• In a world where everybody reads, appreciates, worships the likes of Steve Jobs.
• In a world where everybody claims “fake it until you make it”, where everybody is pushing the limits of ethics selling what they don’t have, hoping that they will be able to deliver before the hell brakes loose.
• In a world where the Silicon Valley model is the role model for everybody, with its FOMO, ADHD, “need to make 10 millions before I am 22”.
• In a world where all the above actually seems to work and they show us Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon… you name it.

Here comes the other side: Theranos.

I know it is old news now, but I have just read the Bad Blood book and I believe it is one of the great reads of these days, to balance the overly positive Steve Jobs example.

• This is why you need to also deliver, not only convince people with brilliant PowerPoints.
• This is why the worst nightmare of investors is to be lied by charismatic founders.
• This is why you are being Due Diligenced to your desperation. Why there is no rock left un-turned in your shop before an investment.
• This is why solid Boards are being required for the company. To advise, but to also to raise red flags when needed.

Please appreciate a good VC not only for the business help, but also for the thoroughness in pushing you to become a solid company. It will not only help the investors, but will also keep you out of jail.

I know the concept of Noble Cause Corruption, where you believe you lie “a little” while the bigger goal is more important. But NO. Never ever do this.

As an entrepreneur, please don’t plan for “I just met this investor, it looks good, I will have the money in three months”, even though all investors will tell you that this is possible. It is, but it will only happen as a huge exception – that is if you have the coolest and most wanted company on the continent.

Better plan in advance – keep in touch with a lot of potential investors long time before you need the money. Tell them what your objectives are, so they see you achieving them.
Share your pains so they can understand the plot of the movie. When the time comes, they will be ready for you.

Boom: The average time between the first meeting and the investment closing is 18 months (personal experience).

Longer and better explained here. Written in 2010, some things have changed since.

Product – if you have money, you can pivot;
Management – if you have money, you can (arguably) buy;
and so on.

I do understand that lack of money have more, deeper reasons; including bad product or badly managed sales. Or overspend. I do understand that money cannot cure all (even though they literally say “sales cure all” – and I agree).
I do understand that you cannot get financing if the company is not “good”, and therefore it is very important to keep a company in ship shape.

But I guess what I am saying is that one of the most under-thought objectives of a CEO/Founder is to keep the company well financed. The founder needs to make sure that, even for the worst case scenario (and then worse than this), there is enough money in the bank to be able to function.

I have seen so many entrepreneurs who are only focusing on building the product. They raise funds – only as much as needed for the best case scenario (BTW this never happens!). And, surprisingly, money ends before sufficient sales turn into enough revenue.

That is why I respectfully suggest – keep your company well funded. And then be scrappy and use as little money as possible to grow as quickly as possible.

Since I do believe the best way to understand an institution is through its members’ stories, I decided to write this essay instead. I will say something from the start: this essay is not a research paper, nor University advertising. Its goal is not to offer a complete and accurate description of the Stanford undergraduate experience, nor is it to convince you of the program’s excellence. Rather, it is a collection of my observations and experiences, which by their nature, are biased and limited. So please, if you do go on reading, interpret it as such: a slightly more deliberate fireside reminiscence about my college days.

The essay is structured in sections, each treating one aspect of my undergraduate experience. I tried to have a consistent format throughout: the main body of text is comprised of my observations, and particular anecdotes are indented and in italics.

At a glance

Stanford is a university in the Bay Area, California. The campus is its own city, mostly car-inaccessible, and traversable in an hour by foot, although most people bike.

The University population consists primarily of undergraduate students (4-year liberal arts college), graduate students (masters or doctoral), faculty, and staff. The majority of students live on campus.

Undergrads are admitted through an application consisting of a CV, high school transcript, and a few personal essays. In order to graduate, students need to declare a major by the end of their second year, and take classes that satisfy the general university and major requirements. As a liberal arts college, Stanford’s general requirements aim to create breadth in undergraduate education; these requirements are Aesthetic and Interpretative Inquiry, Applied Quantitative Reasoning, Creative Expression, Engaging Diversity, Ethical Reasoning, Formal Reasoning, Scientific Method and Analysis, Social Inquiry, and there are at least 200 courses satisfying each one, covering a variety of topics. Stanford offers approximately 100 majors – the Bachelors’ degree a student receives (https://majors.stanford.edu/majors-alphabetical/a–z); students often change their major as they explore more areas of study. Additionally, students may create their own major, and design its requirements themselves, under guidance from the University.

Besides classwork, students have the opportunity to join student organizations, which are funded by the University. Organizations vary in terms of focus: athletic / recreational, careers / pre-professional, community service, ethnic / cultural, Greek life, health / counseling, media / publications, music / dance / creative arts, political / social awareness, religious / philosophical.

Something of a country club

Stanford is a small town, but effectively feels like a country club. When I first heard this description as a senior in high school, the comparison provided me with little help in picturing life on campus. Let me expand on what I, at least, mean by it.

The campus is organized as one single facility: all buildings are open during the day and after four years you end up knowing many by heart – where the classrooms are, bathrooms, random sofas, dedicated study spaces and lounges, etc.

In fact, people end up knowing some buildings maybe too well: “When you walk through the door to the Sloan basement men’s bathroom, you see… another door. That door (Door 2) leads you into a small metallic atrium containing a urinal. It actually makes sense, because without this door there would be a pretty clear line of sight between the hallway and the urinal. But of course, it doesn’t end there: the urinal atrium has yet another door (Door 3). Door 3 leads to a stall. […] “Why,” you now ask (as any reasonable person would), “is this a problem?” I posit that the issue is primarily combinatorial in nature: there are too many combinations of open/shut states for the door. Suppose, for example, that you walk through the outer door and see Door 2 shut. You do not, at this point, know whether or not Door 3 is shut. Are you willing to risk walking into the urinal atrium and having to wait there? Or do you retreat to the safety of the hallway? It’s a difficult choice, and, in this writer’s view, not one you want to make if the stakes are high.” (Retrieved from the Stanford Loo Review (yes, this exists) http://stanfordloo.review/).

