Amy_From Silicon Valley to Beijing

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2010-06-27T20:16:00.001+08:00

Please check www.kaipan.com where I am the co-founder. If you are interested in this space, please drop me a line.

Government money, accept or deny?

2009-11-28T16:38:00.002+08:00

I attended an interesting forum in Beijing on Thursday. There are three famous VC sitting in the panel, Hugo Shong, Partner of IDG AP, Yan Yan, Partner of Softbank SAIF, and Nanpeng Li, Partner of Sequotia China. They were debating with government officials on whether a start-up in the creative industry should accept government investment. Someone did a survey among the audience. Turned out that only one tenth raised up their hand to accept the money, while another one tenth raised hands to deny the money. The argument from venture capitalist is that accepting government money means a lot of time cost,so better not.

I totally agree. I was in the same situation these days after coming back to Beijing to work on a start-up. Government said they will subsidize the overseas graduates for being an entrepreneur, but the process is very long, and there are lot of forms to be filled. I have to spend half of time dealing with those processes, instead of focusing on the main business. I would rather have the government help with reducing the bureaucracy of starting a company. Looking back, Silicon Valley is really a nice place to start a company. Hopefully government offcials can learn to be more friendly to entrepreneur and understand their concern from deep heart.

electronic commerce in China

2009-11-09T18:42:00.002+08:00

I was going to buy a new PC. After asking around, friends suggested me going to 360buy.com(or Jingdong mall in Chinese name). The first time I heard about it is its financing story. It raised tens of millions of dollars in the last round of financing, which hits the headline of every business newspaper.

I went to the site, and selected a type branded by Acer as cheap as below 2500 RMB. Then I order a plug base, and chose to pay both after delivery. In five minutes after I clicked the "submit" button, a sales representative from 360buy called me and said he will take care of my order. wow, that's very fast service, I was thinking.

However, the next day, he called again saying the PC is not available. It may take longer than the schedule one or two days to arrive. I was pretty upset since no one told me so before I submit the order. Then I waited for a few more days before I found out that my order was blocked. I called the sales guy again, and he said there is something wrong happening on my order, and he will call to confirm with the logistic dept.

A few days later, I called again, and they said it already arrived and will be delivered in two days. However, the plug base I ordered is not available(though it is said to be available when I ordered it). How can I use the PC without those plug base? The salesman asked me to buy it in a store if I want it urgently. I argued that they should deliver a plug base to be for free. But he said he can't make that decision, and if I want to buy another type in a different order, I have to pay for the delivery fee.

It's not a pleasant experience for me. All in all, I made ten calls totally and haven't received all they need. They learned the hardware from Amazon.com, but they didn't get the software inside, which is how to make the customer satisfied. Customers should be updated frequently on how the order proceeds, which 360buy doesn't do; They also let customers pay for the mistake they made, such as a out-of-date status update. I would rather have a smooth online order experience, instead of dealing with a nice sales representative. I wasted more time in talking to them online. Customers will pay for convenience; if they find out that online experience is not pleasant enough, they will go to offline. No matter how much money you have, 360 buy, you should pay attention to it.

China Internet Conference 2009

2009-11-04T13:29:00.004+08:00

It's probably the biggest conference in China's IT industry. That's for sure, since this is a conference serving over 360 million web users and 192 million mobile internet users. I estimate there are over 5000 people attending the conference held in Beijing's International Conventional Center, most of them are young people under the age of 30.

Speakers are trying hard to promote their companies. Big posters such as Google or Sina can be seen anywhere. Internet guys are talking about the big monopoly such as Baidu, Sina, Netease and Tencent, while mobile guys are complaining about mobile operators. The keyword is the market, instead of technology, which for me, is a pity for a lot of technical talents.

Can China have a big Internet company as innovative as Google? I have no answer. Since I arrive here for only two months, I definitely see the struggling start-ups who are trying to survive first. The first question on a start-up is business model, though most of the investors know Google never make money when they get funded, or Craigslist just don't want to make a lot of money. For a lot of Internet companies, making money is always the first priority, which make them start charging users soon, instead of focusing on improving user experience. Kaixin001.com may be one of the few who has done well without thinking too much about the revenue. But beyond that, I see CEOs are busy thinking about how to charge users, instead of delivering a better service.

I hope the conference will have more innovative speakers and topics next year, at least something exciting, something that can give people a good dream.

It's been a long journey

2009-10-30T01:35:00.002+08:00

It's been a long journey from California to Beijing. But here I am. There are so many opportunities and so many obstacles. I keep wondering how some of the overseas company can succeed in this market since the rules are quite difficult, even for a local business person like me. However, I am learning fast on lots of relationships and the difference in China's IT market. I am glad I came back immediately after graduation since I can learn quickly because of my young age. One day when I look back, I would be proud of my decision.

Some of the lessons I have learned and will keep sharing:

(1) The market is huge but out of order. you have to be quick enough, you have to have street smart. Especially for Internet, people learn quickly, and they are all smart people.

(2) Have a local partner or adviser. I have a lot of local friends who helped me going through the burcraticracy of the government, the toughness of local businessmen. etc. Without them, I can't imagine my business will go on smoothly.

(3) Everyone can help you. It's amazing that even a random introduction can help with a million-dollar business, which I've never experienced in U.S. A big network of contacts is essential for a businessman. You know who you can call when you are in trouble, or eager to expand your business.

Those are not typical lessons in a business school. Have to be in real practice to know this. You lucky readers:)

Being in China

2009-09-10T22:38:00.002+08:00

It is a right decision to come back to China. Beijing almost become a strange city to me even in less than a year. People work hard, and it's never difficult to get banker working on Sunday, and to order food in the night. I even ordered water online, and got a phone call in one minute.

A lot of people are starting companies, especially Stanford Alumni. I already met a few who are doing well, and a few who are still working hard. They are impressive people. The Chinese government also tried to support people who studied overseas to come back to start company. I went to a few government-sponsored zone to visit companies and government officials. However, it's sad to see no one is really into helping build start-up. Some of them only care about charging start-up rental, and some of them only care about the number of start-up they attract.

So I totally understand why Kai-fu Lee, the former CEO of Google China, now left to start an incubator. China needs an incubator more than just an office for start-up. It's good that he realize that young entrepreneurs need more support in human resources, strategy, technology.etc. I am sure there will be more and more people doing the same thing.

Walking on the street, I feel overwhelmed by the crowds, but I sense their eager to succeed. The country is on the way to grow quickly.

P.S. if anyone can tell me how I can access blogger efficiently, that will be appreciated.

Back to work on thumb and dinner

2009-08-31T23:09:00.002+08:00

Back to China, two things I have started to do most, first working on my thumb, I started to sms a lot. It is like a replacement for my blackberry email, and now I type sms crazily. The second thing is dinner. Talking business has to happen during dinner, and even not a big dinner person like me has to adapt to it.

Good thing is I feel achievement every day. There are new opportunity and partners coming up every day, and I feel refreshed. Beijing is packed with people and opportunity. It's a trade off, but more like a trigger of a powerful bullet. Way to go!

My privacy concern with facebook mobile

2009-08-17T10:21:00.002+08:00

I just found out that Facebook Mobile occupied the address book on my blackberry. It automatically matched the name of my Facebook friends with the name in my address book, and then insert the facebook info of those matches to the address book. I never agreed to let this happen, at least no one asked me to agree with this option. Further, I don't know whether this info exchange is just one-way or two-way. If it is two-way, then it means facebook knows all the information on my address book, including my friends' phone number. I feel my privacy protection is violated by facebook.

Be careful when you download the facebook mobile.

I just can't stop laughing at this.....

2009-08-07T11:02:00.000+08:00

when you have to click the UI designer to close the Chrome window. ha.

Real-time search, is this the future?

2009-08-04T11:35:00.002+08:00

One thing I like about Twitter is you get real-time news from real-time people. Google news can't do this since it depends so much on newspaper. For me, twitter is more like what is happening to the world now, while Google news is what happened yesterday. A question I've always been thinking is if twitter can replace Google since a lot of people definitely stopped blogging and started twittering.

Today I ran into this website http://www.collecta.com/, which is a real-time search engine. It is still in early stage, but it is interesting that it searches comments across the web and tweets too. I can see this is a very good news tool for me to get updated information(though have to be specific, all you will get random comments all over). Newspapers is running out of fashion, and the next one is news wires.

A break from Google for one second. Just for some fresh news.

Paypal opened its platform

2009-07-29T15:20:00.002+08:00

This is the thing I loved about Internet. Open, open, open, even for payment. Seems a lot of opportunities.

http://finance.bnet.com/bnet/?GUID=9518883&Page=MediaViewer&Ticker=%24CNET

oday PayPal announced plans to open its payment platform to third-party developers with the release of new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow developers to embed PayPal’s secure global payment system into their applications and platforms.

In opening up the PayPal platform, developers can now create new ways to send and receive payments for services beyond traditional e-commerce. According to a recent McKinsey report, the global payments market represents a $30 trillion opportunity.

PayPal has spent over a decade creating a secure, global payments network for e–commerce and person-to-person transactions, which seamlessly integrates 27 financial networks, 15,000 local banks, 190 global markets and supports 19 currencies.

What Facebook should learn from Twitter, and in reverse?

2009-07-27T15:14:00.002+08:00

I have been using the app from twitter and facebook on my blackberry for a while. It's very interesting to see their difference, and in fact, they can learn from each other to improve the service.

What Facebook Can Learn from Twitter:

(1) shorter summary on the highlights of friends status, so that users can see more updates from friends just by scanning
(2) Remove the add friends button since people will rarely use phone to add friends.
(3) Also reduce the refreshing time. Twitter is much better on this.

