would hate to have to compete with these guys from the yahoo or msn end. by the way, google personal will be complete once they add sections for wikipedia, babelfish, and zabasearch.

brief thoughts on

the sony/msft vgame showdown:

(edited from an email msg i sent to a friend)

i haven't been paying a ton of attention to the video game fracas, but it seems like all of the companies are hell-bent on stoking the fires for their consoles. sony has pre-released details of the ps3 (obviously just to counter the momentum that msft has been gaining) - if you look at what the xbox 1 has been doing vs. the ps2, it's pretty impressive. in this battle, though, it's useless to fight over just technology, which is why i think sony loses this in the long-run. it's all about the games, and this is where msft has an edge - apparently, it'll be much easier to develop games for the xbox 360 vs. ps3. if you look at what msft has been doing - getting the formerly exclusive guy at squaresoft to bring the final fantasy franchise to the xbox - it's notable. time will tell, i suppose. we talked about this in my competitive strategy class today, actually, and the professor showed a pretty impressive clip that sony put up....it was unreal....so lifelike! but then, it was pre-rendered stuff so it'll be interesting to see what actual gameplay looks like.

obviously, msft's ambitions here go way beyond games...ultimately, the xbox 360 is a specialized media center 5.0 PC, and this was its plan from the beginning - the console is merely an entree into controlling the living room, which is a smart strategy. sony could try to do the same thing, but it doesn't have the same software expertise as msft and will have a tougher time executing on such a strategy. plus, sony has fucked up repeatedly with respect to standards - its mp3 player was a miserable failure because it tried to lock-in users to its proprietary format for music. but the company now has new mgmt, so it'll be fun to see what sony and msft do to each other in this space. interesting to note that msft's drm software is gaining traction.

there's nothing like

sports to make you forget. that's what i love about athletic competition: truly, it's about living in the moment, and regardless of what you're dealing with, sports can make you forget. not so with music: listening to music makes you remember. i was just thinking that "the book of laughter and forgetting" is a great title for a book, although i've never read it. sometimes, i wish there really were separate books for laughing, forgetting, and remembering.

the gsb/kellogg olympics

are this weekend, and i got put on the wiffleball, flip-cup, and kickball teams. my absolute first choice was dodgeball, and i didn't even make the squad as an alternate! i told the guy in charge that this is a load of horseshit. i've got to be one of the ten greatest dodgeball players, EVER!

although podcasting

and blogging are indeed revolutionary, i don't think that either app will live up to its hype. businessweek ran a story an issue or two ago about how blogs are going to change the face of business. hold on a minute...while blogs are definitely having an effect (and will continue to), i don't see them fundamentally changing the face of business. podcasting is in the same boat - it's cool now, but once everybody and their mothers starts podcasting (much like blogging), the novelty will eventually wear off, and it will be business as usual, with a slight twist. i remember, back in 1995, when it was really cool to have your own webpage. not a lot of people knew how to write html, and so there were few compelling webpages. fast forward ten years: now, everyone and everything has a webpage - it's just not a big deal anymore. i think blogs are hitting that point: there are so many useless blogs out there publishing useless drivel (like mine, for example), that most will never get read by more than an audience of 1 or 2 people, if that. the power, of course, are in the blogs that publish compelling content: if you've got something interesting and novel to say, the public will pay attention. but this is the way it's always been: viewers will tune in if nbc has a cool show (e.g., seinfeld) and listeners will listen if labels turn out good music. so blogging and podcasting are the same thing, just different: no one's going to read your blog or listen to your podcast if you don't have compelling content. the difference, of course, with blogging and podcasting, is that these are much more democratic applications: it costs millions of dollars to produce a season of seinfeld, but it's virtually free to publish a blog. that's the difference: blogging and podcasting will allow those people who have something interesting to say to say it. the thing is, most people are boring, and don't have much to say. so while i'd like to say that blogging and podcasting are going to drastically change the way that the public gets its news/information and music, i don't see it happening. after all, when tv news broadcasts came out, newspapers didn't disappear. blogging and podcasting are all the rage right now, but i don't see traditional news sources and radio going anywhere anytime soon.

call me crazy

but this whole 911 issue seems like a ploy (encouraged by the rbocs, no doubt) to slow the entry and use of voip. i understand that having access to 911 services is a critical issue, but i don't think that it should be required for voip. with cell phones as ubiquitous as they are, and with the minimal cost of some plans, owning a cell phone is not too much of a financial burden. no one should be relying on his/her voip phone for all voice needs; he/she should also have a cellphone...just in case of emergency. i think that voip providers should make sure that users are aware that they won't be able to dial 911 on their voip phones; voip companies should be sure to get contractual indemnification from every user.

when i have

a headache in the morning after a night of drinking, i don't think that it's due to the alcohol. in fact, i think it's because of nicotine overconsumption. last night, i smoked a half cigarette more than i usually smoke (putting me up to 1.75 cigarattes in 24 hours), and i woke up with a headache. i didn't drink anything at all. from now on, i need to make sure i limit my smoking, especially if i'm drinking.

i went to

see rilo kiley play at the metro last night, and was left a bit underwhelmed. they didn't play "the frug", which is my favorite song. they did acceptable renditions of "does he love you" and "the execution of all things" but i don't remember anything particularly profound. well, i never realized how hot jenny lewis is but she was looking pretty sweet.

during dinner today, i watched the final episode (season 3) of strangers with candy. i never noticed how hot winona ryder can be. she's definitely up there at the top of my list now with jennifer connelly. hooray for hot women who don't know that i exist.

so the xbox 360

is going to have a removable hard drive according to several sources. some have speculated that this will become the xpod, or msft's challenge to apple's ipod. personally, i don't see msft explicitly developing a directly competitive product to the ipod, but i can imagine msft putting windows media 5.0 on a device developed by a 3rd party e.g., samsung. the thing is, msft is not in the business of making hardware: it's not really in the company's DNA, per se (despite the xbox and xbox 360), and so i think that msft will leave peripheral development to outside parties. in fact, this is in msft's best interest: by allowing 3rd parties to develop peripherals that tie into the 360 via usb ports, msft can require these companies to put msft's proprietary software on these devices, and most likely generate revenue from licensing agreements. further, if these peripherals are successful, it will make the xbox 360 that much more compelling.

i really thought

it would be a good idea, but then i just realized: i don't really have much to say. right now, that is.

there aren't enough blogs

in the world, so i decided to create my own.