Lounging in coffee places and restaurants is not only permitted but accepted as the norm. The different shops act as one: you can take your coffee from Starbucks, and food from Axe and Palm, to the CoHo Jazz show. This campus hospitality extends beyond those affiliated with the university – many young professionals from the Bay Area often take advantage of the great events and lounging spots at Stanford. If you do have a student ID, then you are getting premium access – pay at most shops with it, borrow any tech (charger, laptops, projector, etc.) for the day, use 2(or 3)-D printers, borrow any book, or use the gyms.

Stanford revolves around its community. On a practical note, the campus changes according to the undergraduate calendar. One could monitor quarter schedules extremely accurately by what the majority of people keep across the table: friends, laptops, or family on Skype. One of the best product design schools in the world, Stanford is amazingly skilled at making small changes around campus to make sure undergrads don’t miss important deadlines.

On the day after graduation the post office has two massive boxes right at the entrance: one is filled with PO box keys with a green sticker on (the same stickers you can see piled up near the box), and the other has change of address cards (both filled in and empty). I remember wondering a couple of times during my senior year where / when I had to return my key and what would happen to my mail. In my freshman year, and in any other city, I would have looked this up in advance, but at Stanford I was sure that simply going to the post office after graduation would suffice.

Everything on campus is shaped for and by the Stanford community. This effectively means that wherever you need a white board, you will either find it already there, or you will be able to bring one to the exact spot you desire, be it a classroom, co­­nference room, lounge, or under a tree.

Stanford is a bubble for many reasons, and communication and trust are two essential ones. As I mentioned a few times already, there are thousands of things going on around campus; the great thing is that everything is updated online and you can always access the details of events, organizations, contact person, logistics, requirements, etc. with minimal effort. Moreover, most of the people I know at Stanford answer their email within an hour – if the sender has an @stanford.edu address, of course.

Trust is an interesting phenomenon on campus. Even though it is not an isolated part of the world, and you don’t know all people personally, there is this tacit understanding that people on campus will not steal the laptop you left unattended for 20 minutes, will return the dishes they take to their room from the dining halls, and they will be absolutely fascinating to talk to. The extent to which people let down their guard is ridiculous and misplaced at times:

One email I received from the Stanford police read something along the lines of “Unfortunately, we started seeing more and more car robberies on campus, so please be vigilant. One measure you can take to prevent this is to lock your car when you leave it in the parking lot.”

Still, the atmosphere that results is unique – living on campus sometimes feels like having a 12.78 square mile living room with 14,000 extended acquaintances.

“Wind of Freedom Blows”

Stanford’s motto, “the wind of freedom blows”, is central to the culture on campus. In my experience, there are only a few things forced on students – being excited, and in accord with whatever social movement is fashionable at the time. However, in terms of an undergraduate’s career, academic and otherwise, close to nothing is prescribed. Students choose their major(s), their classes; they choose in how many years to graduate, or which quarters to take off; they choose whether to focus on coursework, research, or student projects.

To have hundreds of opportunities and almost no restrictions on what you can do … except for time, and cognitive power – if you ask me, that’s what makes Stanford exhilarating and daunting. Walking around campus in the middle of the night, I always felt so inspired to take down mountains, and do whatever I felt is cool at the moment. The harsh reality always hit in the mornings that the difficulty of discovering and creating these opportunities is second only to the difficulty of deciding which are worth pursuing in the first place.

Without denying the discomfort often inflicted by such freedom, especially paired with the ever-present pressure to do as many great things as is humanly possible, I must admit exploring so many options and mapping out a path for myself was the most rewarding part of my Stanford experience.

I started out as theoretical mathematics major, with a desire to eventually enter industry. During my time at Stanford, I experimented with also majoring or minoring in computer science, philosophy or philosophy of religious studies, management science and engineering; as a junior, I joined Stanford Marketing; I worked for a price optimization company and for a hedge fund. Before my senior year I realized that I am truly interested in Operations research, and that most of the classes I took based on interest at the time are, in fact, highly relevant to this field. For me, this was the strongest evidence that Stanford was effective.

What classes are you taking?

Between having fun in some, critiquing others, and losing nights of sleep for a few, I rarely took the time to acknowledge the remarkable machinery of Stanford classes. Every Stanford graduate receives a very different education, even within one major, and that is partly due to their selection of classes. Basically creating your own curriculum, choosing classes is an important part of an undergraduate career.

Students are entirely responsible for choosing classes such that they fulfill all university and major requirements. Although the University assigns advisors to answer questions regarding course planning, I found that fellow students are the best source of information.

Each quarter, the University offers approximately 4000 different courses; and students are encouraged to take classes from any department, even in fields not directly related to their major.

Information about these classes such as description, professor, schedule, requirements satisfied, and sometimes syllabus becomes available online a few weeks before the start of the quarter. Scrolling through the course catalogue https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/ (you can see the classes by department or as a list if you search ‘#’) is a glimpse into an otherwise small part of campus activity.

The definitive list of classes is due in the third week of the quarter, and so people often shop for more classes, and then narrow down what they take in the first couple of weeks. The beginning of a quarter can become quite hectic: in my experience, days are filled with too many lectures (which could, however, be quite enjoyable as they are introductory lectures on topics that interest you), extra assignments for classes you might want to take in case your schedule doesn’t work out the way you hope, searching for good classes, counting requirements and quarters left, and potentially having philosophical discussions about the interests you should pursue.

Although classes are so diverse, in my experience many share an attitude towards learning, which, depending on my mood, I have described as either superficial or conceptual. I’ve noticed this most strikingly by comparing a waltz class at Stanford and another at a dancing club in Boston.

The course at Stanford taught in 10 meetings basic rotary waltz, something like 20-30 different configurations / tricks / combinations a pair can do, how to change pace / direction, and generally move on a dance floor. The Boston class spent 2 meetings on learning how to perfectly step on 3-count music, using only the box-step for waltz. While people coming out of the Stanford waltz class are far from having a proper technique, they have the big picture of what waltz may entail, and they have a basic competence of handling waltzing on a busy dance floor.

