Yellowstone Pictures

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Think the Opposite

Something I really liked on Slideshare (Click on the Play button to go to the next slide):

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Branding Practices Defined - Lessons from 1185 Design

An excellent brand is more than just a good logo. Use the following terms and definitions when evaluating the brands you find tonight.

Delivery on Promise
A good brand has a well-defined (either implicit or explicit) promise to its customers, and consistently delivers on that promise. For each brand you visit tonight, try and define what their promise is, and how they deliver.

Memorability/Ownability
The brand uses color, typography, logo and other design elements such as layout and dress of retail locations in a consistent manner. Creating distinctive elements and using them consistently not only makes a brand memorable, but keeps other companies from using the same elements.

Superior Offering or Service
The brand’s product or service works more consistently, tastes better, or provides a more satisfying experience than the competition.

Fulfills a Need/Innovates
The brand takes an existing product or service and elevates it to a new level by re-imaging, redesigning, or combining it with a new approach.
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John Wood, Room to Read

Do we dare to dream big?
Core belief: World CHange Starts With Educated Children
To reach Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal: 10 million children by 2010
70% of Nepal is illiterate, suffering from poverty of opportunity.
John rented Zag the yak to carry the library of books from one village to village.
GDP is linked with education.
Purchasing Power Parity (economy) is linked with education.
Infant mortality is linked with female literacy.
110 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school.
880 million people around the world cannot read or write. 2/3 of these groups are girls and women.

SOLUTIONS:
To work with government to supply teachers
To enlist parents to build the school rooms
To build reading rooms - learn their own language and english
To publish local language books
Long-Term Girls Scholarship - funded by Don Valentine
"Educating girls yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world" The World Bank
Room to Read fund raise.

BUSINESS MODEL:
1) Hire strong and entrepreneurial local teams - not to send volunteers or expat
2) Engage the Community - We call them "Challenge Grant" - catalyze creation of schools, give them ownership.
"You can only help ppl who wants to help themselves"
3) Be nimble and act quickly, no excuses - Team opened 39 schools in post-tsunami area in one year even though no present operations there.
4) Invest heavily in human capital - training teachers and librarians
5) Invest heavily in monitoring and evaluation - 84% Laos librarian is confident to train new librarian.
They published books in Hindi, Sinhala, Nepalese - 10,000copies per books. Authors include 10, 15-year-olds.
6) Have an Intense Focus on Results
"What gets measured, gets done"
7) Makes efficient use of donor's money - instituted no Land Rover policy - can't open 25 libraries, can't open 4 new schools in Nepal.

Run a social business:
Low overhead ensures the money goes where it's needed most
87% Program services
Rated 4 Star by Charity Navigator.

8) Create a World-wide movement of "Super Empowered Individuals"

"Go Big or Go Home!" on philantropy. Scale up
"If Starbucks can do it"

Low prices alllow everyone to "Be the change"

What is the most image can you imagine? - potential or kinetic - take action.
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TIEcon 2008 Panel: Future Trends for Social Platforms: Killer Apps, Niche Social Networks, What Next?

TiE Host: Ro Choy - Vice President of Business Development, RockYou
Moderator: Gus Tai - General Partner, Trinity Ventures
Panelists:
Anil Dharni - Director of Products, Hi5 Networks Inc.
Seth Goldstein - CEO and Co-Founder, SocialMedia Networks
Sab Kanaujia - VP Digital Product Strategy & Development, NBC Universal
Keith Rabois - Head of Strategy and Business development, Slide, Inc.
Anthony Soohoo - SVP & GM, Entertainment Communities & Social Media, CBS Interactive

Lessons/Facts
Online shows and watching TV is similar in activity - Case: NCAA Tournament on CBS
Take fan base to enhance interaction -> higher ad & impressions
Apps that enhance communication works, not info apps
Realty based shows get more people to talk
maximize exposure by building communities based on the show
Widget (hard to monetize)
Platform strategy to monetize
Monetize mobilized social activities (games)
A decreased value proposition will cause product failure - if you don't need to spend much and the product can still spread, you're addressing an important need
Most social platforms don't know how to monetize. The main platform needs to be able to monetize to have the application useful for monetization
Data Portability the trend of the future
Vertical Market Platform: Context will drive CPM, even if a smaller market size (Flixster). BUT look at the size of the vertical. If its too niche also no good
Using network effect to prevent privacy. Release the premium content to everyone that doesn't have pirated content.