What Twitter can learn from Facebook:
Facebook Mobile integrates into blackberry much better by having "facebook" on the navigation panel, and then it stopped sending me msg via email. While for twitter, it still sends me msg via email though I can get it from the twitter app.

GSB former dean to join Citi's board

2009-07-25T14:58:00.001+08:00

Finally, this gave me some confidence on Citi as an investor.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090724005298

Citigroup Board Names Three New Outside Directors and Announces Other Governance Actions

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Citi's Board of Directors today announced three new outside directors. In addition, the Board announced a new, non-executive Chair for Citibank, N.A., a new oversight committee for Citi Holdings and a new Chair of its Audit and Risk Management Committee.

The three new outside directors are:

Diana L. Taylor, the former Superintendent of Banks for the New York State Banking Department, and current Managing Director of Wolfensohn Capital Partners, a fund manager.
Timothy C. Collins, Chief Executive Officer of Ripplewood Holdings L.L.C., an investment firm that invests in financial services and other sectors.
Robert L. Joss, Ph.D., Dean and Philip H. Knight Professor of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and former Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Westpac Banking Corporation Ltd.

The new directors, who will stand for election at Citi’s next Annual Meeting, bring the total on the Board to 17 members – only one of whom (Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Vikram S. Pandit) is a member of Citi management.

China's shares to exceed U.S. in three years

2009-07-18T15:33:00.002+08:00

Bloomberg has an interesting article citing a fund manager with Templeton on China's stock market will exceed U.S. in three years. Beyond the size, I am more interested on opening access for global investors as well as foreign companies who want to list in China. Size is important, as well as globalization.

July 17 (Bloomberg) -- China’s stock market may surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest by value in three years as state- owned companies sell new shares and the nation’s 1.4 billion people put more of their money into equities, Mark Mobius said.

“The Chinese population is just dipping its toe into equities and they’ve got a long way to go,” Mobius, who oversees about $25 billion of emerging-market assets as executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management Ltd., said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in London. State-owned companies are “coming up with more huge” initial public offerings, he said.

I wish Baidu would be more like Google

2009-07-12T16:18:00.002+08:00

I read a very good article from Keso, a famous Chinese blogger, on the questions that if Baidu only exists for the purpose of marketing. It was deleted later, and I guess, because of the pressure from Baidu. But i still want to share it because it is the weakest part in China's Internet world now, and people have to face the problem.

Keso said the innovation will not naturally grow because of the increasing number of Internet users in China. Unfortunately, Baidu believed the other way, he said. "That's why Google is almost like half of the Internet, and changed the way people and enterprise work, while Baidu still positions itself as a marketing tool. It worked well in the past eight years, but Baidu is losing its edge in the impact on China's Internet. It's more about population business, and it's risky. He said Alibaba, instead, is doing something interesting to have enterprise more efficient.

Having been in silicon valley, it's amazing to see how a few big companies such as Google and Cisco pushed the whole industry. A lot of start-ups already planned to be bought by them in the future, while in my opinion, is a good thing. Big companies are not good at innovation, and buying small companies is an efficient way to go. Looking at Baidua and a few other big Internet companies in China, not a lot of them actually did merger and acquisition. They all believe they can do it themselves, while losing touch with the industry trend.

Baidu is safe for now, with the good financial numbers; but safe shouldn't be enough for this no.1 internet company in China. They should go further and set up a vision for China's Internet. Only until then they can be called a great company.

The Michael

2009-07-03T17:44:00.003+08:00

He is still a super star on the stage

He loves climbing trees(while that stupid journalist wasn't dare to), and he adores kids(while that stupid journalists kept asking stupid questions). He was hurt after opening himself so much. Sigh！！！

Are you kidding me? Citi raisedemployee salary by 50%

2009-06-24T14:39:00.003+08:00

Even i have a lot of friends working in investment banking, I still can't believe it. Citi just got bailout money, and it is just using this to compensate its employees. Come on, the excuse of losing employees doesn't make sense, since right now there are so many bankers on the street begging for a job. oh, poor US taxpayer.

How different between Facebook and Kaixin

2009-06-19T15:39:00.004+08:00

I am a daily user of two social networking websites: Facebook and Kaixin(kaixin001.com). Facebook is for networking with my Stanford friends, while Kaixin is for networking with my friends in China. Kaixin is said to be the copycat of facebook of China; however, it is not true just in terms of my behavior.

Difference 1: name.

I use real name on facebook, and all my friends use real name. However, I use fake name on Kaixin, while I know there are plenty of friends using fake name too(amazing we can still find each other)

Difference 2: activities
I usually look at the news feed on facebook to learn what my friends are doing: I leave msg to them, comment on the pictures, as well as upload photos; However, I don't often change my status on Kaixin, neither do my friends. I never have a profile photo there, and don't upload my vacation photos. I spend 90 % of the time on playing games with friends. We buy and sell each other, plant garden, and raise a lot of pigs, rabbits and cows as pets.

Difference 3: interactions with the site
I get plenty of msgs in my facebook account; I never communicate with facebook system. On kaixin, most of the message I get are from the systems, such as "your friend just bought you in 60000 dollars", or "you was just award 1000 dollars".

It will be some interesting research topic for academia on why such difference is generated. I am sure there is something related with different culture, or different user behavior. This may suggest that social networking website may have a hard time to expand globally. And there is always some opportunities for companies who work hard on learning local behavior.

How to create and implement a policy?

2009-06-09T15:19:00.002+08:00

China issued a new rule on requiring PC makers to include filtering software in new PCs recently, quoted to filter the harmful pornography content from the youths . I am confused by where it came from and the way it implemented the policy.

Three questions:
(1) If this policy only targets at youths, why every PC needs to include this computer? not every household has a young kid.

(2) If parents are worried about this, then why don't give them the option, say put a CD in the PC pack, to let them set up themselves?

(3) Curing a disease has to cure from the fundamental. Why don't spend more money on regulating those pornography website, instead of making a national-wide expensive policy like this? I would be curious to know how much taxpayers' money is spent on this? and is there any open/transparent bid on who is going to be the software provider?

If those questions can't be answered, then this policy is destined to be a bizarre.

M&A still going on in Silicon Valley

2009-06-05T14:02:00.001+08:00

When things are cheap, everyone is moving, especially big guys, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel....

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 4, 2009 – Intel Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Wind River Systems Inc, under which Intel will acquire all outstanding Wind River common stock for $11.50 per share in cash, or approximately $884 million in the aggregate. Wind River is a leading software vendor in embedded devices, and will become part of Intel’s strategy to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices. Wind River will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel and continue with its current business model of supplying leading-edge products and services to its customers worldwide.

Transforming Journalism

2009-05-20T15:01:00.002+08:00

Today I went to a conference organized by MIT/Stanford Venture Lab held in GSB. It is called News in the 21st centure: who will read print anymore? As a former news person, I definitely sense a lot of enthusiasm in the conference, and different touches on the future of the print industry. There's a guy named Rob Curley from Las Vegas Sun showing a bunch of projects they are doing on interactive media including a relationship of mafia and a map of history of different building in Vegas.

A few interesting topics include if Twitter is a type of journalism. Over half of the people in the room raised hands when asked if they use twitter. However, some people argue it is not journalism because no one is double checking sources.

Another thing is the comparation of usage of Kindle and iPhone. only three of four in the room have Kindle, compared with over half owning iPhone. This is interesting to see because Kindle is planning to change the whole newspaper industry(while only a few news person use it right now). If there's a book reading function on iPhone, I am sure it will be much popular than Kindle. another start-up idea?!!!

One thing I remember clearly is someone said: the question is not if newspaper will survive, but will journalism survive? Trained in journalism, I know how important the double-check sources and don't take annoymous quote are. However, do we still need those in an era with abudant information? I am seeking an answer.

my take-away from Berkshire meeting

2009-05-18T02:28:00.003+08:00

have been busy with class work for a week and finally came back to talk more on the Berkshire meeting. A few take aways I would like to share:

(1) A song named "my favorite managers". Berkshire made a music video rewriting the song of "my favorite things" in the Sound of Music. It exhibits the pictures of all the Berkshire managers in the video. A lot of times we see investors invest in a company without even knowing the management. here I can sense that Berkshire is really proud of its managers, and help promote them any time. I love the video.

(2) Both Charlie and Munger said good words on the government, which has surprised a few of my classmates.

(3)Munger, which is always cool, suggested people not to pay much attention the ratings.

(4)Who can succeed Buffett? I guess there will be no one. He is not only smart, but also good at building relationships. I think he will be a very good politician before learning that he actually came from a politician family. He said his successors have to learn how to build relationship with business managers, sellers, other investors and shareholders. and I think he achieved those in an excellent way."They have to understand different needs of those managers, and knowledge of individual personalities and meet different demands"-WB

(5)Both of them said investment is more about emotional peace, instead of high IQ. and I totally agree.

(6) "authority does not go to the position -- it goes to the person", this makes me think a lot.

(7) What's Berkshire's competitive advantage? the answer is surprisingly "little turnover". people buy and hold it for a long time, which no other companies can catch up. An interesting quote from Munger is "a lot of the corporate America are running from headquarter, with profit forecast in different branches. The stupidity of managing practice will give BH comparative advantage."

There are more transcript here, though it is not accurate. One of the best things is just go to the shareholder meeting yourself, since people hear different things from the same conversation.