In my opinion, this example illustrates perfectly classes at Stanford. They are extremely fast-paced, focused on giving students the big picture and current developments, enabling them to engage with experts in the field, as well as introduce others to the subject. Of course, there are also classes that spend an entire quarter on a very narrow field, having students work through that in great detail – I remember shocking my high school math teacher by taking an entire class on Lebesgue integration, a topic which was presented to him in two lectures during university. Nevertheless, even such classes always emphasize the possible applications.

Some memorable classes at Stanford

• ‘10 great ideas about chance’: a philosophy class on probability and its development from basically scam artistry to legitimate mathematics, taught by Persi Diaconis, a former professional magician and one of the leading mathematicians today.
• ‘back of the envelope physics’: advanced course in physics, focused on order of magnitude estimates, derived through computationally light methods. The class also has an introductory equivalent, for students with no background in science.
• ‘the Cardinal Fund’: one of the classes for which students need to apply, it lets students manage a real investment portfolio of $1 million for one to two years.
• ‘rhetoric of revolution’: a writing seminar concerned with works such as the Futurism Manifesto by Filippo Marinetti or the Guernica by Pablo Picasso; this class gathered a particularly interesting crowd, one class mate having had designed cross-word puzzles for the New York Times since middle school.
• ‘hyperbolic geometry’: the goal of Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani was to teach hyperbolic geometry without using any advanced mathematics; I doubt any of us learnt a great deal about the subject, but the display of her innovative solutions was breathtaking.

“A university of facilities but most of all a university of people”

The University offers countless resources to its students; to list just a few: housing and dinning, extended access to libraries including free software, journals, etc., sporting equipment and facilities, scientific equipment, on the order of $1 million funding for student organizations, classes / events / talks, alumni mentoring, and counseling (peer, academic, writing and speaking, psychological, and career). The availability of such resources is possible due, in large part, to Stanford’s enormous endowment ($22.4 billion); but a key role in enabling these opportunities is played by the Stanford community – students, staff, faculty, and alumni. While the commitment of staff and faculty is straight-forward, the University has noteworthy strategies for getting alumni and students involved.

Through the Stanford Alumni Network students are just one email away from people in the top of any field who are eager to share tricks to navigating towards a successful career, insights to their industry, position and / or company, and willing to introduce students to the right people in their field. I know many people who agree that the most valuable asset Stanford gives to its alumni is the connections they have, be it good friends from one’s college days or other alumni with their doors always open to Stanfordians.

As an undergrad, I found great support in my alumni advisor. A successful VC Partner in the Bay Area, he shared his diverging interests and non-linear path that lead him to his current dream job. I occasionally thought of joining the beaten track to spare myself the difficulty of finding meaningful work that spans my math, philosophy and business interests. Every time, a lengthy discussion with him reminded me that what I most admire in people I consider successful is not the job title they held, but rather their ability to tailor their career to fit their unique skills and interests. As an example of the dedication of such mentors, I still remember once telling him I was not sure what type of internships could be a good fit for me. In under 48 hours, I received an email with a list of some 20 companies with a paragraph containing remarkably well thought out reasons why the company / position could be right for me.

As an alum, I understood the drive to become a mentor for Stanford undergrads. For me, the desire to be a resource for students is fueled by a couple of things. In my experience, learning to negotiate the maze and tailor your career and life can be daunting, but extremely rewarding. Thus, I both want to share what I discovered so far, and I also believe that the task becomes easier when one can look at a diverse database of journeys and perspectives.

Whereas mentoring relies on a feeling of community, student facilitated learning usually relies on good alignment of incentives. In some cases, it could be a modest salary, or the chance to enrich one’s resume; but in the best scenarios, the students who instruct receive equal instruction out of the experience.

The best example I came across is the computer science introductory series. In these classes, students who never wrote code are taught the basics of programming. Staying truthful to its bubble, Stanford has proprietary libraries that enable students to code relatively complex programs with limited experience; moreover, the classes feature an army of teaching assistant who are responsible for debugging each piece of code (there are usually on the order of 1000 students enrolled across the three versions of this class). I remember expressing my dismay to a friend who was an assistant for this class for four consecutive quarters, but she was quite happy with the arrangement, pointing out that for someone who aims to become a professional software engineer, learning to efficiently debug code wrote by someone else is an invaluable skill.

 “So excited!”

As I hinted at earlier, I felt a mild obsession with being excited on campus, to which I had a hard time adapting. Besides not being a particularly exuberant person, I always found it difficult to discern actual extraordinary interest from a cultural tic.

On the one hand, every conversation I had or overheard, no matter the topic – be it the news of a new career move, failure in a class, romantic relationships, athletic life, etc. – inevitably reached the point of “it’s so exciting!”. In my opinion, this expression can mean a myriad of things when uttered by Stanford students: from the intended meaning of the phrase, to a quick apology for complaining too much (in this scenario it morphs into a not-so-convincing “but yeah, it’s exciting”), to something I often interpreted as a self-motivational attempt, or to downright nothing at all – I believe every single talk I attended started with “we are so excited to …”.

Although a harsh critic on, what is in my opinion, an unrealistic portrayal of enthusiasm, I did relate to this more superficial feeling of excitement in one way. I always likened being on campus with a summer holiday trip in which I don’t mind sleeping just four hours a day for a week, try to fit in as many cool events to take advantage of the time I have there, meet new people every day, and have a very strong feeling that this place is mine for limited time.

