Israel and the Electric Car

While everyone in the Middle East world is still fixed on oil, and maybe natural gas, as the sources of energy, everyone in the US is talking about alternative sources for energy and clean technology. The exception of course is Israel.

In an economist article about how tech entrepreneurs are switching to green entrepreneurs, they highlighted Shai Agassi, 39, who was set to be SAP's next CEO but choose to start his own venture BetterPlace that focuses on Electric Cars.

The interesting thing, is that Shai has joined a partnership with Renault and his Israeli Government to bring electric cars to Israel aiming at a 100% gasoline free Israel. Shai has managed to secure $100 million of funding from Israel Corp. and the first car is expected to hit the streets by 2009 aiming at mass production by 2010.

It's interesting how both the Arabs and Israeli choose to react differently. The Arabs, finally knowing that oil will not be there for every for them to bank on it, started thinking of creating other industries like tourism, finance, and freight. Israel on the other decided to go after technological lead of the emerging forms of energy whether electric, wind, or solar.

More on Google's Innovation

Continuing with the look at Google's innovation drivers, I've watched a video of Douglas Merrill, Google's CIO, speaking about Google's Innovation Plans. Here are some of the points i noted:

• Start with the User
• Listen to Problems, not Solutions
• Pay Attention to Data
• Live Out Loud
• Foster Diversity
• Experiment Often, Fail Fast
• Let Engineers Find their Passion
• Chaos Breeds Creativity

You can watch the video here.

9 Notions of Innovation @ Google

Just listened to Marissa Mayer's - Google's VP for Search Products and Users Experience- speech about what keeps Google innovative. They are:

1. Ideas come from everywhere
2. Share whatever you can
3. You're brilliant, we're hiring
4. A license to pursue dreams
5. Innovation, not instant perfection
6. Don't politic, use Data
7. Creativity loves constraint
8. Users not Money
9. Don't kill projects morph them

If you have time you can go and watch it here. It's worth the time

The Geekness Factor

Today i gave up most of my Saturday to attend communityNext - the viral marketing conference. I was hoping to get some insights similar to those you get from reading something like "Tipping Point", but this time hearing it from those experiencing it first hand. Unfortunately i got very little of that.

Except for one or two speakers/panelists, i really didn't get anything concrete that can be reapplied. Telling you that the main thing is to have a really good product, doesn't really add much. The over emphasized fun factor was starting to sound like irresponsible and goalless. This is not to say that there weren't a couple with meaningful things on their hands. But there was a big portion of people that are doing things that "they" think is fun and period; a not seemingly-interesting person broadcasting his life 24/7, a blog that has to do with cats and cheese burger, and a guy who thinks its extremely obvious that booze is so cool with email and have nothing to add more than that.

It's a different world out there. And they are the ones millions of people are downloading their apps on facebook. It's interesting to get to see it from the inside, but i don't seem to belong to it. Maybe I would have a different opinion if i were in their shoes playing around to start the next big thing, or maybe the next not very big thing.

"Crossing The Chasm" a playback of 4 years of sales

Yesterday i finish reading "Crossing the Chasm", which i started reading less than ten days ago. I am usually not that fast with books, but this one was very special. It took me through a series of flash backs to the years i spent in software startup selling enterprise software. Lots of "Aha's". I believe anyone who's embarking on selling software to business would find it extremely useful.

The main theme is how a startup go mainstream with a disruptive high-tech product targeting the enterprise customer. There are a lot of basic marketing covered in the book. There is the typical segmentation, targeting, and positioning, and various elements of the 4 P's. However, the books main proposition is superimposing the product lifecycle and identifying different types of customers that are served in each stage - technology enthusiasts, visionaries, pragmatists, & conservatives. It adapts those marketing elements to the stages of that life cycle, and fleshes those high level concepts into more concrete images and tactics.

If not for THIS, then for what?

If I'm to spend my career in business, that's what can make it exciting!!!



This video is from Microsoft surface. Although similar technology was introduced 6 months @ TED, "hats up" for Microsoft for they'll bring it to market.

Facebook dominates my Spring Quarter

I am one of Facebook's 24 million happy users. Having joined around 6 months ago, together with stumblevideo.com, facebook became my primary online destination. And as many ppl, reconnected me w/ ppl that were almost wiped from my memory.

But my interest wasn't just as a user. I spent some of my time this quarter working on a follow-up case on facebook for one of Prof. Barnett's classes. The main focus was to examine the actions they along the past year. This was nicely concluded with attending the session where the class discussed the case in the presence of Mark Zuckerberg. This is the third time i see Zuckerberg talk. Despite how young he is, 23 years old, he's an extremely smart grounded person that knows what he's doing.

I also attended the facebook f8 launch and hackathon a week earlier, of course i never knew what that was until i was there. That was a nice thing to see, developers from all over the place, coming in one place, to literly start coding their f8 applications.

That said, it's worth commenting on their platform launch. I think it's definitely the right move for an extremely ambitious company. It's the move that facebook needs to have its valuation rise to $8 billion as its owner said its worth. This said, it's not an easy move. The resemblance with Microsoft is initially dazzling, but a more careful analysis points out that it is a different situation. According to Zuckerberg, their value proposition is in an active social graph. I would modify that to say that their value proposition, at least to me, is an active social graph of a friendly nature. This might change with the opening of the platform.

What's Valuable about YouTube?

I don't think it's the endless user generated content - a lot of it really sucks. I also don't think it is the free copyrighted content that is provided - it is not that expensive after all. But what really makes a difference is the focus that u get on quality sections of copyrighted content.

If someone spends time ripping of a scene off a dvd or off TV then this is probably worth watching at least for certain people. It saves other users having to sit for a complete episode or show to get to that particularly interesting part and having to bear with less interesting if not boring sections.

