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Eating Local
2010-08-13 03:00:00
I spent some time learning about the “western diet” that we have here in the United States and was fairly shocked at how dramatically it has changed over the last 20 or so years, partially as a result of a shift in farming policy in the 1980s that encouraged rapid production growth in corn through ...
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Some Thoughts on the iPad
2010-06-09 03:30:00
When I initially saw the iPad, I thought it was a big iPhone and balked at the idea that it was running iPhone OS (now iOS) instead of MacOS. Granted, the hardware looked great, but I did not see how it would fit in with my everyday life. After spending a week with one, I ...
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An Experience With Kiva
2009-12-10 17:22:00
I have been using Kiva for the last week and it has been a great experience. I am clearly a bit late to the game signing up, but I had to give it a try. For the few who may not know, Kiva is a micro-lender of sorts that facilitates peer-to-peer lending for emerging market entrepreneurs ...
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Ochos Rios Trek
2009-12-07 14:59:00
So far, all is well in Kingston, Jamaica. On a whim, I decided to rent a car and drive up to Ochos Rios this weekend. This plan soon fizzled when a colleague “strongly suggested” I not do that until I am more adjusted — apparently driving in the countryside is a bit sporadic. Instead, I ...
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If Salvador Dali had a cat?
2009-12-04 06:04:00
It would look like this. All the time.
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Hello Jamaica
2009-12-04 04:39:00
For reasons I have yet to discover, I took up an opportunity from my employer (a known multinational investment fund) to do some work on the ground in the Caribbean. Before I knew it, the wheels of the plan were skipping along the runway in Kingston, Jamaica. I’ve only been down here a few days, ...

Shifting to a Digital Library
2009-06-13 02:24:00
Well, it appears I?ll be moving in a few weeks as school is officially almost done. As a first step, I?m unloading some furniture on Craigslist, which is always a fun experience for me. Selling stuff online is a sure way to meet some interesting folk in the area. The first to go was my ...
More About: Library , Digital

Complacency
2009-03-09 22:13:00
This clipping from a professor (c. 1994) is classic. It cuts right to the root of flaws in our educational system. Granted, I am biased to my own experience, but I found the public system of lectures, bells and repercussions to be suffocating. It may have changed since, but I doubt it. This conditioning was ideal when graduates would leave for lifetime employment at a nine-to-five job that rewarded passive obedience. Unfortunately, the industrial era has long-ago passed and with it went the ability to hide behind the facade of smiles and nods. If we are again to succeed, companies need strong minds who are innovative and not fearful of expressing opinions. Granted education reform, no matter what form, mimics turning a battleship in unsteady seas, but I would like to see more entrepreneurship and creativity encouraged. We need more innovation, with that we can build the drones. share this post

Housing Price Impact on Household Income
2009-02-23 01:19:00
The deflation of the housing bubble (which was fueled by low rates and relaxed lending standards) triggered the current financial crisis and is now impacting Main Street through deteriorating consumer confidence. Falling home prices are a sure way to turn consumer spending levels toxic, but I think it is more than fiscal conservatism that is triggering decisions. I took a quick look at median home prices (and the year-on-year increases) and compared the gains to the average household income. The average consumer trend for the last 5-10 years has been to live comfortably, and then refinance surplus debt (credit cards, auto-loans, etc) into the home mortgage. As the mentality that home prices will always go up persisted, it became easier for consumers to associate home gains as additional household income that could be captured through refinancing. Although based on wide assumptions, the table below shows that consumer incomes were 10-20% higher due to average home price appreciation...
More About: Household , Income , Housing , Price

Building Facebook Connect into Wordpress
2009-02-21 01:03:00
This afternoon I took a shot at building some elements of Facebook Connect into this site. Overall, it was a fairly painless process and I think the results are pretty cool.  To borrow Facebook’s language, Connect lets you: Seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with your site Connect and find their friends who also use your site Share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook In easier language, it means that this site can now recognize visitors by their Facebook profile (if allowed) and (if wanted) can now distribute information back to their profiles. For example, if you comment here you can elect to publish comments back to your newsfeed in Facebook. You can also invite friends to this community, share content back with Facebook, etc. This particular blog is running on Wordpress , so I used  a plugin developed by Sociable! to get it up and running. Their documentation covers the main steps, but to highlight so...
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The Venture Capital Fund Structure
2009-02-19 23:55:00
Private Equity funds (including Venture Capital funds) are largely structured under a “2 and 20″ business model. This will run through a quick example about how it works from the Limited Parter and General Partner perspective. Limited Partner (LP): Invest money in the fund and include: pensions, investment managers, high-net worth individuals, etc. General Parter (GP): Select companies for investment and manage the portfolio until exit is realized (IPO, strategic sale, recapitalization) The 2/20 model says that the GPs receive a 2% management fee on committed capital (in this case, $100m) and 20% of any realized capital gains. The LPs, on the other hand, invest $100m into the fund and receive their initial investment plus 80% of the gains. These percentages can change, but they are fairly standard in the industry. The management fee is used to keep the lights on and pay salaries (supposedly) and the “carry” or 20% gains is the profit share. Now, in our exa...
More About: Venture Capital , Fund , Structure