On the other hand, the interests of people are remarkably versatile and intense, and the most evident benefit of this fact is the abundance of events and resources on campus. The quantity itself is not what is truly impressive to me – you could probably achieve this simply by setting the right incentives rather than relying on the personal motivation of the organizers. The events, however, are ever-changing and ever-in-tune with current events. Professors constantly do research and give out surveys to retire / change old classes or introduce new ones: for a short time, for example, Stanford had a class on the 2048 game. Student groups bring in companies that are most influential in their field of interest. Students establish new groups and events they dream of attending – the Stanford Viennese Ball for instance, was founded in 1978 by students who returned from a quarter abroad program in Austria, and it has been one of the most vibrant events of the Stanford community, bringing together affiliates of all ages.

FOMO

Stanford is a huge fan of funky abbreviations for the things that most people encounter on campus. So is the case with the proprietary MemChu – Stanford’s memorial church – or FoHo – the underground news publication on campus, named The Fountain Hopper after the Stanford tradition of jumping in fountains; and so it is the case with the globally established FOMO, or fear of missing out.

Between the thousands of amazing opportunities, the pressure of choosing everything for themselves, and all the excitement, students often find themselves experiencing a constant fear that the one event they missed is going to bring down their undergraduate career. The fast pace of the campus is driven by the hunger of its members, and since Silicon Valley evolved around Stanford, it mirrors this perfectly.

I am an avid rock climber, and going to the Bay Area and San Francisco locations of my climbing gym, I always notice the difference in pace between the two regions. At the gym in Silicon Valley, people are relentlessly trying to send as many problems of the highest grade, they are always on their feet, trying to get in front of all the others waiting to get on the wall. In San Francisco on the other hand, people climb problems that they find enjoyable independent of their grade, and take long breaks in between climbs, relaxing with their friends.

To me, a healthy dose of FOMO can help you develop the habit of an active life style, the skills needed to effectively search and process information, and expose you to ideas outside your immediate fields of interest. At the same time, too much can leave you sleep deprived, depressed or unable to dedicate enough time to more meaningful work.

One of the more ironic consequences of FOMO is that I would spend some meetings, classes, or events frantically searching my email for future opportunities, instead of engaging with the activity that was going on at the time.

In lieu of a conclusion…

… I will leave you with a poem I found scribbled on a piece of paper and hung on the walls of CoHo, Stanford’s coffee house (the author did not sign this, so I’m afraid it’s impossible to give full credit).

Reflection on Going Places and Leaving Places

the halls lie silent as I collect myself
and the pieces of sleep I didn’t get
a small suitcase, overpacked a bit
I don’t know when I’ll be back
hints of nausea tease at my empty stomach
a gastric mixture of excitement and melancholy
I’m ready a little too soon
so I roam
searching for someone to bid my farewells
let the world know that I’m here
let them know that I’m not here for long
empty couches, rooms, halls,
sleeping friends, oblivious
trees speed past
mosaics of life
broken up by the hairline cracks in
the taxi window
life
split up by all these cracks
head angled up to keep the tears from flooding over
the hurricane walls, I don’t think we built them
tall enough
terrains, split by humans, it’s amazing how we manipulate
the land, amazing how we manipulate each other,
manipulate ourselves into believing we have to do this
alone
honestly never really alone, carrying these fragmental pieces of
our realities, placed haphazardly in our little suitcases,
overpacked a bit, still small enough to be a carry on
with us always.

Our existence is increasingly more and more virtual and complicated. We have many email addresses, accounts, passwords and everything gets mixed up in our heads. We can’t manage to remember them, to understand which ones we need and which ones we don’t need or to realize what to do with them. In this mishmash, we get to make decisions based on emotions and in the heat of the moment: we create an account only when we have to do it and we no longer remember why we did it. I think that an objective understanding of the infrastructure – seen from the “above” – that sustains our virtual existence may help; will try to present my view on the matter.

There are three levels of accounts in my mind: 1. Identity, 2. Infrastructure, 3. Utility. Let’s take them one by one:

1. Identity. Nowadays, although we identify ourselves with our personal IDs, our identities are increasingly more connected to other elements: telephone number (still present in the US) and email address. The internet knows us as an email address. So we all need a personal email address we can keep and use “forever”. It will represent and identify us in the virtual world. It can be a gmail, yahoo, hotmail, outlook, .me email address, or an address connected to a personal domain such as @myname.net, and so on. But we must have a personal email address and this is our most important asset in the virtual world.

The security of this email is vital, as “email theft” is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone. No matter how paranoid you are, it is not enough with this.

2. Infrastructure. There are three infrastructure accounts everyone should have: Apple, Microsoft and Google. These are the three producers of operating systems that you will most likely use and require you to have an account with them. Any “device” you buy these days, you must have an account with one of the three. Phones (iPhone, Android, Windows), computers (Mac, Chrome, Windows), tablets, watches etc… So we should take our time at some point and create these three accounts that we should remember and treat as something special.
What’s more, each of these accounts will try to control our lives as much as they can. Once we have them all, we will have to decide what to manage with each of them: credit cards, other applications, movies, music, maps, security…
Each of these three accounts has a control panel (appleid.apple.com, google.com/dashboard , account.microsoft.com) with which we can see and control everything happening there.
Each of these accounts is based on your email ID. If you want to be paranoid, you will have a different email for each account. However, you should at least have a different password (which should also be different from your email password) for each of these accounts and you should change that password frequently.

