As a student I had, like most students, a love-hate relationship with MIT. You love the environment, the rich academic ambiance, the incredible breadth of talent, the access to world-class resources, the proximity to Boston but hate the fact that it can be incredibly intense and why do those problem sets have to be so hard and why does it have to rain so much?! As a sophomore, I spent 15 consecutive hours trying to solve a 18.03 (Differential Equations) problem only to be told subsequently by the Professor that the theorem had no known solution and he wanted to see how his students approached it! Love it or hate it. MIT is now officially the #1 university in the world. MIT received an overall score of 100, beating out the University of Cambridge, who came in at 99.8, and Harvard at 99.2. If MIT were a country, it would have the 11th largest economy in the world. As of 2006, 25,800 companies had been founded by still-living MIT alumni, employing 3.3 million people, according to the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.
MIT Ranked as the #1 University in the World
Judging the G-Startup Competition at the Global Mobile Internet Conference
I was honored to be a lead judge at the G-Startup competition of the Silicon Valley Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) held at the San Jose Convention Center. Other speakers and judges included Yuri Milner, Tim Draper, Vaughan Smith (VP, Facebook), Phil Libin (CEO, Evernote) and Chinese billionaire Lei Jun. GMIC is the largest mobile Internet conference in Silicon Valley drawing 5,200+ mobile leaders from 45 countries. My top pick from the slate of companies I evaluated, Disherence, also happened to win the overall G-Startup award. Congratulations to the Disherance team who came to Silicon Valley all the way from Moscow and did a great job presenting their solution. I look forward to using your product. Watch out, Yelp and Urban Spoon!
Sweet and Sour of Investing – Part 2
I was pleased to be a featured speaker on Part 2 of the Voice of America Radio segment relating to the “sweet and sour of investing.” You can listen to the entire segment here.
You’re a game-changer! You’ve created the new product or service of the millennium, but have no money to take it to market. Your best options: beg your FFF (family, friends, fools) circle, tap an angel for seed money, or convince a venture capitalist to invest millions. Our experts have a lot to say. Chris O’Connor / Taptera : “You’ve got to have a pretty face (user experience) to get attention; the old ‘desktop’ solution isn’t very sexy with VCs.” Sanjay Parthawarathy / Investor: “When the VC’s ego is valued higher than the funding, it’s better to look elsewhere.” MR Rangaswami / Sand Hill Group: “In these frothy financial times, how many entrepreneurs want to use the strategy of a company that is ‘Built to Last’ versus ‘Built to Flip’?” Gaurav Tewari / SAP Ventures: “Picking the right investor is one of the most crucial decisions for an entrepreneur. If you thought getting married is a commitment, try raising money.” Join us for more on the Sweet and Sour of Investing – Part 2.
The Four Types of People
I just read a bunch of articles by James Altucher – I hadn’t heard of the guy before but ran into one of his articles and ended up spending a bit of time on his site navigating his posts. Lots of good stuff there. One of the posts mentioned his view of the four types of people in the world and how to deal with them. I found this so useful, I thought I’d synthesize it here:
1. Happy People: People who are genuinely happy with their lives at this moment in time.
- ”For you to go from success to success you must first be sincerely happy for the people who are happy around you. Like attracts. Picture all the people you might resent. Spend five minutes a day training your brain to be happy for them. “
2. Unhappy People
- ” Try to cultivate compassion. It doesn’t mean you have to drain yourself to help those less fortunate. If you can share what you have, all the better. If you can give a word of advice, do it. What you give, comes back tenfold.”
3. Good People: This is different from “Happy”. These people legitimately want to help others.
- Be grateful for all the people good to you and think, “this guy is good. I wish I could be as good as him. I hope I can help him in any way I can.”
4. Crappy People: People who will do you harm, no matter what you do, for no reason at all.
- Remember: “When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig gets happy”
- COMPLETELY IGNORE THE EVIL PEOPLE:
- Completely ignore them.
- Don’t think about them.
- Don’t talk to them.
- Don’t write them.
- Most important: Don’t give them advice.
- Most important: Never gossip about them behind their backs
Parking Space Theory of Life
Great line from Faust :
“I call it the Parking Space Theory of Life. Don’t park 10 blocks away from your destination because you think you won’t find a closer space. Go to where you want to be. You can always circle back to where you have to be.”
Sweet and Sour of Investing: Do’s and don’ts of making the deal
“Wow! You’ve got an amazing idea for the game-changing new product of the century. But no money to bring it to market. What to do? Your road ahead is paved with decision trees and gotcha traps. “Picking the right investor is one of the most crucial decisions for an entrepreneur. If you thought getting married is a commitment, try raising money,” cautions Gaurav Tewari.”
I was pleased to be featured on Voice America Radio Show, “Coffee Break with Game Changers,” a few days ago. You can listen to the audio clip here. Segments appear at the following times for expedited listening.
- 3:08
- 6:50
- 16:45
- 23:00
- 36:00
- 49:20
Online Marketing Revolution
Consumers are increasingly using email, mobile, social media and websites to access information and interact with brands. Media consumption is shifting from offline channels to interactive channels, driving marketers to increase the percentage of advertising spending on interactive marketing. According to Forrester’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2011 to 2016, U.S. marketers plan to increase spending on interactive channels (defined as display, search, email, mobile and social media) as a percentage of total advertising spending from 16% in 2011 to 26% in 2016, creating a projected $77bn market in the United States by 2016, of which email, mobile and social media marketing is expected to grow from approximately $4.8bn in 2011 to nearly $15.7bn by 2016, representing a compound annual growth rate of 27%.
