October 2005

Simpson's Paradox

The appreciation goes to Rob

...have became a creativity issue. Good post with plenty of good ideas (online learning for users instead of promotional newsletters is only one of them) but, I personally think it's too much "social" in this "new way".

If you think entering in a drawing for winning something, in this case a hardcopy of a business book, then go to this survey and spend 3 minutes completing it.

Maybe you are lucky and at the end of November you?ll read the Marc Miller and Jason Sinkovitz?s book. And if you get one don't forget to drop me a copy :).

The book is manifesto for reinventing the sales function. ?Selling Is Dead? argues that selling teams and growth-motivated organizations must change to remain competitive. Go here and read the entire reviews.

Dragos came with this great and hard to not take offer so starting today I?ll be on this blog with most catchy news from everywhere.

Seems the battle has just started. Some think this is courageously article. Others name it "idiotical". My personal though? It's a little bit of both. Where do you stand?

Howdy folks, I am extremely busy these days and don't really have time to keep up with the news. While posting will resume to normal soon I hope, @rgumente is pleased to have a guest blogger -- Iulian Bulandra. Enjoy!

It looks like the Austrians and Portugese were the only ones bidding above EUR 3 billions for BCR -- DB, my favourite, apparently had a 2.2 bn bid. More here and here.

...is out -- even though the Romanian officials were very optimistic about it, as noticeable progress has been made, there's still a long way to the desired target. "The fight against corruption should receive high priority" is one of the recommendations. The entire report is available for download over at Romanian Daily.

As you might imagine my rather unfrequently pace of posting on @rgumente lately is a clear sign of being behind the news&events due to various commitments I've been involved in for the last couple of months. But no complaining - I am humble reading that others have rougher times and still keep their heads afloat - I should improve my time management skills. :)

I am fairly behind with my readings, here are some quick links that are worth spending some time for reflection:

- Fred's the lady doth protests too much and the three cases approach when it comes to investing -- also applicable for the entrepreneur for capital budgeting or for scenario analysis/strategy setting and risk assessment
- USV sessions transcript (.doc) and videos (saved for the weekend)
- Mark Pincus's where's the love for web 2.0 and what to do in Rupert's shoes
- Umair's economic decomposition on Carr's latest controversial analysis aimed most likely just as more wood on the fire for the people who are still stucked in old paradigms.

Nice try in Sweden -- offering broadband from a 12,000 cubic metre balloon.

Reading about Google's problems that they have in Germany and now in the UK over the gmail domain name, I started to look into other European ones.

gmail.ro -- takes to an webmail form that doesn't direct you into gmail's when logging in with gmail's credentials
gmail.cz -- looks like it's bought, but the buyer's name is not specified
gmail.hu -- directs you to the g-portal, probably gmail is their email gateway
gmail.bg -- points nowhere
gmail.ru -- looks like it's taken by somebody else
gmail.pl -- gives you a "Szukasz taniego samolotu..??" message and points you to an airline engine
gmail.it -- says that it's under construction, without Google's logo or related
gmail.es -- points nowhere
gmail.fr -- says that it's been taken already
gmail.dk - takes to an webmail form that doesn't direct you into gmail's when logging in with gmail's credentials
gmail.se -- points nowhere
gmail.no -- points nowhere

update -- Dimitris says that the urls pointing to webmail forms may be traps to steal account credentials from users who enter them there voluntarily. He also noted that, however, in those two specific sites the risk is low, since they don't fake gmail's main page.

The American staff from the English embassy from London refuses to pay the so-called congestion charge - a fee imposed to anybody driving through Central London. Oh well, apparently it's become an issue of pride and questioning of semantics, apparently the diplomats are entitled to be tax exempted according to a Vienna treaty. :) [ link]

In Athens, talking about Skype's competitors - Yahoo, MSFT or AOL - from the userbase perspective, that's one of the reasons for which the chemistry with Ebay was right. Rodrigo was there and promised to offer a video with Niklas's speech.

update: more on why the Ebay/Skype deal makes perfectly good sense.

The Taiwanese government put about $209 mil. in a joint project with Intel for developing the largest Wi-Max infrastructure from the world. It is a win-win-win situation -- national infrastructure development that would provide the development background for local companies come up with cool apps. Intel's advantages are obvious methinks. That's one of the reasons for which most of the big things will come from Asia.