3. Utility. Any other account is in the “front-end”, utility area. There are two that stand out (Amazon and Facebook) and that I think everyone should have. They are similar in management terms to infrastructure accounts. We can use these accounts to login into probably other 200 accounts that we use, our favorite online stores or service providers. Whether we choose to use one of our infrastructure accounts for these utility ones is a matter of data privacy (advantage: less accounts to manage / disadvantage: we allow them access to more data than we would potentially want).
(English version by Teodora Popescu)

I don’t want to go into the qualities and features of the product now – although I now wear one of these watches and it’s spectacular. I only want to tell you why this company is extraordinary and why I believe it will make it big:

I was talking to Andrei a year ago about the idea and the project he and two other co-founders had. Here we are – only one year later – and let me walk you through what they have already achieved:

• Hardware design: new watch, completely from scratch. You know, motherboard, processor, the full nine yards;
• Operating system, from scratch. I’ll write a blog post these days and I’ll tell you why a new operating system for watches is required. All in all, the company wrote a completely new operating system. And they didn’t start from Linux, or from RTOS, or from Android – but from the blank paper! You know… “void main ()”… those were the days :-);
• Connecting Apps for all the three main operating systems for phones: iOS, Android, Microsoft, with connection, notifications, updates, AppStore, the whole shebang;
• Cloud: with API for developers, full-fledged AppStore, apps to be run in the cloud…
• Watch apps: Vector did not wait for developers to come with third party apps (though it is so exciting, I am sure so many will), but they already created quite a few nice vector apps. Mainly around better organizing you time – as a watch should do – but also the normally expected health, activity, weather, news…
• Design: it’s not easy to design a watch in a fashionable way. There are few people in the world that know how to do that well and Vector managed to work with them and make a watch that looks gorgeous. Simple, like a classy watch. A collection that offers various shapes, materials and colors;
• Production: it seems easy to say that once the prototype is made in the lab, the rest is being sent to the factory and it gets done. Not true… it’s a very complicated battle to find companies you can rely on to produce what you want, when you want it, with the desired rate of accuracy. You have to negotiate with these factories technologies, inches, finishing strokes… assembly, testing, certification… storage, transport, delivery;
• Distribution: worldwide, distribution channels are much easier to build for software than for a watch. Online stores but also brick and mortar watch stores. And telecoms… in many countries… inventory, returns, warranties, politics between local dealers;
• Branding: a complex exercise that has to explain a coherent vision. In itself, this process only may take up to a year;
• Team: hey, I should have started with this! Vector has the coolest team ever: Joe Santana (ex CEO Timex, London) and Andrei Pitis (ex VP Engineering Ixia, Romania) are the two forces that have built the bridge between technology and watches. Steve (Portland) handles design, Bandu (Hong Kong) does production, Michelle (London) handles finances…. Dan (Bucharest) is behind the Hardware and Irina (Bucharest) does design engineering. More great guys and girls that complete a very special team;
• R&D: you may not believe this, but this very young company has a separate R&D team that is already researching for the future, the same time as the rest of the company is fighting for launching the new product.

All in all, it’s been only a year from the first idea and Vector has a wonderful hardware product that is ready and functional; a great team that works well and at a crazy pace. And it does have everything it needs to become a great company. It’s a project you can’t but love to be involved in!

PS: I have received at least 200 emails saying “I want to buy a watch, how can I get it faster?”. The first watches to be delivered are the ones pre-ordered from the company’s website.

Original Romanian Version
Cat de mare va creste Vectorwatch ?

Deci s-a lansat Vector Watch acum doua saptamani, la Basel. Acum se poate deja comanda online, iar review-urile (“this gorgeous timepiece“, “was the boldest smartwatch at Baselworld” si multe multe altele) sunt deja foarte pozitive.

Nu vreau sa intru acum in calitatile produsului, desi am un ceas pe mana (sic!) si este spectaculos. Vreau doar sa va povestesc de ce compania este extraordinara:

Am vazut multe cumpanii care incep, incet, incet si peste 2-3 ani se prezinta in continuare ca oportunitati, “sa vezi ce putem noi face daca avem ocazia”. Ei bine Vector nu e asa: tace si face. Repede si bine.

Acum un an vorbeam cu Andrei despre ideea si proiectul pe care el si inca doi co-fondatori le aveau. A trecut doar un an si fiti atenti ce aceasta companie a reusit sa faca:

a) Asa cum este sugerata acum, legea spune asa:

• Definim investitorul individual: persoana fizica, capata mai putin de 49% din actiunile companiei eligibile. Adica taxe platite, all the good stuff;
• Investitorul primeste actiunile in schimbul unui imprumut catre firma;
• Dividendele investitorului in primii trei ani sunt scutite de impozit (dar nu mai mult decat imprumutul);
• Profitul realizat din vanzarea actiunilor, daca ele se vand mai tarziu de trei ani, este scutit de impozit (se defineste profitul ca diferenta dintre pretul de vanzare si valoarea imprumutului).

b) Cum cred eu ca ar fi trebuit sa fie:

• O lege cadru care sa defineasca investitiile in startup-uri (si nu numai). Si o alta lege, diferita, (presupun ca parte a codului fiscal) care sa defineasca facilitatile fiscale;
• Legea cadru sa defineasca investitiile in ansamblul lor: atat cele facut de persoane fizice, cat si cele facute de companii. Inclusiv deci legea holdingului. Nu ma refer la facilitati, ci doar la definitii;
• Sa defineasca corect investitia ca fiind achizitia de actiuni, nu ca imprumut;
• Sa intre in cateva detalii foarte importante legate de gestiunea actiunilor, inclusiv ESOP (Employee Share Option Plan), investitii cu premium, valoarea de piata corecta a actiunilor (Fair Market Value) si multe altele, care in momentul acesta sunt instrumente nedefinite in Romania;
• Obiectivul legii cadru ar fi exclusiv de aliniere a legislatiei Romanesti la legislatia internationala si de clarificare a modului de lucru.

c) Comentarii:

Intr-un context in care experienta legata de investitii este foarte mica – Romania fiind la inceput de drum in aceasta directie – si in care antreprenorii se uita la lege cautand definitii si “best practices”, cred ca aceasta (ea, legea) ar trebui sa fie extrem de clara si concisa, definind aproape scolastic investitiile. Adica o investitie (equity) este emiterea de noi actiuni in favoarea investitorului care, in schimbul actiunilor, pune bani in companie. Orice altceva nu este o investitie. Da, sunt de acord ca exista foarte multe alternative de a simula o investitie (loans, convertible loans, achizitia de actiuni de la actionar existent si altele), dar acestea nu sunt si nu au de ce sa fie “main stream”. Ele sunt exceptii si ar trebui tratate ca atare.

Cred ca asa cum este acum aceasta propunere de lege defineste in mod gresit investitia ca fiind un imprumut si va genera o avalansa de perceptii gresite si abordari ratate.