The wisdom of two men

2009-05-05T12:24:00.003+08:00

here is my notes from the Berkshire Hathaway meeting. kind of in a rush, but still a lot of interest things. I read the news on WSJ and FT today, and they definitely missed a lot of information(I know editors are tough and spaces are limited). So I hope you can find more things you are personally interested from my personal notes. The numbers are based on the order of questions.

Warren and Charlie are definitely two of the smartest people i've ever seen, and the most modest.

1. Bought two equity options, from 15.14 to 9.94. 4.9 put options, have 15 to 21 years to run. Has to be lowered at that time. Will make time.

2. Financial literacy

3. Wells fargo: doing the best they can (munger: insane accounting)

4. Discount rate. (they got to do sth in b-school_

High IQ tends to fail, should give some points to others

5. Moody’s rating. It is all anticipation on housing price, not primarily payment system. Don’t pay attention to rating.

6. There’s real activities pick up in lower to middle end housing under 750K; right now it is eating up all the inventories(this is the second way, and the first way is to create demand)

7. Four managers 39% plus dividend. Better than average. “they are ready for the job, but should still learn how to build relationships with potential seller, shareholders, and other managers. They have to understand different needs of those managers, and knowledge of individual personalities and meet different demands

8. Teach value investing. 1-how to value a business 2- how to think about market

Invest in things you understand. Try to get rid of beta in the first 10 mins.

Investing is more about stability and inter peace of the decision.

“it’s simple but not easy”

9. Munger-just reduce nonsense. Your emotion is more important than your IQ. There is resistance to a new human kind to new ideas.

10. Authority goes with the individual, not with the position.

11. People’s behavior changed after the crisis. More people came to our website to save money. In the first 4 months, there are 600,000 policy holders.

12. It should be again S&P 500. The intrinsic value of Berkshire should be going up.

13． Wells fargo good business model. Leverage causes me trouble in the world

Control emotion. Don’t let u sell it because of the emotion

If they own a farm, they can’t get a quote everyday. You have to look at the asset itself to see if it is intelligent investment.

14. the government bailout should be used on infrastructure. Intent is the right thing. It will have consequences on its scale. We don’t think it should be a free ride.

M: hugely electricity improvement

15. borrowing cost higher compared with companies with high guarantee. Real problem for us now. We use borrowed money for utilities. 58 billion

16. They cause leverage to run wide. They cause counter partners to sign sth difficult. Move market in different way. Pop up in unpredictable way. After 1920, congress said people can’t borrow a lot of money to go again the securities. Federal reserve introduced swap. Still 50%, but can do 100% now.

Settlement date got pushed down. Hard to find another person on the other side. More dates, more and more default.

“Great crash”

Ben graham would not like this idea. He would be willing to buy and sell mipriced.

M: derivative dealers take two advantages: 1.??? 2. Being in the same line of clients and have better advantages. “it’s a dirty business”. “ we need less in America”

17. Freddie and fannie, preferred stock was gone. No reason to go up equity. There are lots of earning power there.would buy those wealth there. Chrylser: not a sustaible business model. When common equity is wiped out, the business doesn’t worth a lot of money.

18. competitive advantage: unique shareholders, low turnover rate of 20%, deeply embedded culture. You can’t do this elsewhere. Need to add the right ones.

M: a lot of the corporate America are running from headquarter, with profit forecast in different branches. The stupidity of managing practice will give BH comparative advantage.

“what would they do differently if they own the whole place”? usually asking the CEO. That’s the difference with other companies. They know we are not going to leverage it up.

19. When we buy companies, we buy tips. We want our partners to understand. We are reluctant to sell them. We own some stocks for some decades. If we were wrong, we sell. 6.6 billion; sold a couple of million in J&J just because of its cash flow level.

20. I like the personal contact. Different attitude. Webcast will turn into a TV show.

21. Inflation: we are following policies,

2.3 trillion

It’s not the taxpayer who are paying. It is the people who have a lot of purchasing power. Shrinkage of real-value dollar. It may be the Chinese who are paying for it.

(1) Earning power. You will have your share of national economic pie if you are best in your practice.

(2) Best products and wonderful business. Coca-cola. People will pay to buy the products they favorite.

M: invest in coca coal instead of government bonds

Declare ( I got paid)

22. Washington post

We would not buy one third of the newspaper no matter what price is. 1700 newspaper. They don’t have the price power, losing the customer and advertisers. They are not essential for them anymore. Changing everyday.

As long as we don’t think it will not make up a loss, we will stick to it.

Keep looking for a good model.

M: national tragedy They kept government honest. They will not be disireable. This is life.

23. south florida will be a problem for a long long time considering many units there

24. importance of opportunity cost – face problems in Sep and Oct. we love to have money around. $5 billion GS. We were faced with chaotic market for opportunity cost calculation constantly. Have to measure billion from one to another. Big transaction cost. It is a sign of opportunity cost.

25. Nature of advertising. We know half works, but don’t know which half. We will never stop with the advertising. We want every American investors to buy it, probably not China. Will spend more money this year. 800 million this year, compared with 600 million past year. We want Geiko and Coca to be in everyone’s mind. We are getting more than advertising money.

A brand is a promise.

We are a low-cost producer.

26. Irish bank??? Its more about business model. Best bank in the country. should have understood the exposure to development-related loan. “I just wasn’t paying attention”

WAMU-there were a lot of signs. You can get a lot of trouble leveraging.

The figures are there, just people didn’t notice.

Huge differentiation between businesses.

M: allow a conservative bank to show a lot of earning when they made a lot of big loans. If accounting has made a big job, then banks will not do this. I am ashamed.

Afternoon:

1. Get uneven

2. M: BYD investment is worth it, feel privileged to be connected to. 17000 engineers, and beat all the JVs with foreign brands. People need batteries. The founder is young.

3. Moody downgrade didn’t affect the borrowing cost. But affect the brand globally

m-“they show considerable independence”

4. “in the end you will find I am right because Munger is smart and I am right” -WB

5. Wind energy “net exporter of energy” love the idea of putting in more in wind. One of the advantages we have is we are a big tax payer. We will do more in utility business. In the pipeline, we did well by not investing in dynergy in 2002.

M-in any utility subsidiary we will be leaders

Fairest opinion based on fairest opinion

6. 4 trillion in money market account, sep meeting in coglone

7. Scale causes lower return, a few percentages in our intrinsic value over S&P 500. It will not be 10 percent any more. Cant happen with big money

8. It’s very hard to imagine we will have nothing to do in China. We want to buy more in BYD, but they didn’t sell it.

9. 1 trillion reserve can’t hold US assets. 250 billion in paper. They have reluctance to put in US government bonds. The purchasing power will be deducted. They are running a trade plus. China has the most successful economic policy in the world. They lost purchasing power a bit, and that’s great policy. US and China should be friendly nation.

10. (admit mistakes)

11. Don’t believe in contracts. It’s about the passion. Will they keep the same passion no matter what will happen. It’s all about mutual trust.

12. we will not spin off any business since we have wonderful business. See’s candies generate a lot of cash flow; if they can’t use it, we will use it somewhere else

13. what people need-water, over populated countries

14. 3 billion swiss francs invested in a swiss securities(12% a year) . get called.

15. Nationalized the annuity business is a good thing. Public got outraged.

16. Keep hedging on euro dollars. Could be a pain in the next year.

17. Honor and system: shareholder is the honor, executive is the system

18. We find people who love their business

19. Interest rate were much higher last sep, so good opportunity to buy into US equity. Corporate bonds is cheaper and disorganized, Mcdonald burger, cheaper, happy since I am going to buy it for the year. Wait for 1973 1974

20. Picking is not the game, but pricing is the game.

21. Household information is important, residential construction.

listening to Buffet in Omaha

2009-05-03T11:30:00.002+08:00

I am in Omaha these days, attending this big annual shareholder event for Berkshire Hathaway. There are 35,000 people coming for the meeting. It's amazing how people respect Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger, and they are definitely the smartest people i have ever seen who can execute. Taking down a lot of notes, I learnt a lot on investment philosophy and their sense of humor. Stay tuned.

Should Lenovo buy IBM PCD?

2009-04-23T08:55:00.002+08:00

Business school is interesting to me since there are always a lot of role-play opportunities. In the role play, we can be senior managers, outrageous employees, bankers, board members and so on. This week, my fellow classmates and me are bankers helping Lenovo bidding for IBM's PCD division during the synthesis seminar, one of the newly created classes in our class.

It's interesting to look back at the deal again, and debate among ourselves on whether Lenovo should buy the PCD division from IBM. There are definitely a lot of downside and risks in doing that. However, I can sense the excitement of Lenovo managers when they first thought about the deal. such a great opportunity to expand to the global market. From our analysis though, the risk is also pretty high. Even IBM can't make it profitable, and how can Lenovo do that considering the cost saving will be very limited. Is there any other good target needing less money than 2 billion plus? Sure, there are, though not glorious.

Financial Times made the M&A the front page on Thursday, talking about M&A market are coming back. However, how many of them will work? A perfect business model for me will be to grow organically step by step, and that's the way to build a long-term business. Oracle may be too rich to keep the $7.1 billion in its pocket, but is Sun a good choice? and how much synergy can it bring?

It's a crazy world now, and I believe cash is King, always.

Is it a good time to start a company?

2009-04-12T09:29:00.003+08:00

For some reason, I missed this post in my Google reader thread. But the comment is still up-to-date in my opinion. Enjoy.

To summarize, it is a good time to start a company if you can get funded. ha, quite a chicken and egg topic.

