Greek Complexity

Strange Youtube video stat

2012-01-21T10:14:00+08:00

So I was watching this video on Youtube and noticed something strange.

The video only has 302 views but 3314 ratings? I'm puzzled. How can someone rate the video without first getting to the page and watching it? Wonder if anyone knows.

Don't bother sitting through the video. It's not particularly funny. I'm not being over-sensitive (hah!) -- it just isn't that funny.

The argument over Internet freedom

2012-01-19T08:08:00+08:00

...aka piracy, depending on who you talk to, is fast becoming a hot-potato issue.

Even in sedate Singapore. Entrepreneur Bernard Leong makes his case to the Singapore government as to why they should not enact a law similar to SOPA. You'll find his piece here. He says:

The burden of reviewing every blog post, tweet and video submission is impossible to manage for any company. This is similar to the situation in China, where video sites such as Tudou have to hire people to monitor content uploads 24-7 to ensure that no sensitive political content is uploaded.

SGE‘s opposition against SOPA/PIPA legislation is not focused on freedom of speech arguments which have been brought forward by many digital advocates. You can read about these elsewhere. Our concern is that such legislation has profound implications to our economy.

He later says:

There has been strong resistance against both bills not just from many technology entrepreneurs from the start-up space but also from multi-national companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook.

...meaning that the opponents of such legislation are, as one would expect, those who would suffer most from SOPA-like legislation. Now, The Economist said in their usual forthright style a few weeks ago that:

The bill’s supporters want this [how content should be distributed and paid for] to change as slowly as possible, so they have time to adapt. Opponents want to see more rapid changes in business models to speed up overdue innovation: cheaper pricing in poor countries, more use of on-demand digital services, less exclusivity in distribution, and ultimately, less reliance on selling albums and DVDs. Yet self-interest is at work on both sides: many of the bill’s critics are trying to create just these kinds of business.

A related issue is now boiling over in India. Global Internet companies are in effect being held accountable for things that their users said, even though a law had previously been passed specifically to clarify that Internet companies and other intermediaries could not be held liable for their users' misdeeds (as long as certain conditions were met). See Is India Ignoring its own Internet Protections?.

So who's right? I'd rather focus on the freedom-of-speech argument that Bernard eschews. High-minded? Idealistic? Yes and yes. But that doesn't make the argument any less valid. In fact, focusing on dollars and cents cheapens the issue.

Note also, as The Economist implies, that arguing purely on economic grounds is to pick winners and losers. Who is to judge whether Google's and Facebook's claims are more valid than counter-claims by Newscorp and CBS? On what basis can one pick one side over another?

Taking the freedom-of-speech tack will probably not have much effect in Singapore (possibly the reason Bernard avoids this argument to begin with) but I think this is the right argument as a matter of principle. Possibly the only right argument. It certainly doesn't have the conflict of interest of the economic arguments advanced.

Singapore vs Hong Kong as a business jurisdiction

2012-01-18T13:44:57+08:00

Link of the day: Singapore as a Holding Domicile for Your China Operations

This piece contrasts the use of Singapore as a location to set up holding companies for Asian operations versus using Hong Kong instead. Mostly about tax but also other matters. Not as boring as it sounds. The article doesn't mention it explicitly but Singapore also has bilateral trade and tax arrangements with India, separate from the India-ASEAN tax treaty. China and HK don't.

Inside the VC's mind (episode deux)

2012-01-18T07:58:00+08:00

I'd posted episode un last year but that was more about how VCs look at investments and why they, or rather, we think a certain way. This post is inspired by this NYT op-ed piece -- the title of that piece isn't meant to imply anything about VCs! -- and is actually literally about how this VC's brain is wired.

To quickly summarise the op-ed: it makes the point that, contrary to today's received wisdom, teams aren't the best way to achieve creative and efficient solutions to hard problems. Solitary operators are often better since they have time to reflect, don't get influenced by or feel compelled to agree with other people's opinions, aren't in permanent meeting-hell, can benefit from privacy, and so on. This has implications for organisation structure, how people learn, even office ergonomics and how each person's daily calendar is organised. All quite fascinating but plenty has already been said in the NYT and it's not what this post is about.