Din nou, nu vorbesc in nici un fel despre facilitatile fiscale. Aceste facilitati sunt mult mai putin importante decat o legislatie clara, care sa nu lase loc la intrebari, fara “ifs and buts”. Nu facilitatile fiscale, ci legislatia clara, coerenta si stabila este cel mai bun “incentive” pentru un investitor.

Astfel, as indrazni sa concluzionez ca aceasta lege – asa cum este ea acum construita – face mai mult rau decat bine, incurcand borcanele si confuzand lumea. Avem oportunitatea ca intr-un domeniu in care nu exista legi sa facem legi [curate, inteligibile, fara contradictii] din prima. Si cred ca ce vedem nu face decat sa incurce. Parerea mea.

I am surprised to learn that, even though everybody speaks about it, very few people actually know what it is. And it is not that easy to put things together just by asking our friend Google, because you will either find information which is very technical or very shallow. So I’ll start with the very beginning and I’ll try to give you relevant information, not necessarily 100% technically accurate (for the benefit of understanding the bigger picture):

I will start by saying that “bitcoin” is actually two things: bitcoin the virtual currency (I’ll call this BTC here, just to underline the difference) and bitcoin the protocol (I’ll call this bitcoin). Bitcoin (the protocol) is actually a ledger of transactions of assets (underlying the general assets). And here is the first thing to understand: Whereas assets were recorded until now mainly via “Balance Sheets” (static pictures of your belongings at a certain moment), with statements of transactions as ancillary documents, bitcoin says that the main document is the “P&L”, which is the journey between two moments / balance sheets. Based on the huge computer power to which we have access today, we register the transactions in the ledger and, if we want to know how much money (or other assets) there are in a specific account/wallet, we just crawl the full ledger and do the math. This protocol is distributed and democratic. Which means the ledger is stored on millions of computers (so it cannot be killed) and any transaction needs to be accepted by more computers to get into the ledger. This seems very idealistic, but it works.

And BTC (the currency) is only the first asset to be stored in such a way, using this technology. It was created and used only as a starting reward for people to volunteer the use of their computers until the critical mass of fees (see what transaction fees are in the next paragraph) was reached.

Technology/ Process

So, there is a ledger of transactions. Each line is one transaction, which says that wallet 1 gave wallet 2 this asset (potentially for this fee) and a timestamp. Lines are organized in groups (blocks) and the ledger is called “block-chain”. When a transaction is being initiated, it is placed in a queue before being accepted in the block-chain.

There are a lot of computers (miners) that are part of this system. Their main job is to confirm / settle / approve transactions (I would have called them settlers, not miners – but this is a different story). So each of them copies (as opposed to move) a transaction from the queue, approves it (by crawling the block-chain) and puts it into his block.

Each miner is doing two things:

(A) Approving transactions and trying to create a block of transactions. Every approximately 10 minutes a new block is started. Every miner is piling up transactions on his own, creating a block. So every 10 minutes millions of alternative blocks are being created, but every 10 minutes only one block is the winner that makes its way to the block-chain. Since this is a race to process transactions, miners prefer to process the transactions which have higher fees for processing. Transactions which are part of the “loser” blocks are not lost, they are left in the queue for processing.

(B) The second thing that a miner is doing is solving a math problem. The solution of this math problem is not the BTC and there is no connection between the problem and the currency. Solving the problem is just a way a) to get a time bomb for the block – as soon as the first miner solves the problem, the current block is completed and a new one starts and b) to decide who the winner is. The winner block gets into the block-chain (all the others vanish) and the successful miner gets the award.

The block winner award: in order for the system to work, miners need to get paid (because they spend resources – time and power – to run this process. This award has two components: some BTC and the fees associated to the processed transactions). In the long run, they will be paid by the (voluntary) fees attached to transactions. But to kick-off the process, until the number of transactions (and fees) gets to a critical mass they invented the BTC (picture below). Transactions can be free of any fee and miners will chose them out of the queue on a fifo basis, or they can volunteer a fee and miners will pick them quicker (of course ). This is a very interesting mechanism that will settle based on the market: more transactions –> longer queue –> longer the time to wait for settling –> people choose to pay a fee –> bigger fees –> more miners interested –> shorter queue. Getting back to BTC – this is the only way BTC is being created (minted): Every 10 minutes a number of new BTC are being “printed” and awarded to the block winner. As in the picture, every 4 years the BTC award is halved: 2009 – 2013 the price was 50 BTC, now it is 25, in 2017 it will become 12.5 and so on. If you do the math, you realize that the total potential number of BTC is limited asymptotically to some 21 million BTC. Obviously, in the first 4+ years half of them were already thrown into the market, so now we have already printed about 12 million BTC. Some of them were lost (at the beginning people did not understand the value of BTC), some of them (1 million BTC?) are assumed to belong to the famous Satoshi, who promised not to use them (whatever this means).

Security

The protocol as well as storing of sensitive data may raise a lot of security issues. But then, the only way to be 100% secure is to be 100% disconnected from the world. I will not get into details (I am not necessarily a specialist, I will probably try to ask a good friend to write more about this in a separate post) but: the protocol seems to be as secure as the cryptography itself, and this has a very strong history. I guess that the biggest threat is in user misuse or mistake, which is very similar to what could happen to fiat money and money storage.

Financial

The obvious questions I hear are:

Money is supposed to be backed by something (gold, other valuables, government…). BTC is just smoke. Why would it survive?
Not 100% true. Today’s money is significantly less than 10% backed by gold, because of leverage by the banks. Today’s money is not backed by government – it is being used by the government. Today’s money (let’s call it fiat money, from the Latin fiat = existing) is being backed by trust. As long as people trust it, it has value. Same with BTC – as long as people trust that tomorrow they will be able to use their BTC, the currency will exist. And, one way or another, this trust seems to be here to stay. Look at all the hits that BTC got in the last 3-4 months, culminating with the death of Mt Gox (one of the BTC exchanges). BTC is still there, with a very limited value drop. And after each drop, it goes back up.