[link]

Paul Graham's Ideas for Startups -- in case you don't check PG's website periodically. :)

A World Bank initiative -- e-discussion about young social technopreneurship. [via psd blog]

Free online porn access provided by a Danish company. :) [sent in by Iulian]

The report for 2005 is out, Romania is ranked on the 78th place, New Zealand, Singapore, US, Canada and Norway lead the pack. An excel file is also available for playing with the rankings. [via]

Mihai Ungureanu, the Romanian foreign affairs minister, on issues related to Moldavia, Russia and many more. [link]

NeoIt made available a very interesting and suggestive paper about the worldwide offshore main markets and where, as expected, Romania is presented as having a low future attractiveness due to the reduced labor pool and the relative low maturity level as compared to its peers from Central Eastern Europe, for example.

It does make sense -- the demand is rather high as there are several multinational companies discovering Romania's attractiveness (price & culture similarity & proximity combo), the brain drain it is still existent and hence the labor supply is diminishing in spite of the fresh CS graduates. This puts a lot of pressure on the (labor) costs and as such on a short term basis I expect that many of the more than 5000 existent software shops will go under. Unless, of course, they will look for re-orienting their company around (competitive) products or niche markets whereas they build competitive advantages.

In terms of foreign companies looking to come to Romania, the first mover advantage still works, they can still get fairly cheap deals, one of the latest, as you may have noticed, being TechTeam acquiring Akela.

[ download pdf]

Portal with legislation info about e-business across Europe and particularly aimed to SMEs.

A very good and well-documented paper about all you need to know about angel investing. Though created in 2000. [pdf]

Tom Coates of plasticbag just joined Yahoo -- Yahoo certainly looks like is adding a lot of strength to the team, head to head with Google I'd say. Which Google, btw, is actively expanding into Central Eastern Europe, looking after a regional business development manager (Romania and Bulgaria) and engineers which will be located in Zurich.

Nice, funny reading for a cold autumn night.

Google made Calacanis' a case study on how to make $$ via online ads.

It is a serious matter, it looks like the virus was found somewhere in Romania, in the Delta Danube specifically, allegedly brought in by the migrating birds. As a consequence two villages were put under quarantine and thousands of birds were sacrificed - now they're testing if the area was sterilized by populating the place with baby birds which are the most likely to get infected if that's the case.

Over at Romanian Daily we have a special section with the latest updates on the matter.

Cracking op-ed tough questions or quizzes, allegedly similar to the ones MSFT is asking when hiring. [ link]

Kiva - intermediating loans for businesses from developing countries. (via bubblegen)

Heard it a couple of days ago, it just popped up into my mind just now: it looks like Tom Peters will be in Romania sometimes next month, in spite of this - that would just involve piling up his ranch with 6-month emergency provisions. If that. :)

More often than not whenever asking somebody having a great business idea why he/she wouldn't make it happen in an entrepreneurial way the answer I get is: "I don't have the money". Inevitably at my next question of "how much would you need" I get errs and uhmms, or uneasy looks and answers. That basically is a result either of not having the homeworks done (i.e. the back-on-the-envelope startup costs calculation) or of a preconception that becoming an entrepreneur means having loads of money that you would have at your disposal whenever. And the latter becomes a turnoff for even bothering to start making calculations.

Well, of course one needs money to do it, and startup funding may come from under various forms (bootstrapping or from the 3Fs - friends, family or fouls -- for tons of resources just look into argumente's VC archive section) - however, after making the financial evaluation you may be surprised that what you need is not as much as you might have thought, after all it is a great time to be an entrepreneur these days.

The most important thing though whenever you start a business is the atitude: working hard and being responsible among others. If you however think you have a killer business idea and don't even bother to know how much money you need to begin with than probably your idea is not even worth the time to talk about it. Or you're just an idealist to begin with. :)

Iulian sent me the story of the latest Gap's strategic move for segmenting more the market and for targeting other revenue sources in addition to the traditional three brands. The brand will represent the store per se - Forth & Towne  - and is specifically targeted to women 35 and older - busy Baby Boom women looking for a sort of "third place," a destination other than home or work where people enjoy spending free time.

Had a discussion last night with a young friend of mine who wants to get into the advertising industry "just to see what it's like". We had an interesting pros and cons argument (mostly cons) that ended with us half jokingly that what she's doing to herself might have repercussions on her character since she'd be part of an industry with the main objective of wrapping up only good things about a company and promising a value proposition that it's not always (or most of the time) true. And that is lying to the consumers mainly.