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TIEcon 2008: Day 2 Morning Keynotes

Starting Keynote: Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla Motors, Solar City & Space-X w Mike Malone
(Refer to the earlier post on Space-X and X-Foundation)
Forecasts: By 2030,
- Solar Powered
- Pure electric vehicles the dominant one
- Man on Mars

Lessons:
For large item purchases (e.g. Tesla Roadster), have a "lockout" period to maintain branding and make sure people don't start selling your item on eBay
Innovators' Dilemma again - Tesla took the market space that Toyota and Detroit manufacturers won't be moved to jump into the area

2nd Keynote: Sustaining Entrepreneurship in Biotech and Its Global Impact - John C. Martin, PhD, President and CEO, Gilead Sciences
- Biotech lies at the intersection of life sciences and technology: Health focused companies that capitalize on the increase in scientific understanding of biology and genetics
HL: "Don't be boring. Make Biotech as sexy as Tesla motors"
Healthcare Challenges and Opportunities:
- Globalization makes disease travel faster
- IP in developing world to attract investors

AIDS Developing World Challenges:
- More than 30 million infected
- 4.1 million new infections per year
- Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa: 47
- Without AIDS, life expectancy would be 62
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TiECON 2008 Keynote - You like me, You REALLY like me.. Now what?: Challenges After Hypergrowth

Keynote Panel - 4-5pm
Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal
Jia Shen, CTO & co-Founder, RockYou
Kent Lindstrom, President, Friendster
Derek Liu, CTO & co-Founder, Gaia

Lessons Learnt
Mathematic growth of huge market will allow for huge growth
Self-expression a need for human interaction
Dorm rooms still not producing quality apps. Slide and RockYou still key players.
Youtube app?
Huge applications might not be the key. Niche but high interaction would be more monetizable
Building applications onto platforms instead of building social network platform
Friendster facing "Innovators' Dilemma" that's why mySpace and Facebook got to take over despite Friendster's initial success
Agility to keep success of website over long period of time
CTR rates????

Monetization Models
Long tail model (Google) vs. Site target model (Yahoo) of advertising
Data Profile that each advert publisher "must buy" - e.g. if you want to meet college student you must buy Facebook ad, if you're launching movie must buy MySpace ad. This is actually still similar to buying ad during the relevant TV show
Fake cars, fake houses to impress real people =)
Microsoft Passport Model - Friends Connect, Facebook Connect; Expanding of Social Graph beyond the own website
Mobile - will grow from there
Micropayment systems in Asia
Ads as brand advertizers instead of cost per click model for people who want to drive traffice to their website
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NVC - Arijit Sengupta, Founder of Beyondcore on Pico-Coding

OperatorEvaluator.com cost $300+

Learning Points
Outsource – break up into small pieces so that nobody get the whole picture of what you are looking at
Definition:
Algomist – like Alchemist reversed, so build up the entire architecture
Pico-coding – break up into small pieces and code
“McDonaldize” the processes and in addition, try to let no one step affect the other step
Chunk it up until the context is gone. People don’t know what it actually iss
Be global from day 1

Positives of Pico-coding
Globalization – Global resources on your hand when you need it
Time to market
Lower cost of development
Make most use of the thinkers instead of spending time coding

Problems & Solutions of Pico-coding
What to do when you need upgrade? Throw away and buy a new one!!
Security of Code: How to ensure that its integrity?
1. Look at ratings – will go south with one entry
2. Code inspection – get someone you trust to do it
Can’t use this model when you are doing a pure innovation
Learning reduced
Core algorithm still has to do in-house
Enterprise software might have a problem because it can’t be fixed immediately
Information security requirements
IP – the coder is supposed to use unique code for everyone