Lucrative secondary market

2009-04-11T14:46:00.002+08:00

Today, we talked about liquidity in the asset allocation class. A very famous professor, a veteran investor too, said that the reason that LP now want more liquidity is that they want to buy the cheap assets in the secondary market. A lot of people got caught in putting more weight on private equity and now has to offer at a huge discount.

Maybe a good time to start a distress debt investment vehicle?

Start a company in the valley or in China?

2009-04-08T02:39:00.002+08:00

My friend Marc raised an interesting question a few days ago: start a company in the Valley or China? I personally have been struggling with this question for a long time. So here is my two cents. would love to hear the feedback.

Start a company in the Valley:

1. Good weather(save a lot of time)
2. Lots of investors
3. Lots of start-up peers
4. Lots of bright engineers inspired by the dream
5. Good life style(all super outdoor, good to your health)
6. Good food(Chinese food:))
7. Good Stanford alumni network(good for me)

Start a company in China
1. Cheap operational cost
2. big and potential market
3. Bright engineers but hard to be inspired by the dream
4. Good food
5. lack of entrepreneur with successful track record
6. Familiarity of the market and culture(that's just for me)
7. Decent family time(that's for me, too)

What I expect more from Amazon Kindle?

2009-03-21T15:41:00.002+08:00

I still remember one of the interesting cases I did in my Strategy class in the 1st MBA year is on Amazon Kindle. Philip Leslie, a very smart professor, asked us the question in one of the exams on the business problems for Kindle.

At that time, I was still not a Kindle user, while I hope I was. I am in a trial with Kindle for a whole week, and there's so many things I expect more. Technically speaking, Amazon is trying to change the whole experience of reading a book, and it's hard imagine a person already read books for at least over 20 years before he or she tries Kindle. I hope Amazon does have a Chief Experience Officer for Kindle to actually design an enjoyable product.

(1) a bigger screen. Currently, there are only 12 lines in one page, which is such a pain for the fast reader like me. I get bored with pressing the "next page" button all the time.

(2) a touch screen. I do like drawing on a book, and i hope i can have a pen and draw on Kindle, just like my IBM Tablet can. If it is hard, then how about a scroll ball that my favorite Blackberry has?

(3) removing the keyboard. who needs a Key Board on a book reader? if you want to type an artcile, using laotop will be much faster. Removing the keyboard with definitely reduce the cost and make the Kindle available to more people.

(4) A folding screen. That will make Kindle more like a book.

(5) Move the power button and wireless button from the back to front. Come on, right now when I want to turn on or off the Kindle, I have to look for the button on the back, which is really not convenient.

The reason why users are crazy about Apple product is its super user experience. you can easily get addicted. For Amazon who is famous for its operation efficiency, there's still a long way to go on the product design part. Speaking of this, I believe Amazon will change fast. Look forward to trying the Kindle verson 2 and so on.

Google CEO: newspaper is dying

2009-03-13T04:06:00.002+08:00

When radio was invented, people said newspaper was dying; when TV was invented, people said newspaper was dying; now when search was invented, Eric Schmidt said newspaper is dying.

It turned out people were wrong for the first two times; then how about this time?

Eric Schmidt, a lecturer in Stanford Graduate School of Business, gave a speech to all MBA students on Tuesday. The main topic is trying to inspire the frustrated MBA students that America still has hope. However, it is more like a lecture on Google's vision in the media world.

"(The traditional media didn't get it; Internet is built on the abundance, not on scarcity. It is a "max" system, and they should try to maximize the distribution". Schmidt said. "Online behavior is very important now, and the maching can learn what you like".

Coincidentally(or not), Google publicized that it will match online adverts with Web users' viewing habits today. It is another controversial technique on people's privacy, but hay, Google always has this in all its services such as Gmail and Google News. and soon, everything becomes a standard.

I agree for Google, it is a strategic and smart move. Advertisers would love this because right now not a lot of people click on the small ads on the right of search results. But this turned out to be a traditional model, just as ads on newspaper or on TV. Schmidt's saying on the traditional media model is definitely contradict to what Google is doing now. Internet is a media, not different from newspaper and TV, though it has a fancy name "technology".

Do people still need newspaper? Sure, but in different format such as on PC or mobile. Do people still want to read a piece of paper to read on the train or at breakfast? Sure. The need is lower, but still there. I have bias on newspaper, while every time newspaper turns to survive and be stronger. Finger crossed!!!

Behind-the-scene story of Jack Ma in Stanford GSB

2009-03-02T18:00:00.003+08:00

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, was in Stanford GSB to give a speech to Stanford students and Silicon Valley engineers. I gave a welcome speech at the beginning, and asked Jack to do a MBA case with Stanford some time.

However, he didn't really like to do so. He told the audience: "all MBA have said are correct, but they can't execute it", or "professors are paid to speak". I respect a successful entrepreneur like him, but definitely he didn't realize the value of business cases. Chinese businessmen may think they are born to be successful businessmen, and don't have to learn from the history. Personally I don't think that's correct, a lot of business practices are the same from the old days to now. and hopefully people can learn from the experience to avoid making the same mistake.

Speaking of this, Jack is still an inspiring speaker.

Maybe Obama works??

2009-02-19T15:45:00.001+08:00

According to a report from State Street, North American institutional investors are regaining confidence while other regions are not.

Investor confidence is rising, according to the results of the State Street Investor Confidence Index for February 2009.

The index measures investors' confidence on a quantitative basis. It analyses the actual buying and selling patterns of institutional investors.

The index found global investor confidence increased by 12.7 points to 72.9 from January's level of 60.2. The increase was mainly driven by North American institutional investors, whose confidence climbed 13 points to 64.5.

There is evidence that institutional investors appear to have "left behind the extreme gloom that characterised their outlook towards the end of 2008," concluded the report.

Difference between my Chinese thinking and American thinking

2009-02-18T12:32:00.002+08:00

A native Chinese under an elite American education system:

Speaking in the class
my Chinese thinking: respect what professors say
my American thinking: challenge what professors say

Working with partners
my Chinese thinking: try to get along with first even he doesn't perform well
my American thinking: fire him when he doesn't perform well

Meeting with new people
my Chinese thinking: talk and chill first
my American thinking: let's talk about business

Going to a party
my Chinese thinking: have to go because the host came to my party last time
my American thinking: i am busy and don't really want to go

and there are more........

PIMCO_Stop the Decline of Asset Prices

2009-02-17T07:18:00.003+08:00

PIMCO, headquartered in Newport Beach, Cali, is one of the asset management firms I respect. it said the most important thing for an asset manager is to control the risk exposure on its web front page, which is very true. Bill Gross, one of the companies, just published a report on stopping the decline of asset prices as a way to revive U.S. economy. Very interesting theory, just want to share.

PIMCO’s thesis for several years has held that the levered global economy long ago morphed from a banking-dominated regime to one that hid behind securitized lending and structures resembling a “shadow banking” system. SIVs, hedge funds, CDOs and increasingly levered mortgage and investment banks fueled asset appreciation in all investment markets, which in turn propelled real economic growth and employment to unsustainable levels.

To PIMCO, the remedy for this deflationary delevering and mini-depression is simple and almost axiomatic: stop the decline in asset prices.

That is the same thing as saying that current yields must come close to matching the economy’s embedded cost of debt if default is to be avoided.

PIMCO’s advice to policymakers is as follows: you can’t bail out everyone, yet economic recovery is not possible unless certain critical asset sectors are not only reliquefied, but rejuvenated in price.

Capitalism at its philosophical and practical center depends on credit, and while new loans can be and are being advanced via the banking system, it’s a much more difficult task to force shadow banks to lend. That lending depends on securitization which in turn depends on stable and eventually higher asset prices than currently exist.

The original text is here.

Twitter got funding, again

2009-02-14T10:55:00.002+08:00

When the whole valley is talking about how twitter makes money, the investors definitely are not worried. Twitter, raised $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital earlier, making the total investment of $50 million.

Valley is always like this: users are always the first priority before business model.

Twitter Gets New Round of Venture Capital Funding (Update2)

By Joseph Galante

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc., the Web-messaging service used by everyone from Barack Obama to Britney Spears, raised $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital, gaining funding to expand products.

Benchmark General Partner Peter Fenton will join the board, San Francisco-based Twitter said today in a blog posting. Twitter had earlier raised $22 million, bringing the total so far to more than $50 million.

Twitter has more than 55 million daily users who post short updates on anything from their latest date to their views on Congressional hearings. The service has emerged as a valuable source of information and news, which users can access from mobile devices or personal computers, said Todd Chaffee, general partner at Institutional Investors.

“This is going to be a very large media property,” Chaffee said in a telephone interview. “Any time you have millions of users engaging with your service multiple times a day, there are a lot of monetization opportunities.”

The company, founded in 2006 by Chief Executive Officer Evan Williams with partners Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, rejected an offer to sell itself to Facebook Inc. last year, Chaffee said. The investors plan to make it an independent media company, he said.

anyone who figures out how to make money from radio should be a genius

2009-02-13T12:32:00.001+08:00

seems Google can't figure out now..

Google to Shut Down Radio Business, Cut up to 40 Jobs (Update3)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aS850OvFGSTs&refer=us

By Brian Womack

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular search engine, announced plans to shut its three- year-old radio-advertising business and cut as many as 40 jobs, saying the investment didn’t provide enough of a payoff.

The company, which expanded into the market with the 2006 purchase of DMarc Broadcasting Inc., is seeking a buyer for software that arranges ads on radio programs. Google will stop selling radio ads by May 31 and focus instead on online streaming audio, according to a blog posting today.