Bad Apples (jerk, slacker and pessimist)
2009-02-19 05:57:00
I had a class tonight (Managerial Leadership) that was taught by a guest speaker, Tim Sullivan from Madison Dearborn. It was a great lecture overall and picked up on transitional leadership elements between the military and private sector, among others. One point that stuck out was regarding team dynamics. The research he brought up concluded that a team’s outcome is not necessarily dictated by the best performer, but more likely by the worst. This is sort of a weakest link analogy. Essentially, there were three team members you wanted to watch out for (or more importantly want to avoid being): 1) The Jerk - condescending, sarcastic, etc.  2) The Slacker - feet on the desk, late to meetings, etc. 3) The Pessimist - bad attitude, always negative, etc. Basically, if one or more of these characters are adamant in a given team structure, then a negative performance is more than likely. This was tested by injecting an actor into groups who convincingly played these parts and then ...
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Public Versus Private Markets
2009-02-18 20:38:00
I’ve been debating my stance on preference between private and public markets, specifically with respect to how I’m allocating components of my portfolio. I recognize that advice leads us down the idea that public market diversification is ideal. The logic that a 30+ stock portfolio is more diversified than holding only few companies is hard to dispute. This reduces the portfolio’s asymmetric risk (e.g. company specific risk). This way, if one company blows up, you hopefully still have 29 that are doing OK. The flip-side if that is if one does extremely well, you have diversified against the upside. This logic leads investors to the concept of the market portfolio, which is essentially a portfolio that owns every available stock and is fully diversified. This is closely replicated through Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and various global indexes. The premise here is that a market return (for example, 8%) does not compensate investors for ANY asymetric risk, which can...
More About: Markets , Public , Versus , Private

A Calvin and Hobbes Look at the Bailout
2009-02-11 21:47:00
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More About: Calvin , Calvin and Hobbes , Hobbes , Bailout

BankerBullshit.com - Sales Update
2009-02-11 04:49:00
Tonight I logged into my CafePress store, called BankerBullshit, and was surprised to see that sales are coming in for a few products! Hot items include Equities in Dallas shirts, Rainmaker Hats, and “Reach Out” shirts. I’m definitely surprised (but admit I bought a hat too). Apparenly a global collapse in the field of finance and investment banking drives sales in related, niche retail. I launched the store on the back of the Banker Bullshit Generator (crafted around 3:00am during my London banking days) and didn’t have any high expectations to generate sales. I was more curious about how the CafePress model worked from a resale perspective. Overall, I’m happy with it — but the UI / navigation is pretty terrible. And you guys are sending my checks to the wrong address (my fault)! share this post
More About: Sales , Update

IPhone Contacts Sync
2009-02-10 07:08:00
Google released a contact / calendar synch for the iPhone. I’m fairly sure it works, but do I really want all of my gmail contacts on my phone? They have always struggled with contacts (missing the boat on social networking - except in Brazil) and, in my opinion, since having that ‘auto-add’ feature. The result is thousands of contacts and not all of them remotely useful. Do I really want the guy who subletted my apartment stored in my local directory? I suppose the fault is mine for not wanting to scrub through the contact list. Not this week… share this post
More About: Iphone , Sync , Contacts

Google Latitude
2009-02-04 22:54:00
Google is rolling out Latitude , which is a location publishing service. Will be interesting to see how this performs across platforms. Will likely pull using contact numbers, since the Gmail contacts base is crude at best. Many companies will compete for this space and my guess is the best social network will win, since the technology is replicable but the social data is more difficult. share this post
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Gotham Chopra, Virgin (Liquid) Comics
2008-10-03 02:59:00
Earlier today I had the opportunity to sit in on a Q/A session with Gotham Chopra, who was one of the co-founders of Virgin Comics . He’s had some incredible experiences and it was great to hear the entrepreneur’s take on the founding, and subsequent unwinding, of the comic book company. I am impressed that the pair, ...
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Investment Banking Model
2008-10-02 18:15:00
The decision by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to convert into bank holding companies was one of the final blows to the traditional investment banking model. The massive losses from trading floors (traced to falling home prices and asset-secured holdings) were too much to carry for the stand-alone broker dealers. As the flight to quality ...
More About: Investment , Banking , Model , Investment Banking