Project Management vs. Global Outsourcing
Project Management starts with resource constrain, global outsourcing is planned with no constrain
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Mentorship Session with Sudha Jamthe - Startup to Launch in the Social Media World

Growing an Entrepreneur
Lessons:
1. Try, Fail, and Learn, Grow – Try Fry Cry
   a. Find Your Passion (What are you good at?)
   b. Hang on the edge of your comfort zone
   c. Failure Teaches Fast
2. Social Media use to network, build your identity and try out projects
   a. Facebook - Launch Tool, Events, Fan Pages, Podclass.com
   b. Twitter - Follow people in your field of learning
   c. Blogs - i) Start your own blog ii) RSS Feeds of people in your field iii) Find advisors
   d. Organize Local events - i) Meetup.com, barcamp.org, mobilemondays, wikiwednesdays, startupdinners ii) Volunteer for events to surround by smarter people where you can learn
3. People, People Technology
   a. Find your team
   b. Find your team style
   c. Find your team, Style your team likes
   d. Find your team, Style your team, Likes that breeds success

Info about Sudha
Ignorance to breed success. The first woman to raise venture capital in the New England states. 120 people and met in 40 days to get first million. She didn’t know about it, might have been scared off if she did.

Advices
When you think about what you don’t know, get to know it.
A milestone to live and die by – measurement of success.
Its about the people. An important milestone – find people.
The more you try, the luckier you get
When you know how to do something, get someone else to do it. Go find something else to do
Practice scaling and “doing business for others” as an exercise
Marketing to Students – Facebook Marketing
Hand around and find or create a group to network with people
Find local meetups to evangelize to people, these people have the local knowledge on the market
If you don’t ask busy people exactly what help you need, they can’t help you.
One Lesson: “Find Great People. Not just people who mean well, but GREAT people who can help”
Always be looking at the people, give a chance to people
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Marketing, Decision Making and Learning – the Munger/Buffett Way

Anand
Current: Advising 3 companies in Valley, 1 in India
A love for Ben Franklin: The original ‘renaissance man’. Inventor, Philosopher, Businessman, Diplomat, Politician, Librarian, Scientist, Engineer
Special Meetings: Mohnish Pabrai, MD of Pabrai Funds leading to a new way of thinking driven by values and sound principles, not buzzwords
Ideas are big, but DON’T BE OVERWHELMED. You have a lifetime to learn and apply these principles!!

Munger/Buffett Track Record
Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway: Coca-Cola, Gillette, ABC, Wells Fargo, See’s Candies, Saloman Smith Barney, GEICO, NetJets, Costco, AmEx, Washington Post. WITHOUT scandals, greeds or creative accountings
Early students of Ben Graham,
‘Moat’ Philosophy – Moat for sustainable competitive advantage
‘Cigarette Butt’ Investing and approach to evaluating ideas/business – Just do it and make a bit of $???
Munger
Modern day Ben Frankin
Fair business at a great price vs. great business at a fair price
Buy own, work for and invest in a great business with a fair price than the other way round!!!!
Notion of worldly wisdom to build latticework of mental models and lollapalooza results

Key Themes
- Meet the eminent dead
- Meet the one-legged guy in an ass-kicking contest
- Worldly Wisdom: “man with the hammer” tendency
- Invert, always invert
- Lattice
- Multi-disciplinary approach
- Web of derserved trust
- 6 themes of influence
- Self-serving bias
- Ability to kill your best ideas
- Inventing vs. method of invention
- Bad bridge vs. bad business
- How do you build a 2 trillion $ brand from scratch?

Meet the eminent dead
Instead of explaining concepts in the abstract, it’s a lot more fun to make friends with the eminent dead!!
- Ben Franklin
- Carl Jacobi
- Charles Darwin
- Adam Smith
- Linus Pauling

Worldly Wisdom
The man with the hammer… would want to make everything look like a nail so that he could use the hammer. So go back and add other tools to the hammer so that not all problems look like a nail. If I can’t solve the problem with these skill sets, add more skill sets!
The one-legged guy in an ass-kicking contest. You can never win. Build other tools so that the problem is varied and not with that one tool that you have.
Evolutionary Biologist would come out with hypothesis then change. Darwin proposed it.
Don’t make the decision then justify. Go and observe and come out of comfort zone.
How to acquire Worldly Wisdom??
- Making friends with eminent dead across fields
- 6 themes of influence (tbi)
- Self-serving bias: Appealing to bias, not to rationality
- Causality vs consequence