A competitor to YouTube might be better off limiting it's content to copyrighted content, but have users do the programming. The users would select which scene's to publish, and the business model can be based on revenue sharing with the original content owner and the publishing users.

It's funny that this strategy is largely inline with YouTube's slogan, "Broadcast Yourself". But Youtube now became, "Produce & Broadcast Yourself"

Future of Advertising in Digital Media

The $10 student special price for the $395 ticket wasn't the main attraction to attend today's Stanford-Accel symposium on "The Future of Advertising in Digital Media" - especially having had to miss two class for it.

Although i thought i will be more interested in the panels, i enjoyed Sir Martin Sorrel's key note the most. Key takeaway was that the growth in advertisement will be in nontraditional media in mature markets and traditional media in non-mature market. Another is that the tides are shifting towards the east side of the world, not just in terms of business, but also in terms of technology leadership.

Sir Martin Sorrel had some strong opinions about Google. He described Google as a friend in the short term and a foe in the long term with Google's acquisition of DoubleClick making the short term shorter. He also contrasted Google and Microsoft, where he characterized Google as an integrator and Microsoft as a builder. He also contrasted Google and Yahoo saying that Google is about technology and Yahoo is about people.

As for the panels i attended, I felt they tended to be more promotional and/or politically correct rather than insightful or opinionated. Not much beyond the prevailing belief that digital media is the next big thing. However, two ideas that were emphasized is the value of mood sensitive advertising and high engagement interactions.

Finaly, i didn't do much networking. I guess the mood and the dress code had to do with that.
However, i ran into Tony, my former LDP instructor, and unexpectedly we ended up having a very personal chat.

Edgy Career Choice

I am in a middle of a big dilemma. What's the best thing to do next summer? (1) Join a big high tech company, (2) Join a high tech startup, or (3) join a not-for-profit in South or East Africa.

When it came the time to accept my Amazon offer a week ago - the only one i had at that time - i realized how confused i was, so i boldly (crazily) declined it. Now I am getting a second chance to be insane, yesterday Yahoo contacted me for a marketing internship. Everyone says Yahoo is not at its best times, but i have an initial liking to the people there. I think it depends on the project I'll be working on. Right now the most exciting would be a big company that has a big stack in the online video space - think TiVo, YouTube, GoogleVideo, or Apple Tv. I hope Yahoo has big plans there especially after the NBCUniversal/NewsCorp new company.

As for startups, most people say the best thing is to join a growth company not at a very early stage - think Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or eHarmony. However, this needs close networking which will take time and I it would be a huge risk. Another alternative, which is what i am working on, is to try and find a really cool early stage startup set to disrupt an industry - think powerset, joost, or xoopit. Here i have an advantage of the ESP funding offered by the Center of Entrepreneurship at the GSB to cover part of my compensation. I can land something quicker here but it requires more judgement.

The int' development at Africa is a huge decision. A big shift. I don't know much about what to expect. However it seems to be the kind of thing i can feel most comfortable and satisfied to contribute too - think acumen fund, kiva.org, or one-acre-fund. Kiva is great place because they combine social entrepreneurship with interent technology, however, they don't offer summer internships. The ultimate thing though would be to Win-a-trip-Africa. I can't think of a more life changing experience than this one.

Some would say i am making too big of a confusion for myself, but i think it is worth.

Barney of PoswerSet at VLAB's event at the GSB

Just came from one of VLAB's interesting panels that was held at the GSB. I had go to it despite having one of my finals tomorrow. The panel was about "Next Generation Search".

At the center of the event was Barney Pell the CEO and Founder of PowerSet - the startup aiming at disrupting online search through the use of AI. Barney made a very informative presentation about his vision about search and PowerSet's potential.

It was interesting to know that PowerSet's technology is based on exclusive rights to some of PARC's NLP technologies that weren't widely applied. I would typically think a startup develops all its core technologies from scratch. This said, PowerSet has added value by adapting this technology to serve online searchers and advertisers.

Among the things Barney presented was the results searches like "who did IBM acquire?" as obtained from PowerSet and Google. The discrepancy in the relevancy of results was impressive. Despite this being a highly controlled experiment, the potential is clear.

Among the panelists, was Munjai Shah, CEO and Co-Founder of Riya that had launched like.com. Munjai pointed out the relatively high indexing cost both linke.com and PowerSet have - Powerset cost is 100 times more than Google's. This requires huge CapEx giving Google a big advantage. PowerSet offsets this by renting processing power from Amazon at relatively low costs. Nice interplay with AWS.

Another concern is language sensitivity, not to mention dialects. From Barney's response, it seems there would be considerable discrepancy in the accuracy across different languages.

Despite these shortcomings, the promise of PowerSet remains compelling. And it would be nice to see how this will develop in the future. It was very interesting to be int the middle of this active discussion because i was just proposing to my strategy professor to do an independent study about incumbents and entrants in consumer Internet with digital media and search as the first two suggestions.

For such events and interactions, i don't want to leave the bay area in the summer :( and go to Amazon.

Ballmer Visiting the GSB

Yesterday, Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, came to talk to the GSBer's. It was interesting to know that he is a GSB dropout. He left school after his first year after being pitched by Bill Gates.

He's definitely a very smart and intense guy - If you haven't experienced his intensity, check the video below :).

Ballmer talked about...
- how he joined Microsoft - Gates pitch
- taking over after Bill Gates
- Bill Gates - the smartest guy he ever met,
- Microsoft Vs. Google - how Google made one big trick (search), while Microsoft has done more than one trick and how he thinks the rate of Google's growth is insane.