The NYT article made me think of how I think my own brain is (or needs to be) wired to do my job well. I'm sure some of you think this is self-indulgent drivel, and you're probably right :-) but I loved hearing about this from a VC friend/mentor before I got into the field myself so just hoping to pass on the favour.

The one thing I'd say about the VC's mind (my mind) is that I am (or need to be) almost manically bipolar.

The VC I spoke to several years before I myself moved into VC told me that venture capital can be a lonely job. You need a lot of self-motivation and willingness to learn by doing. There's no large team around you to bounce ideas off, take the slack when you feel like taking it easy, blame when things go wrong, celebrate with when things go well, etc. No one telling you what to do or not do. This is all completely different from private equity or nearly any other job. You're essentially a lone ranger. This isn't a mode of operation that everyone is comfortable with.

At the same time, VC is also about working in large distributed teams and being responsible for the results and failures of not just one's own efforts but also several others. I know that sounds paradoxical but what I mean is that a VC isn't just an individual in a VC firm. He is also a member of several teams -- not only the (usually small) team within his own firm, but also the teams in each of his portfolio companies and the VC firms that he co-invests with. This extended family can be as big as a few thousand people often spread across diverse industries, depending on the number and type of companies in the VC's portfolio.

This means that, although he is a solo agent more often than not, he also needs to be an exceptional team player, manager/boss, extrovert marketer, engaging salesman, recruiter, influencer/thought leader, coach/mentor... Did I say bipolar? I should have said multipolar. (Disclaimer: I don't claim to fulfil these roles as well as I'd like. I only aim to do some of these reasonably well some day soon.)

Another way in which the VC is bipolar is that, IMHO, a good VC needs to be both incredibly analytical and highly creative. I am sure that some of you will say that is disputable whether a VC can ever be creative! The analytical aspect should be clear enough but creative? I think VCs need to be creative in the way they, for example, apply ideas and lessons from one industry to another. Or dealing with people problems. Or looking at a trend here, a data point there, and coming up with a solution to a problem elsewhere. (But is that analytical ability or creativity?)

And finally the most common way in which any VC worth his salt is bipolar is, of course, that he needs to be simultaneously very optimistic and very pessimistic by nature. You've got to be an optimist when you consider that the VC game produces perhaps one big success for every ten investments made, and those investments themselves made the cut only after a further 1 in 100 (or more) whittling-down process. Faced with those odds, wouldn't most, er, normal people sink irretrievably into depression? But no, the VC is ever-optimistic.

Or is he? If he only makes 1 investment out of every hundred or more that he sees, doesn't that make him an extreme pessimist about all those ideas on which hundreds of people have already spent considerable time, money and effort?

The word you're looking for, dear reader, is bipolar.

:-)

Dilbert wisdom

2012-01-17T22:45:16+08:00

On CEO stock options:

And in real life? After having run the company to the ground, the CEO walked out the door and left the clean-up job to whoever stayed behind.

Apple is disgusting

2012-01-17T19:23:00+08:00

There's no denying that my views on Apple's stock price were wrong last February and remain wrong today. The stock is today up about 15% since my prediction of a fall. But Wall Street has also started looking at the company's broader impact on the world, something I mentioned briefly in this post. Take a look at what Henry Blodget says at Business Insider:

Daisey interviews dozens of (former) workers who are secretly supporting a union. One group talked about using "hexane," an iPhone screen cleaner. Hexane evaporates faster than other screen cleaners, which allows the production line to go faster. Hexane is also a neuro-toxin. The hands of the workers who tell him about it shake uncontrollably.

Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers' hands no longer work, obviously, they're canned.

...

If Apple decided to build iPhones and iPads for Americans using American labor rules, two things would likely happen:

The prices of iPhones and iPads would go up

Apple's profit margins would go down

Neither of those things would be good for American consumers or Apple shareholders. But they might not be all that awful, either. Unlike some electronics manufacturers, Apple's profit margins are so high that they could go down a lot and still be high. And some Americans would presumably feel better about loving their iPhones and iPads if they knew that the products had been built using American labor rules.

In other words, Apple could probably afford to use American labor rules when building iPhones and iPads without destroying its business.