21 million units is a small number. We have 1.3 trillion USD (about 5 trillion USD worth of all currencies, worldwide). How can it be used?
BTC has 8 decimals. So, if you keep the last two for cents, we can actually have 21,000,000,000,000.00 units; this is 21 trillion units (plus cents ). And today’s value of one unit (called one satoshi, with respect to the bitcoin creator) would be 0.0005 USD (based on 1 BTC = 500 USD). So, Yes – it can be used and there is plenty of space to increase the value.

The value is very unstable. Is this not bad for a currency?
This is bad for preserving value, but it is good for speculative business. The start of a currency can be (and should be) very speculative. This is how you create wealth in that specific currency. Moreover, if you look at the short history of BTC, it is becoming more and more stable. BTC gets a lot of hits and is still quasi constant in value.

I can buy a beer with my USD. Can I buy beer with BTC?
More and more shops accept BTC. You have BTC ATMs in most of the cities. Online businesses started accepting BTC. I know of people that made a point of living 100% with BTC, and it is possible. Not comfortable yet, but we are quickly getting there.

Political
The governments are losing some of their power – the power to print and control money. This is true and probably the most important threat for the BTC adventure. But the play has already got too far for governments to be able to kill it easily. The beast is alive and mature, and self-sustaining. As media companies could not kill torrents and (more important) as governments could not kill internet, they will not be able to kill bitcoin. So, based on the famous “if you cannot kill them – join them” I bet my two cents that eventually governments will choose to slowly regulate virtual currency, control it as much as possible and establish rules to mitigate risks. The more enlightened thinkers of the governments (hint, hint) will actually gain a lot out of this opportunity for their countries.

You can already see that things are moving in the right direction: many countries (including the US and Western Europe) have declared that they want to regulate BTC but they are generally happy with it; two (Iceland and Thailand) have said that they are forbidding the use of BTC, as they are in depression and don’t want wealth to leave country. Others are in the “wait and see” mode.

Very interesting story (that I don’t know how to read yet) is VISA and Mastercard shutting down operations in Russia for one day, apparently as a penalty and a reaction to the recent politics in the region. Using BTC/bitcoin can prevent this kind of dependency on the big credit card institutions and some states might even take advantage of this.

Fiscal

Another big questions for governments is “how to tax BTC”? And the core of this issue resides in the question “is BTC a currency, and should it therefore be taxed with VAT/sales tax, or is it an asset, and taxed with capital gain?”. I guess this is the biggest of today’s questions. The US taxman gave his views a couple of weeks ago: in the US BTC should be treated as asset.

Some people say that this decision of the US tax authorities is a setback for BTC, as it takes away the main feature of a currency: each unit is exactly as the next one. So if you have 100 BTC you should be able to spend any one of them and the specific BTC you use for the transaction should make no difference. With the US view, if you have one BTC acquired at 100$ and one BTC acquired at 200$, when you buy something it does matter which BTC you use. Because you need to declare your capital gain on that specific BTC.

I would say that US clarifying how BTC should be taxed is a huge step forward. It pulls the BTC out of the grey area of “what the hell is this?” and legitimises it. It is now obvious that we are not speaking about some tricky games or occult practice. It is also clear as to what you need to do in order to be 100% legal and in good standing. And this is the basis for solid business. Second, it actually creates an opportunity for companies to offer more services for and with BTC.

But my guess is that, at some point in time, if things work as they seem to work today – huge hype, lot of shops accepting BTC, accelerated learning process for consumers – we will get quickly to a point where the US and others will take the next logical step: they will treat it as a currency.

Legal

The legal side of the story is also very interesting. Living in a world where banks are under huge pressure for compliance, KYC (know your customer), avoidance of money laundry and terrorism – the use of an alternate, non-regulated currency looks like a big challenge. Therefore there is a need for the legal system to get updated. Now, please remember that we are speaking of the legal system of a lot of countries getting coordinated. This is not a simple task, but it will happen due to pressure from the users. I am already seeing most of the big law firms designating a “Bitcoin Partner” – this means that they see the opportunity and are taking it seriously.

The legal requirements will also eventually push for a move to treat BTC as currency rather than an asset based on the fact that assets cannot be easily monitored and regulated. Buying beer with BTC (asset) is a trade and nothing regulates it, and you can do this without any clearance from National Bank or any other fiscal regulator, whilst buying beer with BTC (currency) is subject to all currency specific laws and regulations that I was speaking about above.

Social

One very interesting aspect of bitcoin and BTC is the social part. This is now perceived as the next “Flower Power” movement. ‘69 was the last time when so many people spoke loudly for freedom – freedom of speech, freedom to sing, freedom to spend. BTC is supposedly (rightly or wrongly) the one subject that now makes people raise their heads and “fight the system”. The movement gets bigger and bigger. Sometimes such movements go the wrong way and are misused, but the vast majority of people are thinking about it as the savior from oppressive chains, the key to freedom of not being followed every moment, like we see in the movies (police using banks to track the plastic for fiat money usage).

Business

Both bitcoin and BTC are huge business opportunities. One needs to understand the way to get involved (and there are quite a few) and understand the risk / reward model:

BTC: an investor may choose to invest in BTC to speculate on its value. The general feeling right now is that the right price for BTC is (one / two years projection) around 4,000 USD. So, if you want to gamble on the currency itself, fell free to invest in it as you invest in any other financial instrument (shares, bonds, etc). There already are a lot of funds specialized in investing in BTC, so your wealth management bank can just acquire positions in such a fund if you don’t want to buy BTC yourself and monitor its value.