Anyways, the most handy example just came in today: I saw a BA advert claiming a fly to NYC for as much as 450 euros (or around). Oh well, guess what - they just forgot to mention that the price doesn't include (about) 220 euros representing "taxes, fees, charges and surcharges per person". That's a classic marketing strategy of not mentioning the hidden costs, especially done by the telecom providers. Ya know - not having the what you see is what you get atitude: that's the price and this is what you get for it. Will try to avoid BA.

Whenever in a startup phase most entrepreneurs may not have an exit or/and the context of it in mind. They're mainly focused on the short term $$ or the cool products they're able to use or create. If, however, targeting an exit to a strategic investor such as Microsoft for example, is becoming a valid point to consider you may want to keep in mind a few pointers. [via]

Socialtext and wiki are the points in case -- as always, Jeff puts everything into a clear strategic picture.

Just got a sneak preview - it is definitely eye-catching and some would even say that it looks cool. Still a beta is a beta - a geek friend of mine says that MSFT has a lot to do until getting to a stable release. His guess was that it'd take at least 10-12 months till launching, my take is that spring time may strategically sound more appropriate.

Om's idea is live - a wiki with specific info about providers from all over the world.

Online content growth as a result of blog networks explosion makes it difficult to find relevancy or keeping track of conversation -- Jeremy has a good reality check.

That and more according to a pdf paper released by Yahoo. [via]

After the AOL deal, Verisign made two quick acquisition moves this week -- content creation and content aggregation are important in the internet space.

Stefan came up a list with some financial indicators about the main players in Romania. It is in Romanian but have a look at the figures for yourself, CA stands for turnover and angajati for employees.

Why is this important - I am expecting this industry to explode in the years to come once the market becomes mature enough forcing companies to better differentiate. And presently not too many people around here have an idea on how to do it in spite of the noise from the local biz claiming the opposite. The people in their 20s will have an important saying in this, things ARE changing in Romania.

Feature reduction, or cut the BS and cut to the chase. Reminds me of the KISS principle.

RSS reader, of course. I will give it a try.

Just noticed a piece of news claiming that BCR, the government pearl and the largest Romanian bank which is yet to be privatized, was valued somewhere between 3.8 to 5.8bn euros by Goldman Sachs. If we're to judge from an average of a 7% IB industry fee that means a commision between 250 and 400 million euros per transaction only for the investment bank. The related fees (or collateral revenues) make a very profitable involvement for all the parties, consultants, auditors, etc.

Not bad for a deal in Central Eastern Europe. :) Any idea if Goldman is one of the sell-side advisors - I wouldn't be that surprised.

Oh yeah, it looks like Calacanis gets the exit to AOL. He is *the* guy and definitely the 2 years of work were worth it, I bet this will become an HBS case study soon - ya know, making a bet on a newly emergent technology, disrupting media's traditional business models while crossing the chasm, Clayton Christensen and Geoffrey Moore altogether. But it looks like the grapes are sour for others. :)

Without further introductions - Chris Anderson's on the long tail in the software industry and Adam Bosworth's on intelligent reaction (early, lots of, run-like-mad releases)

Looks like the buzz of the last period was wikis or apps with similar purposes - platforms that allow simply online collaboration. I think that wiki is still in early stages, in the enthusiasts/geek adoption phase, but am wondering if you ever used such a tool, a wiki that is? Hence the question from the upper right side...

...certainly looks interesting, I have been thinking a lot about this type of apps actually lately. 4H is somewhat doing something similarly as it addresses similar needs in a pretty straightforward  and easy to use way: publish, interact, network and collaborate.

Ning does that too to a certain level, though it defines itself as rather a platform for developers to come up with cool ideas in the social space, aiming at network externalities, of course. 4H plays the simplicity card and enables anybody to do just do that, having the aforementioned principles at core. Interesting space to watch.

...and so little time. I am way behind the news and I really miss blogging, I feel outta the loop. I got thousands and thousands of feeds to catch up with, also lots of things to update on. I try to scan every morning at least what's happening on the Romanian business landscape, Iulian is really helpful and contributed a lot to what I pompously call my Romanian news agency. Things will get back to normal soon, I hope. </rant> :)

Looks like the people from SF got free wifi from Google. One advantage of having Google located in your residence town, huh? :) Om got the scoop a while ago, am too lazy to look up the link just now.