So it seems reasonable to ask why Apple is choosing NOT to do that.

More: Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour

Top 3 myths about immigration

2012-01-16T20:58:01+08:00

Short and informative video about immigration:

This is about America not about Singapore but I can't imagine the conclusions would be that different for Singapore or anywhere else.

Losing the plot

2012-01-16T20:22:00+08:00

Here's an excerpt of an email from this morning, suitably censored for public consumption:

Drivers in Singapore are such *** pieces of ***. Robots. Inconsiderate ***. I got on the CTE as usual and it was really jammed at least until Balestier and also behind me (before my on-ramp). Happens sometimes but only for a few hundred metres before clearing up. This time it was like this all the way to the CBD exit at Havelock Road. Ok, at least I could move at 40-50 km/h on my bike past near-stationary cars, but I couldn't work out why it was so jammed. Come out onto Havelock Road and it's even worse. Looked like Bangkok. This is 7 km from the start of my journey! I thought there must be some major problem like a lane closure or something. Keep going, don't see anything. Finally got to Raffles Place, just at the junction with Shenton Way, and I find there's been a minor collision between two cars. No injuries, no great damage even. But the *** *** just *** sit there and create a giant *** traffic jam for the rest of the world during peak hour. The rules are quite clear that if there are no injuries, you must move your vehicle so you don't obstruct other traffic. What's worse is, no one sees this as a problem. The police should be issuing gigantic traffic fines whenever this happens (and it happens quite a bit). People should be yelling at the numbskulls. None of this happens, as far as I know.

Robots was the funniest expletive because it's so true!

The science behind snoozes

2012-01-11T18:51:00+08:00

Came across a graphic in The Boston Globe that tells us how to nap. This isn't as frivolous as it sounds. Quite sciencey, in fact.

See How to nap for detail.

Something similar at NYTimes back in October: Really? The Claim: For a More Restful Nap, Avoid Caffeine

All of which reminded me of this fascinating book, which provides a look into the bigger theme of synchronicity in nature, napping being just one among several examples:

Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

I highly recommend reading it.

Separately, I read a lot but haven't really put much of this on the blog itself. Changing that from today. See new post category On Murli's Radar (LOTD). Meaning, "Link of the Day". I used to put this stuff on my On Murli's Radar feed but as you may recall, Yahoo decided that good enough ain't good enough. They seem to have fixed the problem since my post but I don't trust them.

How to nap [del.icio.us]

2012-01-10T20:01:28-08:00

The Mystery Behind Anesthesia [del.icio.us]

2012-01-10T20:01:15-08:00

Japan has outperformed the US over the last 20 years

2012-01-10T00:55:10+08:00

Really? So says an op-ed in the NYT. The writer presents some strong arguments to bolster his case, including:

The fallacy of the “lost decades” story is apparent to American visitors the moment they set foot in the country. Typically starting their journeys at such potent symbols of American infrastructural decay as Kennedy or Dulles airports, they land at Japanese airports that have been extensively expanded and modernized in recent years.

America’s growth in recent decades has been overstated by as much as 2 percentage points a year. ... This factor alone may put the United States behind Japan in per-capita performance.

The Japanese are consistently among the world’s earliest adopters [of expensive, new high-tech items]. If anything, it is Americans who have been lagging.

There are, I think, plenty of other facts he ignores, but this is still interesting to chew on. More: The Myth of Japan’s Failure

2012-01-07T15:52:00+08:00

Google Maps's new 3D MapsGL feature is dizzying. Not that it's a miracle of engineering (I doubt it; maybe once upon a time). I mean that it literally made me dizzy! Serves me right for never being much of a gamer.