Infrastructure: the other new business potential is to build bitcoin related infrastructure. This does not have anything to do directly with BTC value, but it basically creates technologies and services that would help people use BTC or bitcoin. Some quick examples would be: hardware for miners, mining itself, processors, wallets, exchanges. I spoke to one bank the other day and asked “Is BTC/bitcoin a friend or a foe of the banking system?”. And, surprisingly, the answers was that it is a friend! A bank that openly thinks about the future will not perceive BTC as a threat that will eat into their existing business, but as a tool to gain more access to consumers. Now, this is only one of a lot of huge opportunities for innovative startups. Mining pools software… there are so many basic infrastructure things that are needed, that you can consider this as the opportunity to create a brand new industry.

In any case, my suggestion to bitcoin/BTC enthusiasts would be not to double-dip. Invest only in one of the two, don’t risk both sides.

Math

Is there a math problem that cannot be broken? It is a non-reversible function f(x)=y, where you know the result (y) and need to find x. The only way to do it is by trial and error. So one needs a lot of computer power to quickly test the function for a lot of x and see if the result is y. As the number of miners and the processing power grows, the time to solve the problem decreases – and the function is getting more complicated to keep up the 10 minutes.

PR Story

This may not have worked without a very good PR story. And we have two of them!

One is the glamour of an unknown, undercover, extremely clever creator. Bitcoin was designed by a Satoshi Nakamoto that nobody knows. It is almost as a religion now and he becomes a mystery man….. But the story is good, the plot is perfect. Last month, in a new episode of the series, Newsweek said that they discovered the guy. A lot of buzz, press, etc… no, it was not him, search again. 

The second story, even more mysterious, claims that such a big disruption would not have happened without the support of some very elite groups.

Philosophy

This is a mind twisting game changer. Hundreds of years ago we were sure that we cannot fly, and when we did, we were puzzled. Now we think about money as we know it today. Money means bank, cash, credit cards, gold… For some time, pressure has been building for a more efficient digital way to store and use money, and the solution has obviously appeared. We are scared, we see all the downsides, people misusing it. But eventually we end up embracing it and changing the world. As internet did so many years ago, when we did not think that it would ever be possible to do so many things, bitcoin is changing our lives every day.

The new thing – the internet of assets

The internet protocol first appeared in the 70’s. People did not know where this would go, as it was only a simple hand-shaking protocol between two computers, linked by a wire. Computers could exchange bits – who cares?

Then, in the 80’s, the first layer of infrastructure was built around the internet protocol – hardware. Companies like Cisco took over the world (and they actually became the most valuable corporation of the world at some point).

And still we were not there: in the 90’s, the second layer of infrastructure started to grow – software. Netscape and others like them built the dotcom bubble.

In the 2000’s Google appeared to organize the world’s information and in 2010’s apps and applications are showing us the real power of the internet. Facebook, Linkedin, Amazon are only a few names of companies that we now believe are so important to us. They are huge companies, life-changing businesses – but they would not have been possible without the protocol invented in the 1970’s.

I believe the bitcoin protocol is trending in the same way. It was invented (created, started?) in 2009 and we are now evolving at a quicker pace than during the internet boom. Five years instead of 10 (you know, we are now moving faster ) and, in 2014, the first layer of infrastructure is being build: miners, pools, exchanges, processors, wallets, coins, security layers, ATMs… all the basics required for BTC to boom.

Like with any new game changer, the fans of BTC will have to overcome challenges – legal, taxation and the political environment. In less than five years from now the banking system will most probably be duplicated for BTC. Banks will learn that bitcoin is not a foe, but a friend and will start to use it. And the second layer of infrastructure will be there. Then things will get organized. Five years more and killer apps will show us why bitcoin was, and is, important. Will this be a wallet that can store all your valuable assets? Or some money replacement? Who knows… but I put my two cents on the table that it will be big, very big!

I argued that those who leave multinational companies aren’t as successful as they expected. What happened to Silviu after some time? And, BTW, what happened to MS Romania after Silviu?

First of all, I found that his goals were different than usual – and not just different, but fundamentally and consistently so. He loves what he does and he does it with passion. And NOT because the sales rates require him to declare he does it with passion, but because he really feels that. It would have been revealed eventually, after all this time, if this wasn’t the case ;-). With this in mind, we are already looking from a different perspective at his achievements in the training company (let’s call it like this, although he speaks about this self-knowledge activity in completely different terms). The major achievement is that he smiles more. He is doing what he likes most and it shows. The immediate effect is that his deliverables are of impeccable quality. He helps you build a company, a team, just as you like it. He helps you enjoy doing what you like, too. Just as he was when he built MS Romania. Unlike the vast majority of employees in multinational companies that feed off their business card, we can now definitely say that, in Silviu’s case, MS fed from his leadership.

Maybe also because, on the other side, since he left, MS Romania has taken a nosedive. First it dropped slowly; then it plummeted. Then it became a tragedy. A completely new team, devoid of any emotion. A team led by a man who when asked “why WP7 isn’t good”, answers “Because you’re stupid and don’t know how to use it”… Ouch! I wondered what Silviu would have said… Probably something like “Yeah, you’re right. It’s version 1, launched in haste. We know this and we’re working at the new version which is going to be better. But look, maybe it has some good parts too, among all the bad…”; a more honest answer anyway. And it’s as if, when you listen to him, you feel like following him. (Now it seems like MS Ro has licked some of its wounds and found the right path).

In any case, now – after all this time – I’ve got it clear: Silviu made MS Ro what it was, not the other way around. And he is still (just like he has always been) a man to look up to, a model and a mentor that can teach you many things. Now that he is less visible and I don’t risk being called a bootlicker, I wanted to say this: Respect.

What he is doing these days: http://www.gustavkaeser.com.

(English version by Teodora Popescu)

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is in the doing something else.”

This quote is attributed by some to Leonardo da Vinci, while others say that Tom Peters wrote it in Chicago Tribune, in 1994. I don’t really care who said it first, I am just angry that it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t even me who found it, but my daughter. “Dad – she told me the other day – I found THE quote that I believe represents you completely.” And I must agree with her.

This quote represents the core of entrepreneurship, the deepest of my beliefs. I’ve been doing this for the past 20 some years and I hope to continue doing the same the next 20 :-).