Farewell Blogger
2008-10-02 04:46:00
Dear Blogger , We had many a fun post, but it is time that I bid you farewell. As the internet has grown more open and innovative, you seem to determined to evolve into the senile old man of the web publishing world. How is this possible? You’re run by smart people and sitting under an ...
More About: Wordpress , Farewell

Game Theory
2008-07-15 06:23:00
Today was a bit math heavy compared to the usual. I spent the morning in business decisions class - running simulations on exercises including poker hands and conditional probabilities. For the most part, I can follow along OK. The professor is considerably brilliant and, on a funnier note, is the go-to-guy for McDonald’s when they ...
More About: Theory , Game

Back online
2008-07-13 00:01:00
After a brief hibernation, I think I may continue writing a bit more frequently now. It’s likely the tone of this space will take a slightly new direction, as the last few months have resulted in a number of pretty big changes for me. The major change was that I left my position at HSBC in ...
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Domino's pizza tracker
2008-03-26 01:14:00
I just ordered a pizza from Domino's and was given a link to the Pizza Tracker - which an application that shows the real-time status of your order from prep to delivery. A few minutes after ordering and the pizza is in the oven - not bad.

Two. Dollars. A. Share.
2008-03-17 06:53:00
I can't believe that Bear is going for two dollars a share - - I understood that times were bad for the Company, but I saw no indication last week that times were this bad. This company has been around for 85 years and is now being sold at a fraction of its 20 year dated IPO price. I was expecting someone to buy this up, but not so quick and certainly not so cheap. The building is worth more! Granted this is just market capital (which would likely have been zero under a Chapter 11), but still surprising. I would not want to be the accounting firm that has to due diligence the liabilities on this one.With Japan down 4%, I think we can expect a bloody Monday and another interesting week. Great.
More About: Share , Dollars

Format your website for iPhone
2008-03-14 03:31:00
Mofuse has a quick application that will translate an RSS feed /website into a mobile format. I made this blog into an iPhone format here (takes about three seconds) - even keeps the fav icon for adding to homepage. I also like how it offers a link to full HTML.
More About: Website , Iphone , Format

You take the high road, and I'll take the...
2008-03-14 01:57:00
Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, is famous throughout the entertainment industry for being more than just a little self-righteous.At a recent U2 concert in Glasgow, Scotland, he asked the audience for total quiet.Then, in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands, once every few seconds. Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone, "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies."From the front of the crowd a voice with a broad Scottish accent pierced the quiet..."Well, f--cking stop doin it then, ya evil bastard!"Link
More About: High , Road

Hulu is out to play
2008-03-13 01:02:00
Hulu is now out of private beta. I've been addicted to this web service (I never hooked up cable in my apartment) and this has become a go-to website for following The Office, House and an occasional episode of COPS. The new version also has an expanded movie library and a selection of HD. This product (earlier post here) took a lot of abuse when it first came around...dubbed Clown Co, but seems to be working out for the better. I only hope that the advertiser list expands (eternally brainwashed by Royal Caribbean and Nissan).
More About: Play , Hulu

LimeStore
2008-03-12 03:33:00
LimeWire released their music store, which is a web-based iTunes/Amazon competitor. My friend Jeff is on the development team - nice work.

Hoes, Oh No
2008-03-11 16:32:00
The storm is brewing for New York's moral crusader Elliot Spitzer. I have mixed emotions about this one - - considering I liked him as a politician and did look up to his ability to take action with a just cause. I think Fred Wilson captured it with his references to the pedestal; nobody is perfect, although it is surprising to see this level of blatant self-destruction. I mean, come on - as attorney general this guy was busting up prostitution rings.Regardless of the scandal that will likely usher in his political ruin, he has certainly left his mark on Wall Street. He was the player that pursued the billion dollar fines to the banking industry and pushed for the separation of investment banking and research. It's likely a few of his counterparts - Dick Grasso and the like - won't miss him too much.Some good news I can see is that New York's next governor may not veto the state's Segway bill. Spitzer wrote the personal vehicles off for New York City. I've been trying to get t...

Banker Bullshit meets Cafepress
2008-03-09 16:52:00
I recently played with Cafepress, which is an online market place that lets you develop and sell products without dealing with manufacturing, inventory or billing. The process to launch a store was actually pretty fun and only took a couple hours to set up. The Company offers both free and premium options and takes a healthy margin on all products sold.As an experiment, the store is currently targeting the financial community with finance-based jargon, similar to what you'd find in the bullshit generator. For example, you can get a 'rainmaker' hat or a 'let me reach out to you' shirt. If I feel inspired, maybe I'll add some more.In the meantime, I must disclaimer that wearing a rainmaker hat is not guaranteed to increase your bonus, but in this market anything might help.Note: Also launched a bookstore using Amazon's Associate program. Maybe more on that later.
More About: Bullshit , Banker