Entrepeneurs: please ignore these tips

2012-01-06T17:50:00+08:00

Luke Johnson writes a piece in the FT piece titled "Ten pieces of advice that should be ignored". Every entrepreneur and, arguably, everyone else associated with a young business should read this list. Says Johnson, don't listen when someone tells you:

"Never borrow money." What? Why wouldn't an entrepreneur want to borrow money? Equity is much more expensive than debt. Sometimes, much, much more expensive. (As you can see, I use very specific technical terminology like "much, much more"!) Given that I am in the business of providing equity capital, you might think I am making things hard for myself but I stand by this. Of course, best of all is funding yourself via internal accruals, but that doesn't sound very start-up-ish.
"Profit is all that matters." As Johnson says, different situations call for different metrics of success. Accounting profits aren't the only thing to strive for. For example, one of my portfolio company CEOs has this slogan in his email signature: "Revenue is Vanity, Profits is Sanity but only Cash is reality".
"Don’t worry about your competitors." The lay reader might wonder why an entrepreneur might even fall into this trap. Surely every business has rivals, you'd think, (and if it truly doesn't, consider the possibility that it isn't a very attractive business to be in), but you'd be surprised how often some entrepreneurs fall into the trap of complacency and ignoring their competitors. I'm not saying that entrepreneurs should be paralysed by the presence of rivals -- sometimes competition can even be a good thing, for instance if it helps educate prospective customers -- but razor sharp focus on who else is in the market is very important.
"Don’t work with partners." Johnson doesn't say much about this but I cannot stress this enough. In contrast to the first point, where I talk about how some entrepreneurs unnecessarily dilute their shareholding, the same entrepreneurs sometimes don't like working with partners because it feels like they're "sharing" an opportunity with someone else or giving away control. This kind of thinking is a bit upside-down. 1 + 1 really can be more than 2 sometimes... subject to picking the right partner and forging the right partnership arrangement. I use the term "partners" broadly, whether these are formal business partnerships with another company or getting seasoned execs to join your team.

These are the four out of Johnson's ten tips that I have personal experience with and can assure current and aspiring entrepreneurs that they really can have a big impact on the success or failure of a business.

English Pronunciation

2012-01-05T20:55:35+08:00

No, this isn't as tedious as the title sounds. In fact, I loved this! Wish I'd come up with it myself. Look at this poem:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

That's just how it starts. Gets much harder and much more fun after this. As the site says, "After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud."

click: English Pronunciation

Yes, we need more messiness!

2011-12-05T12:05:38+08:00

Creativity and serendipity depend on it.

What am I talking about? An architect called Aaron Betsky zeroes in on the downsides of Singapore's planning obsession. Yes, it all works but

everything was being planned with such efficiency and with such an eye to latest theories of what makes good urban environment that there was no opportunity for chance, ad hoc activities, or the joy of contrasts.

My office is in the Marina Bay Sands area so I know that Betsky is bang-on with his assessment. Sadly and frustratingly, this is a thread that runs through all of Singapore, not just in urban planning but also, to pick just a few areas, education, the arts, the promotion of entrepreneurship and sports.

This terrific short post tells you more: Singapore's URA: Too much planning? Especially watch for the very funny dig at our bureaucrats' reading habits!

Business opportunity for mobile game developers

2011-12-03T20:22:00+08:00

Mobile gaming companies in Bangalore or other parts of India who have content that they would like to expose to a large, established base of paying subscribers in emerging markets, please ping me.

Airbnb dividend fiasco [del.icio.us]

2011-10-02T20:47:24-07:00

Someone's comment: "Silicon Valley is turning into Wall Street."

Don’t You “Want” Me, Baby? - Facebook’s New Button [del.icio.us]

2011-10-02T19:45:07-07:00

Will FB start demanding a % of transaction revenue instead of just ad revenue?

The Netflix Prize was brilliant [del.icio.us]

2011-10-02T05:59:11-07:00

One more piece on the Netflix prize, also highly readable

A $1 Million Research Bargain for Netflix, and Maybe a Model for Others [del.icio.us]

2011-10-02T05:57:09-07:00

Not new but worth a read

On the Invention of Money [del.icio.us]

2011-09-30T22:43:40-07:00

Are academics always dry? Nope. Here's a long and enlightening rant by one!

Groupon Is `Highly Dysfunctional' Company [del.icio.us]

2011-09-24T01:20:41-07:00

This says it all. HP comes in for a beating too.

Groupon halves historical revenues; COO departs [del.icio.us]

2011-09-24T01:20:25-07:00

Gah

Is Netflix As Dumb As It Seems? [del.icio.us]

2011-09-23T18:42:06-07:00

The strange logic of the company's decision to divide itself in half