How do acquire and retain WW?
Always invert. Ask the opposite question. “If I know where I’m gonna die, I will never go there.” If you know one thing you’re not going to do, that eliminates a lot of possibilities.
Pavlovian Models (See ‘Building a $1 trillion brand’)
Borrow from one subject to improve another like Linus Pauling
Look at reading list from SFI http://www.santafe.edu/

Multi-Disciplinary Approach
Arrive at a checklist of tools that you have. Ways to think of a problem. What not to do. Etc.
Tools to evaluate marketing and business problems
Avoid man with hammer tendency
Costco: Optimize on a single variable (to the extreme) à What is really interest is that they are doing everything Walmart is doing, but they can negotiate with all suppliers, hence get HUGE discounts, and provide for a fee (membership). Paying for value
Gillette: commitment and consistency
Nebraska Furniture Mart: Customer service, low prices
Knowing when to apply the “extraordinary routine” like when you need to fly a plane

Case Study: The 6 themes of INFLUENCE
From “Psychology of human misjudgement”, Charlie Munger speech at Harvard Law School, 1995
Look for reinforcing effects in marketing situations (for Lollapalooza results)
RECIPROCITY
- LinkedIn recommendations: Help people to help yourself
- Chain Letters: cascading effect of reciprocity to reach a million people
COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY
- Only one sperm can get in then it shuts off. One idea is in, your head shuts off.
- Physics: people resist change when they like the old idea and they won’t look like an idiot
- Phil Zimbardo: Stanford prison experiment
o People who play prison guard played the role as humans will commit and be consistent
o The power of thought, commitment and being consistent with it
SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE
- Tupperware Parties. If everyone has it, I have to have it too. And when your friend is at your place, you’re more likely to make the purchase
LIKING, AUTHORITY AND SCARCITY
- Work for somebody because you like him
- Nobody cares who created it. I like the iPod I’ll buy it
- #1 brand always has the highest market share
- Brand loyalty
- Scarcity by Steve Jobs. Show it once, and everyone wants it. Then make people give Apple discounts to sell it.
Real Estate and Car Dealers: Scarcity and Authority to sell you something
Coke & New Coke: Commitment and Consistency. Something you are familiar with.
Darwin vs. the rest: That’s why people don’t like his theory
“Limited Edition” items: Scarcity

Case Study: Incentive caused bias
Apple employees can’t be convinced that Apple sucks
TRUE MEANING OF AGENCY COSTS – never try to work against what people are paid to believe
Fedex shift/hour compensation example: Each employee was paid by shift. So instead of that, they would be paid by the hour and track performance each hour. Incentive caused bias
Commission driven with CRM updating system to drive Salespeople to work

A return to values…
Are you comfortable with this appearing in the front pay of the NY Times tomorrow morning? Use this as a guide to make decisions.
WWJD?
If you build a bad bridge it will collapse. There is no consequence of building bad business. Everyone has to put in their part.
Web of deserved trust: best way to succeed is to deserve what you get
The ability to kill your best ideas – do it before others can do it so that anything that you allow to get out of your lab is going to cater to the highest standard
Makes financial sense to gain others trust

Can you build a $2 trillion brand from first principles?
“Practical thought about practical thought” – Charlie Munger

Lessons:
1. Trademark your name, protect it strongly to build scarcity
2. Have a product with UNIVERSAL appeal
3. Leverage on classical conditioning and operant conditioning (conditioned reflexes)
4. Liking, Scarcity, Social proof
5. Always invert and turn it around – what should we NOT do?
6. Exclusive product that people can’t get ANYWHERE
7. Don’t get bad effect of successes (like Microsoft, etc.) Use principles to build company up
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ETL - Sue Decker

Sue Decker, President, Yahoo Inc.