The move illustrates Google’s failure to parlay its dominance in Internet-search ads into offline media. The company said last month that it would close a business that sold ad space in newspapers. Google spent $102 million in cash for DMarc and agreed to pay as much as $1.14 billion in later installments depending on performance.

Founder and CEO, who can manage the company well?

2009-02-05T14:02:00.004+08:00

As one of the few Chinese companies who successfully expanded to the world, Lenovo is always respected. Liu Chuanzhi, the founder, is definitely a character. He appointed Yang Yuanqing, a 30-something, to succeed him as the CEO, and then Chairman. He always says "Empower the youth".

Now with a huge loss reported for the last quarter, Lenovo is struggling among the pressure from investors. Liu is coming back as Chairman, and Yang resigned from chairman to be CEO. The official reason is that Yang will be mainly in charge of domestic business since that's where he came from. I can understand the pressure Lenovo is having now, but the question staying on top of my head is who can manage a company better, a founder or a CEO.

Probably Levono is learning from Yahoo to have its founder back. However, we see Yahoo went still can't get rid of the destiny to be acquired by Microsoft. One of the companies that Leveno may learn is Cisco. Founders already cashed out, while the company has been going through two generation of CEO, John Morgridge, and John Chambers. Even in bad time, Cisco can still survive.

Founders usually have a lot of emotional attachment to the company, such as its original business plan. That type of connection makes it hard to get to a good decision since emotion is hard to control. That's why when company grows bigger, professional managers are needed because they are the one who made the decision for a better future, instead of a planned future.

All I can say here is "Good luck, Lenovo".

Look for one or two experienced website developers

2009-01-30T14:38:00.001+08:00

I am working on developing some web application in China, and looking for a rockstar developer. Please let me know if you are or you can connect to someone. Appreciate!!!

Meeting Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape

2009-01-21T13:48:00.003+08:00

He is someone in the valley with a big ego. He is outgoing and speaks fast but in a very organized way. I am a big fan of his blog: http://blog.pmarca.com/ though he stopped updating it for months.

He said that a successful entrepreneur has to hire a killer architect, watch closely on the change in the technology industry. He said it's hard to be a person who can both building the company and run the company. He said the silicon valley used to be a high-tech driven company but now turned more into consumer driven. He said the timing is very important.

One thing surprised me is his wide knowledge beyond technology. He is interested in media, and once spent a lot of time on reading the media history. He is also interested in financial service industry, and predicts to see a big change in the next 12 to 18 months.

I always respect smart people who work hard, and he is definitely one of the few.

Support Andy Xie

2009-01-20T17:03:00.003+08:00

I shouldn't try to support someone on my blog since it is not an unbiased report. But Andy Xie worths this. He is an independent economy research and once Morgan Stanley's chief economist in Asia, and is now blamed for "being a US citizen". (see the reports from Standard)

It is not a citizenship problem; the cause is Mr. Xie's bearish reports on China's stock market. An article for an editor on Securities Journal blamed Xie's negative speech as being a US citizen. All in all, it is a big cap that tried to make readers hate Xie.

Not to mention if Xie is Chinese citizen or not. People have freedom of speech if this speech doesn't affect other's safety/security. People have freedom to choose their citizenship if this change doesn't affect other's safety/security. We see a lot of non-Chinese speak good things on China, and a lot of Chinese took bribed money from China to overseas. A citizenship means nothing; for someone who dare to say something different, it's unfair to close his/her mouth. It's also dangerous to a country. China needs much more of those types like Xie.

I just saw an annecdote on Obama today. He is going to bring blackberry to the White House though it is dangerous for his securitiy.

He said: "If I'm doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an email and say, 'What are you doing?'

The pain of financial crisis

2009-01-20T13:34:00.003+08:00

1. US postal office just sent a mail on the adjustment of the mailing schedule after a decrease of 8 million first-class mail in 2001.

2. Jackson library in our school will be closed on Sat and Sun because of the lower budget caused by the financial crisis.

It's surprising on how the public system and education industry got affected by the financial crisis. Obama is going to be the President today. There are lot of things for him to do. A word "change" definitely can't change that much.

3G in China: not a long for now

2009-01-09T15:42:00.002+08:00

China finally launched 3G. It is a good news to the telecom equipment manufacturers, considering the over $35 billion investment in the next two years.

lucky or not, I tried 3G phone for two weeks in Beijing this winter. The phone is from Datang, and the network belongs to China Mobile. Frankly speaking, there's no advantage at all; network coverage is poor and the phone is a pain to use. For consumers, it will be hard for them to upgrade their nice phones into some ugly handsets with poor signals.

Definitely don't long on this one for now.

Chinese banks' efficiency

2008-12-18T10:43:00.002+08:00

I must be spoiled by HSBC and Wells Fargo; now in Beijing, I found even China Merchant Bank, the so-named China's best retail bank, still has a long way to go.

I was in the Dawang Road branch of CMB yesterday to apply for a new account. It took over half an hour waiting and half an hour to process. The other customers have same situation too. In fact, there are quite a few ways to improve the service, just a bit effort.

Ways to improve the customer experience based on the operation theory:
(1)
Reduce paper work and word-typing process. There are so many paper work involved in each service, while customer don't necessarily need it. For example for easy service such as deposit, signature is not necessarily needed. Another example is to reduce the required blank for applying new account, such as office phone/home phone.etc.

(2)
Add the number of customer rep in the normal service counter. Right now, there are three customer representatives serving in the hall(one manager, two intern), six reps in four normal service counter, three reps in the wealth management counter, maybe a few in the VIP room, too. Among the four normal service counter, one is in charge of easy service, and the other three are dealing with complicated service. The whole bottleneck is here. CMB can try to move the reps from the wealth management counter to the normal service counter to reduce the waiting line. Reps in wealth management counter basically doing nothing, while reps in the normal service counters are busy to death. CMB should increase the utilization in the other counter by letting them doing normal services.

(3)

Entertain customer while they are waiting. There are a lot of ad post but they are not entertaining at all. CMB should add some newspaper/magazine or some TV screen to attract customers' attention from waiting. Those entertaining tool will dramatically reduce customers' complain.

Good luck to CMB and other Chinese banks on the way.

bad service in Lotus Beijing Lotus Supercenter retail store in Beijing

2008-12-09T22:21:00.003+08:00

If you are ever in Beijing, never ever go to Lotus Supercenter retail stores. It might be close to your place, but you will sacrifice your good mood for this convenience.

I got a very bad experience in a Lotus Store in Beijing near Chaoyang park. I left my basket in a corner, and went to get something else. The basket just disappeared. I asked one customer rep, and she said she doesn't know. I asked another customer rep, and he said he is charge of the other area. There's a manager-look lady asked a rep to help me, and the rep's answer is she can't help since she just got off the work. I asked totally six employees, and no one ever felt responsible for an annoyed customer.

It turns out Lotus has this rule of return every goods left in five minutes, and someone may mistake my basket as a leftover. I understand this, but that can't be the reason for them to collect the goods basket the customer is still shopping with in two minutes. The rule is a burden to the customer, just because the store wants to keep the goods in order. Shame on them.

More importantly, no one takes an ownership on a single customer. i don't know how Lotus trained their employees, and how they got paid(definitely not for customers but probably for the speed of returning the goods). Every rep looked at me like there's nothing to do with them, instead of trying to take the responsibility to help me. When I asked to see the manager, a rep even said he is not allowed to cross the level to report to the manager.

I used to think the service in Asia is much better, but if you ever in Whole Foods or Safeway in U.S., you can feel like being helped. Reps will approach you and say "do you need help", the countermen or counterwomen will say "did u find everything ok. It's a pity that Lotus is founded by Charoen Pokphand Group, a well-respected Thai conglomerate.

With such a bad service, no wonder Lotus is losing a lot of money in China. It hired two senior WalMart excutive, Jim Haworth and Terry Pharr to save the loss in the beginning of the year and changed the company's Chinese names. My only words to the Jim and Terry: train your people to be customer-centric, instead of rule-centric; or everyone will stop going.

I have to spend 73 rmb in the store today, and will never pay them a cent in the future. Will go to Carrefour though it is a bit far.

If Lotus has a stock, definitely go short.

happiness can be contagious

2008-12-09T15:04:00.002+08:00

Happiness can be contagious, even happiness from strangers. so how about an idea of happiness social network?

From New York Times:

How happy you are may depend on how happy your friends’ friends’ friends are, even if you don’t know them at all.

And a cheery next-door neighbor has more effect on your happiness than your spouse’s mood.

So says a new study that followed a large group of people for 20 years — happiness is more contagious than previously thought.

Reform Chinese media just like reform banks?

2008-12-04T14:15:00.003+08:00

It's a shame for English media to miss this interview in Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly.Liu Binjie, the director of General Administration of Press and Publication in China, said the state-owned media organization should be restructured in the way as banks did. This is a strong signale on an incoming big reform in China on media organizations, and also a sign that Chinese press and publishing industry have to reform in order to survive.

If people, can remember, Chinese banks did restructure itself a few years ago, while the big four already or are going to list in the stock exchange, making the organizations more transparent.

If what Liu said is true, the impact will be huge on the media industry. For example, the newspaper industry in China prints over 44 billion pieces of newspaper every year; if each piece costs an average 2 rmb, it's gonna be a US$12 billion industry just by selling newspaper, not to mention advertising and so on.

For the book publishing industry, Liu said it will legalize the private capital's role in the industry. This means the private capital can directly publish books in the future, which will make the book publishing market more efficient, and I expect more innovative content will be generated.

Liu also talked about the plan to set up three big media groups with annual revenue over $10 billion. This is an easy part, since right now there are already three including CCTV, SMG and Southern Daily Group. This may not be a good thing for a media start-up, but at least their operation will be more transparent when they are listed.

Hope emerges amid the global financial crisis.

Best wishes to Mumbai

2008-11-29T16:23:00.001+08:00

The world peace is hard to remain, and there is always something going on in a corner of the world.

Let's pray.

the impact of financial crisis on MBA

2008-11-27T11:14:00.003+08:00

A lot of people asked me how the global crisis affect a MBA. In fact, the impact is much bigger than expected. A lot of companies canceled their campus recruiting, while even companies came are hesitated to give a full-time offer. I heard a lot of consulting firms only hire one or two people in a regional office, which is much fewer than they used to hire. Not to mention banks and private equities. I had lunch with a friend today, and our conclusion is that the MBA job market will not recover quickly even if the economy turns better.

People started talking about how difficult to get a job now, though Stanford MBAs don't usually take the offer from campus recruiting. Entrepreneur career seems more attractive since at least you can start cheap. Luckily, I am on this trek.

one year older

2008-11-10T14:50:00.003+08:00

Just celebrated my birthday this week. Time flies. It's already a year since I first came to Stanford. and I've now learned so much.

An old friend came to visit this Saturday. We talked a lot on the Internet in China, and especially social networking website. To me, there's still a lot of potential to explore. Now I have this dilemma if I should stay or go back after the graduation. My heart told me to go back, but there's still a lot of things to learn here. Hope I can get a sure answer very soon.

A good time to invest?

2008-10-26T16:33:00.003+08:00

It's a tough time to work in real world, but it is not bad to sit in the classroom now and learn about investment.

In Stanford, we have a class called the Investment Management and Entrepreneurial Finance taught by Professor Jack McDonald. He was once the Chairman of Nasdaq advisory committee, and is well connected in the industry. In the class, he invites all type of investment experts, from the founder of TPG to the Chairman of Capital Group Research. In the past few months, they talked on the downturn of the market usually in an optimistic way; interestingly, a lot of them mentioned the opportunity. One of them, founder of a US$15 billion PE firm, said the next 5 to 10 years is going to be a big opportunity to get a huge return. He said US's opportunity will sit in its advantage to deliver goods and services to other countries. More importantly, US should think more of the real problems such as energy dependence, climate change and food safety by working together with countries like China instead of treating it as adversary.

Clearly, there is a misconception in the US media that the US is going to an end. There are a lot of smart investors quietly observing the volatile market, waiting to be in the best deals. Looking at the past 100 years, a lot of great investors often emerged in the bad time. and who will be this time?

good time, or bad time, to start a business now

2008-10-13T11:42:00.002+08:00

Economy downturn finally spread to the VC industry, while Sequotia Capital called an urgent meeting to all its portfolio CEO last week. Definitely it holds a somber view on the economy.

I was talking to my business partner on if it is good time to start a business now. He is conservative, while I am optimistic. On one hand, it's hard to raise money, but on the other hand, there is less competition. Start-up takes time to develop and the downturn is a good time to prepare it well. When economy begins to fly, your business will start to fly too. Maybe this is too ideal, but isn't that entrepreneurs have to be passionate and persistent to succeed?

Excerpt: (if you need the slides from Sequoia, let me know)

http://blog.weatherby.net/2008/10/a-ceos-sequoia.html

Today, Sequoia Capital hosted a mandatory CEO All-Hands Meeting on Sand Hill Road. There were about 100 CEO’s in attendance and let me tell you, the mood was somber. I’m not one to perpetuate doom and gloom or bad news, but let me underscore this for you: We are in a serious economic downturn and this is just the beginning. Immediate, decisive and swift action is required, along with frugal, day-to-day management of expenses and our business is required.

***Here are my notes from the meeting. Keep this note in your in-box and read it every day. I’m serious folks, this is for our survival.***

Speakers:

· Mike Moritz, General Partner, Sequoia Capital (he moderated the speakers).

· Eric Upin, Partner, Sequoia Capital (Eric ran the $26-Billion Stanford Endowment Fund and knows a few things about Economics and investing.)

· Michael Partner, Sequoia Capital (Michael was recruited to start Sequoia’s very first hedge fund, coming from Maverick Capital and Robertson Stephens. I know him from my BEA days.)

· Doug Leone, , General Partner, Sequoia Capital

best wishes to the friends who left us

2008-10-12T14:59:00.002+08:00

Today Dean Joss sent us a bad message: three of my classmates were caught in an accident on Highway 1 and left us. They are all young bright people who are going to make an impact in the world, but left us too early. Our heart and prayer to them. Wish they would know they are missed by us.

short selling in China

2008-10-08T16:54:00.002+08:00

First, sorry for being absent for a few week. I don't have a good excuse, since students are not supposed to be busy. But actually I am pretty busy. The classes in the second year are so good that I scarified some writing time for reading cases. I am also planning to do a start up on consumer Internet. hopefully I will bring more updates soon.

The biggest news this week is China started the trial on short selling, a big improvement in the capital market. I remember people have been talking this for many years, and the CSRC is smart to launch this now because the market is too low, almost at the bottom. Short selling will not hurt that much.

FT article:

Short selling may be out of favour, widely blamed as one of the most dangerous of the unregulated excesses of market capitalism, but China’s stock market regulators are apparently not worried by that.

Just as many countries have banned or restricting the practice, China announced at the weekend that it would proceed with the trial introduction of both margin trading and short selling of shares, in spite of the global turmoil.

Initially at least, the Shanghai stock market was unimpressed: the benchmark Shanghai Composite index closed down 5.23 per cent at 2,173 points on Monday, shrugging off the positive impact of the announcement entirely, and giving in to concerns about the health of the global economy instead.

Shanghai stocks were also playing catch-up: the mainland markets were closed last week for the Chinese national day holiday, so they were unable to react to market falls elsewhere in Asia until Monday.

On Sunday, partly as a further effort to support the flagging Shanghai stock market, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced the cautious introduction of margin trading and short selling. The measures were meant to introduce “new vitality” to the stock market, the regulator said on its website.

It said only carefully selected brokerages would initially be permitted to offer such services, and the scale of any margin trading – buying shares with borrowed money – would far exceed that of short selling since brokerages have much more cash to lend to clients than shares. Traders expected the measures to lift the market.

But investors appear to have been too preoccupied by global market travails to care much about long-term reforms to the Chinese markets. “The fall today is a negative response towards the external market worldwide during the long holiday. The introduction of margin trading and short selling is a . . . technical enhancement with more long-term effect than immediate impact,” said Zhang Jichun of United Securities. “There is still a big lack of confidence among investors at the economic fundamentals,” especially a continuing slowdown in corporate profitability.

But the goal of the long-anticipated reforms is “much more than a simple market-saving effort. It is geared towards the institutional build-up of the Chinese financial market”, says Mr Zhang. The measures will increase liquidity and weed out amateur investors: “Those who can’t read the market will ultimately be filtered out.”

Jing Ulrich, head of China equities for JPMorgan, said: “The new trading mechanism will fundamentally change the ‘one-sided’ nature of the A-share market, allowing investors to profit from falling as well as rising markets.” She added that in the long term, securities lending should contribute to the stability of mainland markets.

But in the short term it could lead to further volatility “leveraging market participants’ capacity to engage in momentum trades on the expectation of falling or rising markets”.

a big Wall Street Show

2008-09-16T12:24:00.002+08:00

When people were talking about U.S. was going to gain back its strength in the first half of Septembers, now two of the biggest five investment banks on the Wall Street are disappearing. It's like a drama in the past few months, while it's interesting to watch from an outsider's perspective.

Henry Paulson, the Finance Secretary, said American should remain confident in American financial system. However, just saying so will not help. Henry Paulson refused to use the Federal money to help with the liquidity of Lehman Brothers, after he led the U.S. government to take over the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

However, this show will never happen in China. Chinese government owns all major banks and brokerages. If one goes for bankruptcy, the others will be hugely impacted as well. The government has to transfer money from left hand to right hand to make up the loss. It's a good thing for small investors, but not healthy for the total market, since all general investors are overconfident on the government's capability.It is also the reason for Chinese market's isolation from other markets.

Today, the central bank of China cut the rate, though it didn't save the Chinese market from tumbling. This is a good thing. Now Chinese should realize that the local market is closely connected to the global market, and a single government can't control the world market. Now they need to learn how to play the game.

Let's continue watching the show, and there's several stocks on my watch list.

My impact on currency?

2008-08-28T21:01:00.002+08:00

Living in different countries means the risk of currency conversion loss. and now I found my impact on current during a discussion with friends.

When I first moved to Hong Kong, the value of HK dollar started to fall versus RMB;
Then I moved the U.S., the value of US dollar started to fall too;
and I went to U.K. thinking of making some pound in order to make up the loss, the pound fell as well;

Now my friends asked where I am going next. "That's a top business secret". I said.

A trading opportunity for "short", definitely.

From a girl's fake sing to a dancer's accidental fall

2008-08-14T01:43:00.007+08:00

"The Olympic opening ceremony is stunning", everyone I met in London told me this. As a Chinese, I am very proud. There's one moment I feel something wet in the eye when I was watching the ceremony, not because of the beautiful scene, but because of thinking of all the people's effort behind this. For years, everyone has been working hard on the ceremony not for money, but for showing the world a beautiful country. They did it.