Yahoo Strategies
Integrated Search and Display strategies
Yahoo as a Open Platform?
Acquisition of Right Media and Blue Lithium
Display (Page View advertising)
SearchMonkey… mmm…
Yahoo! Buzz: Ecosystem of Users, Publishers, and Advertisers à Digg style voting
Yahoo Monetizing that?? Finally making profits??

Of everything that could be asked, first question is about customer care… and interface of the yahoo email… haha =)

Discussions and Stories about Yahoo the past 2 weeks
Weren’t planning to sell
Board felt that Yahoo! Is in the midst of transformation since December due to development costs, so Microsoft came at the exact right time
Sue was at Berkshire Hathaway on Board meeting, shook Bill Gates’s hand

Pace of Acquisition of Yahoo!
Yahoo! Will continue to acquire things that can integrate into their systems
Not integrating Overture faster causing Google to move faster in Search

Open Social
Yahoo! Will support open social, with a broader approach, with $$ for developers to develop on Yahoo! Instead of on Google

Macroeconomic Environment on Yahoo!’s movements
Ad is 500billion size
Ad is cyclical with economy, especially in traditional
Online ads can figure cost of customer acquisition, so less reduced compared to traditional ads

Alienating User Groups with Voting
Homepage is not automatic, so Buzz doesn’t change the main site immediately. The main editors will make sure quality is there.
Dynamic content serving

Google outsourcing question
Panama and Google only about 20% difference in earnings
Is it worth it to use Google to close it, and use Google, or continue to build

Video Ad Monetization
Video Ads on static content page

Yahoo’s acquisition of Zimbra à EmailInsights from content will provide relevance and allow others to want the experience
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ETL – Peter Diamandis peter@xprize.org

What were you excited about as a kid?
That’s what you’re passionate about, VCs will fund you, etc. Life’s do short to do something for somebody else

Government can’t take risk for space frontier as there’re too many issues involved that would cause them to lose out politically
Have to go with the private industry

Long Term Mission – Asteroid Miner, lots of $$ in there

How X Prize Foundation is financed

Spirit of St Louis – Flight across the Atlantic for a prize

If he can do it, everyone can do it – the flying fool, Lindberg

Hence X Prize is the prize to simulate the prize for Lindbergh

Line of Super Credibility - Things you do that no matter what you do it will succeed. Line of credibility only brings you to being acknowledged

Insurance Company took the bet with X Prize that for each trench of advancement, the company will pay out

Founded Zero G airplanes to have fun

Space Adventures – Rocket Racing League

True breakthroughs require taking risk. The day before something takes off, it is a crazy idea. Got to be willing to take these risks.

How can we incentivize really crazy stuff? Originally was by government.

Average age of Apollo program engineers was 26 as nobody was there to tell them what they could or could not do. Same as dot com revolution.

Go do the crazy idea. Have to take risk.

X Prize is to change behavior

http://www.xprize.org/, http://www.gozerog.com/, http://www.rocketracingleague.com/

Leverage on people’s capabilities for sponsorship instead of $$ all the time
When you ask for great advice you get great money
It’s a people process, not a $ process

Make other people heroes

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ETL - David Rothkopf

Market Marketism
Banks - Great 14 people
Global financial non-regulation as sovereignty can't control the situation
Risks were "unknow-able", Board doesn't understand the risk, incapable of doing it, opaque systems of modern securities structures - we need to enforce old regulations of board controlling risks
Vilfredo Pareto - the 80/20 rule, a billion people affected by 200m people
More than half of people live on $2 a day - poverty struggles
Cross ownership causes concentration of power
Military power concentrated - less war = good or bad?
Religion concentration
"As scale play a bigger role, and technology allowing for democratizing (though not always - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace)"
Consequence:
1. Astonishing rapid growth in inequality - absolute poverty going down, real improvements at the base, BUT middle class shrunk especially in India and China
Top 11000 people (billionaires) assets are almost double of the bottom 2.5billion people put together - same as with other examples
3billion salary for the Hedge Fund managers
Growth no longer to be tracked by economic growth? causing political tension?
Backlash - globalization causing backlash