I had a big debate with an Australian friend when we were watching the ceremony because he kept saying Olympics is all about politics. "China should improve its human right before holding this Olympics", he said. A lot of politicians were there, and a lot of politics were involved, but there is only fair competition during the game. Athletes deserve a clean field to compete, and every country does too. If Olympics discriminate a country with one fourth of the world's population just because of politics, then I can't imagine the flame of the torch originated from Athen is still pure.

A few days later, he forwarded an email on the fake voice of the Chinese girl who was singing in the ceremony. He wants to prove his point. Look at the pictures of the two girls, you can see the one who showed up is "more cute" than the others. However, I can't help thinking the impact of this action on the girl who actually singed. Her name is Yang Peiyi. She has a beautiful voice, but she has to be behind the stage because of her "less-cute"look. She is just 7-years old, and what will she remember as she grow up? Also, to the girl who showed up, she will also remember she doesn't really sing in the ceremony, but get the position because she is better looking. What will happen to her?

In China's traditional saying, we will never judge a person based on his or her looking. But, I can understand why the director did this, though I don't agree. This is called groupism; people do this to make a better performance for the whole group, but they shouldn't ignore what will be the impact on individuals.

Chinese people are in the process of changing from a 100% of groupism to a mix of groupism and individualism, especially among younger generation. It's a good thing, and it's a right path for China to improve the human right situation.

When I am still "ashamed" by this fake sing, I found this story on a leading dancer who was expected to dance in the ceremony but fell off and hurt herself. Her name is Liu Yan. She may never stand up again. Zhang Yimou, the director of the ceremoney, visited her in the hospital. "You're the deepest pain in my heart," Zhang was reported as saying. "If I could see you stand up again, it would make me much more happier than any praise I've received."I was very impressed by this. Despite all the critics on Zhang's directing style, his words shows his respect to a single individual life, and that's the true Olympic spirit.

I replied my Australian friend a long long email, telling him China's history before and the change now. At last, I said, "let's try to open mind to each other, and understand each other much better than our parents do".

(liu yan)

Beautiful Cambridge Town

2008-08-04T21:40:00.010+08:00

King's College

Queen's college

Punting in the river

Nice place with fresh pasty

The intelligent Investor

2008-08-02T01:11:00.002+08:00

There's one book accompanying me in London all the time, "The Intelligent Investor". The author Benjamin Graham is the teacher of Warren Buffet, and set up this theory of value investing. It is an easy-to-read book, especially with the new commentary by Jason Zweig. History always replay, so does the investment. Luckily, there's some value we can see from stocks. We are always tempted by ourselves, and the biggest enemy of successful investment is ourselves. Have to read it again to remember this theory more. A good investor is always well prepared, and this book is a must-to-read.

China Surpasses US in number of Internet Users

2008-07-28T17:08:00.002+08:00

New York Times-"China said the number of Internet users in the country reached about 253 million last month, putting it ahead of the United States as the world's biggest Internet market. The estimate, based on a national phone survey and released on Thursday by the China Internet Network Information Center in Beijing, showed a powerful surge in Internet adoption in this country over the last few years, particularly among teenagers. "

Though the percentage of Internet users in China is still lower than U.S., 19 percent compared with 70 percent, it shows a new generation of Chinese citizens already grows bigger and bigger. Most of them are younger than 30, born as the only child in the family, speak English, and have time to surf on the Internet. They are the one growing up with a PC at home, just like baby boomers in U.S. growing up with TV 50 years ago. They will have their own generation problem, very much different from their parents, but no doube they will have a big impact on where China will go.

In London, I am shocked to see the poor knowledge on China of a lot of Europeans. In their mind, China is still a scary country without freedom of speech and human rights. Thanks to a lot of western media's coverage, people's mind still stays on the same page as twenty years ago. It is pitiful for China to be recognized in the world, and it is also pitiful for the world in the other way.

Mobilize the social network

2008-07-22T00:20:00.003+08:00

Working in London means getting more access to the European start-ups. Today I heard the name ZYB from a colleague. It was quite an interesting website helping people getting an easy life when changing to a new phone. It has a cool website name called http://www.igotanewphone.com/

It will be quite helpful to people who constantly change phones. I still remeber I have to write down all hundreds of contact from my old phone, and input it to the new phone, which is quite a mess. It turns out that I have to carry two phones in Europe, because I have all my China contact on one phone, and all my U.S. contact on the other.

This website is kinda of doing sth more innovative beyond uploading and downloading contacts. It tries to make use of those contacts to set up a network for people to share calendar and contacts. Vodafone bought this company in May, which I can see a lot of opportunity for Vodafone to develop in this space. However, the biggest concern in the mobile networking is how much people are willing to share their mobile numbers since they are more private info compared with facebook account or even email account. Imagine when you want to introduce a friend to another, people normally use facebook or send out email, instead of text the friend another friends' number. But who knows? people always change.

National Gallery P.S. MoMa

2008-07-15T03:14:00.002+08:00

They are the top two art museum in the world, one is in London, and one is in New York.

They both have the most famous piece from Vincent Van Gogh, one has SunFlower, and the other has Stary Night.

I love National Gallery because of its old style and the heavy history of over one thousand history.

I also love MoMa in New York as of its modern architecture and decoration, and possibly delicious soup in the canteen.

They are both precious belongings left by our precedents to us.

and what we will leave to our next next next generation?

I am back

2008-07-15T02:57:00.004+08:00

Sorry for being absent for two weeks. I am now doing my summer intern in London. The weather this week is quite nice and cool, but I still quite miss the sun in California.

Europe is a very interesting place, especially London. Very multinational, very not-efficient, very long history, very respected culture and very lovely people. I am yet to say I love London, but I can sense the creativity & knowledge of the Londoners (if people call themselves Londoners). Living here for a whole summer is very different from my last short visit two years before. I feel the city every day.

I visited Germany last week, and some photos to share. still thinking of going to France and Italy. Berlin is my favorite and definitely recommended to everyone.

even palo alto downtown is dangerous

2008-06-27T09:58:00.002+08:00

I always think Palo Alto downtown is safe. But today I am wrong.

I was sitting in Wells Fargo bank on Hamilton Avenue for some account service. suddenly, two men came in and robbed the bank. "everyone put your hand on the table". They yelled. In twenty seconds, they robbed money and ran.

Gosh, is this a CSI scene just happened in real?

"The Nokia Revolution"

2008-06-26T16:22:00.003+08:00

Strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in mobile industry. This made-in-Finland company experienced a long process to evolve into the world-class handset producers in 140 years. Can you believe it was one of the largest toilet paper producer before, and it was also a no-brand OEM houses? With a strong leadership and the insightful vision of the Finish reformers, Nokia has grown up to be a global-competitive company. And is still doing great.

From what I read in the book, only one element can not make a great company. It needs good timing, good leadership, good strategy, good parnters, good government and a lot of other good things to make the great thing happen.

Reasons being bullish on China

2008-06-17T11:21:00.002+08:00

Here is a fun piece from Jeff Farley, columnist of Seeking Alpha on why he is bullish on China after a two-week ground visit. He is probably more positive on China than I do, such as quote: " I would describe the Chinese government as similar to the parent of a teenager (which is kind of where they are in their economic development). They allow a lot of freedom but there is also supervision, direction and strong decisions made for the good of the country and the masses. The way I look at it is, parents are not violating human rights when they tell you your curfew is midnight, or you must go to school, don't do drugs, cut your hair, you cannot get a tattoo till you are 18, don't drink and drive, you cannot drive the car if you flunk out of school, or you better not get your girlfriend pregnant."

You could see how people change their opinions after being there by themselves. You can also see people's opinions in the 30 comments following this. Anyway, a good read if you want to learn how biases vary.

Google-Yahoo Deal

2008-06-13T15:06:00.002+08:00

For Yahoo shareholder, they wanted to get a big watermelon a few months ago; now they only get a small apple.

The big watermelon is that Microsoft to buy Yahoo at a price as high as $37, while the small apple is that Google is going to open its ad service to Yahoo, which will bring a $250 million to $450 million strong cash flow to Yahoo's balance sheet.

Today, Yahoo announced that it ended up talks with Microsoft. However, it said it will partner with Google on opening its searching service to Google's advertising business. Reuters call it as a new model in ad partnership, while I believe that's only an apple to comfort upset yahoo investors.

In addition, Yahoo admits that its ad service based on its searching business is no longer as competitive as Google's. It may get a huge share of revenue from the deal, but the fact is that Yahoo can't do a better job in selling ads by itself.

It's interesting how similar the history looks like, even beyond the border. Over 2000 years ago, there was a small nation in China called Qin. The other five nations were all bigger and stronger than Qin. However, the Emperor of Qin is a very good strategiest. He chose to partner with one or two nations in order to fight with other bigger ones. Qin grew bigger and stronger benefiting the alliance, and finally took control of all the other five nations.

Managing a business is like governing a nation. Alliance is important, but that is not all. Yahoo may see a good deal now, but it will soon fully rely on Google's ad platform. Google will be the one who decide the percentage of revenue Yahoo can get. Yahoo needs more than a partnership to revive its business, without being taken over by anyone including Google and Microsoft.

The Hong Kong acquisition of China Merchants Bank

2008-06-05T13:21:00.003+08:00

The deal cost $4.66 billion, and valued the target at 29 times of the 2007 book value. People call this crazy, and Standard & Poor downgraded China Merchants Bank to Watch Negative, but I will say this is a good move.

S&P quoted the reason of downgrading as "CMB is short of managing practice in Hong Kong", but I will argue that CMB management is already prepared for it. Roughly one year ago, the management of CMB was asked if they want to expand in Hong Kong. A funny quote was "The number of bank branch in Hong Kong is higher than the number of restroom, it will be hard for us to make the progress". To me, the deal of this time represents the CMB's confidence in the future expansion.