Therefore look at Superclass:
People who have influence over millions, international, on-going
60% from atlantic, 60% from business
Under-represented demographic - Women 94% of super is male, 6% is female
20% of these superclass went to top 20 universities - networking for multipliers
Ethics of leadership not trained in this class of people
More Transcient, but not necessarily more of a meritocracy - instead Geography, Luck is a huge part of of this
People less worthy might be more successful - other factors play a part
Etc parabos but all things are not equal, hence the reason for leadership and government to put rules into place

Other things:
Geographic location of these people (superclass) - fastest growing is Asians (Russia, India and China): 100 billionaires in China over the past few years (but bubble?)
Interest of these superclass align will drive how things are done
DAVOS - Have business leaders come together and talk things through so that through influence, things will be run the way people want it to
Power is skewed, disproportionate, and tools like government don't exist on the global stage anymore - much harder problem than cancer or global warming
Community - now global as we can communicate and do business
however difference in cultures still cause problems
Inequality is unsustainable - hence all the whacky ideas like terrorism, etc.

1 philosophy and won't have another until crazy people come out with new ones that may tip the balance and cause world to change in revolution style

DAVOS problem is that the fastest growing component is not represented (China and rest of Asia)
Scandinavian better wealth distribution than US

Europe is a museum, not much
Sweden wants to get off fossil fuels and be green
Traditional markets are not really market if supply and demand are done by the same people
European model maybe blended with the Singaporean or Chinese model with more government control to resurgent

Green tech
Government policies play a big role in Germany being better in green, US likely to follow once the next President takes over
Last energy bill are ridiculous as its done by random, causes wind and solar subsidies to reduce
Interest tug of war, so not really best policy comes through

Power dynamics
Constantly changing and different in each situation and influence level
Manifests in different ways
Roman Abromavich is a governer of a province in Siberia while he lives mostly in Chelsea
Agenda setting will change with the introduction of Asians
Disagreements with americans mainly due to fact that most countries do not agree with how things are run in US after Guantanomo
Lots of countries in asia have different values of states, how they interact, and what kind of things these states do (e.g. Sudan)

Structural Change within the year - incremental change
Global Financial Markets
Climate change going to motivate the change of the world in green tech emphasis
People rising to the challenge - big challenge is big opportunity

Burden sharing with US and China whether it can be resolved
Survival over climate change issues

Political division tension and not so much social unrest may be a result of how US is run now
CEO salaries and regulatory legislation

Compounded Advantages
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Kinda Easy... Dodge Ridge

I'm busy rushing a business case for submission tonight... but the thought of not posting this up was lingering in my head for too long... so I did this up real quick and am posting this... Btw all these were done in 1 day. I think I managed to cover so much ground this time coz:
1) It's kinda easier
2) More courage to take on the black diamonds (sometimes misplaced though... they listed too many as black diamonds when their difficulty levels are totally different... e.g. hole shot and straight shot.... or maybe I just don't know how to navigate through too powdery surfaces)
3) of course I'm getting better... haha....

ok... now back to work....

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Mt Hood... Since I'm at it

Since I'm at it, here's the trip that started it all (the snowboarding bug).. While at Portland, Oregon, we went to snowboard at Skibowl resort on Mt Hood. Similarly, the routes in purple are the ones that I completed while on Mt Hood. Will write more about this when I do an entry on snowboarding... =)

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Heavenly... Simply Heavenly

Sincere apologies to everyone and anyone that has been checking out on my blog. Been really caught up with stuff... Anyway, I will start re-documenting everything that I've missed out over the past 3 mths (in summary of course)... but as a start... and sharing this made me wanna blog all over again, this is a map of Heavenly Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe, and on it, the routes marked purple are the ones that I've managed to clear over the Saturday and Sunday that just passed by.

I honestly think that I've been severely bitten by the snowboarding bug, and I will most definitely be going a couple of times more before the end of winter... Its lucky that I've shifted to staying in the living room and saving almost $200 a month on rent, which leaves me with a little excess cash to spend on this new hobby of mine...

Until I put up the photos later... I'm gonna stretch my millions of broken bones and aching muscles before I turn into stone... =)

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