Beyond the management confidence, there are still three other reasons for me to pro this acquisition.

First, the origin of CMB. CMB is originated from Shenzhen, a neighbor city of Hong Kong. Considering a lot of Hong Kong citizen residing in Shenzhen, CMB is already familiar with the customer culture in Hong Kong. Plus, CMB is the best in terms of retail banking in China, which will make it competitive in Hong Kong, a retail banking-dominated city.

Second, the RMB service of CMB. Currently, a lot of Hong Kong residents are saving RMB because of the continuous appreciation. CMB can provide a better service based on its RMB reserve from its mainland China branches. This is hard for the other Hong Kong banks because of their limitation in operating in mainland China.

Third, the increasing middle class in China. taking a survey on mainland Chinese who shop in Hong Kong, it will be amazing to see a high percentage of using CMB credit card. It will be much more convenient for them to enjoy a local service if they travel in Hong Kong. I believe this is only the first step for CMB. More and more overseas acquisition will happen because of the demand from Chinese consumers.

All in all, it is a high valuation, but it is a valuation after careful consideration. I look forward to a succesfull integration between CMB and Wing Lung.

Blogging buzz by Whole Foods CEO

2008-06-03T05:48:00.002+08:00

This is an interesting piece i've read so far. John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, are back to blogging after an investigation of annoymous postings on Yahoo Finance. It makes me think of the grassroot media's impact in the financial world.

Here is a digest from WSJ.

"Whole Foods Market Inc. Chief Executive John Mackey is back in the blogosphere after a months-long investigation that questioned his anonymous postings on Yahoo Finance message boards.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission spent the past 11 months investigating whether Mr. Mackey's roughly 1,400 anonymous messages under the screen name "Rahodeb" had broken any laws. The commission concluded no action needed to be taken against the chief executive or the company.

As a result, Mr. Mackey has returned to the Web with a vengeance, posting a 2,037-word piece on Whole Foods' Web site in which he said he's sorry the investigation put a negative spotlight on the company. He acknowledged making a mistake in judgment, but not ethics, saying he didn't realize posting under a screen name in an online community would cause so much controversy.

"I don't wish to apologize for being highly competitive, because much of my drive and creativity come from this competitiveness," he said. "I don't believe that I ever crossed the line of fair but vigorous debate in these postings." The posting was reported earlier by Silicon Alley Insider."

Charity Sale

2008-05-31T17:48:00.002+08:00

We raised $15,715 from classmates for the earthquake relief effort, which will be matched one to one by BCG China. The total $31,430 will be donated to Red Cross. It's not a big amount of money, but we hope it will help the people in Sichuan rebuild their home and get back to normal life soon. Best luck!

smile from Sichuan

2008-05-22T16:35:00.003+08:00

It's hard for people to smile after a big disaster. Here I forwarded a pic of a few kids who succeeded in getting away from disaster after climbing over the hills to get to the safe place. The 483 kids in this primary school built under China's Hope Project(a charity project sponsoring students in the poor area to go to school) created a miracle that no one died or injured in this disaster. The mainstream foreign media may never report on this, but the school is one of the few that its building didn't fall down during the earthquake, which gave the chance for teachers and students to survive. The sponsor, a private enterprise in Sichuan named Hanlong Group, made the construction quality the first priority in this project, which help saved all the lives of those innocent kids. A Chinese journalist reported this on his blog, while he called the miracle is led to the firm's advanced insight on what will happen in the future ten years before developing the building.

I have seen so many miserable pictures these days, and this is the first one I can see hope. Those young girls smiled very happily, that's the happiness of surviving with all their friends. They are lucky, but there are hundreds of thousands of kids who are not lucky after either losing their lives, their friends or their families. Now, my hope is that the one sstill alive will remember this disaster, but will look forward. They should know there are much more happiness they can enjoy in their future lives.

I am planning with a few friends on going to Sichuan this summer. The only purpose is to bring them happiness, and enjoy that with them. If you have experiences or training in dealing with people who suffered from major disaster, please give us some help on what we should pay attention, or should avoid. We appreciate it very much.

Chinese Earthquake Relief Effort

2008-05-20T18:00:00.002+08:00

The Sichuan earthquake turns out to be a major disaster. From the first minute I heard it from a friend in Shanghai, to the moment where my two best friends' families suffered in the region, the information flowed around and I felt worse and worse. Over 30,000 people died and most of them are kids who were studying in the school. I remember seeing a photo with the bodies of students lying underground in the ruined classroom, with pencils or textbook still in the hand. I was wordless. They are supposed to be having a bright life, but suddenly an earthquake took all their lives. Why they are under protected, and why they can't get out of the classroom immediately?

This may not be the time to argue for the cause of those death, since people are busy saving lives. However, I still want to say we need an effective national emergency system, especially in areas with frequent disasters. Stanford just tested its emergency system, while it can reach everyone via mobile phone or fixed phone immediately and automatically. China needs this too. We have to make sure we are able to notify everyone in case something happens. Even if sometimes the notification is not accurate, it is still necessary to notify because life is the most important thing.

P.S. We are organizing a charity sale in Stanford now. Today is the first day, and we have already raised over 5000 US dollars. We will continue to raise money tomorrow.

Some reader asked me the websites on donation. There is only a few in English, such as Jet Li's One Foundation. I kinda of curious why Red Cross China doesn't even have an English website.

P. F. Chang's

2008-05-11T15:51:00.002+08:00

I still remember the first time I saw P. F. Chang's was in Austin, TX. A few friends and I were on the way to a Mexican restaurant. I suddenly saw this Chinese restaurant near by, and felt home. However, I didn't try it at last, and neither did I try it after I came to California until this Friday. I came into this restaurant with this mixed feeling. It is not a traditional Chinese restaurant, at least from the foreign waiter/waitress and pretty plates; but its renovation is very Chinese, with ancient paint and red color all over the wall. It turned out the restaurant is indeed a mix. The food is indeed a totally disaster, totally messed up the traditional Chinese cooking style. Too much soy sauce and sault; but the service is great, fast, efficient, and pretty plates which I do like. It is indeed American-decorated Chinese. Amazing to see it is packed with people for at least over two hours during lunch. Plus, it has a nice-designed website.

It kinda of reminded me of Chinese news in American media. On one hand, we see very Chinese-culture oriented reports, but on the other hand, the content and spirit is totally distorted. A lot of foreign reporters were trained thirty or forty year ago, and still hold this strong opinion towards Chinese. Pitifully, a lot of nice young American have been reading those since they were little, and bearing this wrong image afterwards, just like they will take P.F. Chang's as the native Chinese cuisine. In one of my non-market strategy class, the professor asked us to describe China in one word. The most shocked word I heard is "communism" from a young and charming female classmate. I got stucked and didn't know what to say.

Today I watched two war movies, We Were Soldiers Once..and Young, and Saving Private Ryan. Beyond the brutal scene, the only thing I saw is miscommunication, between American and Vietnamese, and American and Germany. Now Chinese will face the same situation, from the image people get from the cheap manufacturing labor to the angry shouting group in front of French Supermarket Carrefour. Media, especially English media, has an important role in describing all this. I sincerely hope they could end up with the original Chinese cuisine at last.

Chinese entrepreneurs in the 90s

2008-05-04T13:59:00.002+08:00

Chinese entrepreneurs in the last decade is the generation bearing too much debate. They were smart, that's for sure, taking advantage of the changing policy to generate wealth. A lot of them became billionaire in a short period of time, while they attracted a lot of attention from the society and regulator as well.

Wei Dong, an entrepreneur, founder and chairman of Yongjin Group, committed suicide after reported investigation of the government regulator. The Reuters report doesn't mention his suicide note, which was publicized by Sina. He said in the note that he was struggling in mental distressed disease. He hoped his death will release everyone, including the beloved family members, from the burden.

He is not the only one in the 90s entrepreneurs group who suffered from mental distress generated by outside pressure. People talked about the "original evil", the "illegal" actions or strategies took by them in the 90s when the society was in chaos. And now the question is if they are going to be punished by that.

I don't have the right answer, but I do believe suicide, or getting rid from the reality, is not going to solve problems. There must be a solution, and those entrepreneurs need to find it before moving on.

Top 10 wireless start-up rated in Dow Jones wireless conference

2008-05-02T14:16:00.002+08:00

it seems mobile space is much more diversified than Internet(which has a big focus in social networking now). These 10 start-up ranges from network, camera to shopping and ringtone. To me, that's a good sign for entrepreneurs.

1. Aerohive Networks Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., a developer of enterprise wireless networking technology. The company raised $24 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Northern Light Venture Capital. http://www.aerohive.com

2. Digby, Austin, Texas, a provider of a mobile commerce platform. It has raised $2.3 million and may raise additional venture funding in the first half of 2008. http://www.digby.com

3. Knowtate Inc., San Jose, a maker of technology used to link the physical, mobile and virtual worlds. The company is raising a $5 million round to close in the second quarter. http://www.knowtate.com

4. Mojix Inc., Los Angeles, a developer of signal processing products for sensory networks. It has raised $20.6 million from investors such as InnoCal Venture Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Red Rock Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. http://www.mojix.com

5. Myxer (MVisible Technologies Inc.), Deerfield Beach, Fla., a provider of mobile technology, products, services and programs to manage and deliver digital media to mobile devices. The company has raised $9.7 million from investors including Harris Preston & Partners, Morgenthau Venture Partners and New World Angels. http://www.myxer.com

6. Ontela Inc., Seattle, a provider of a technology platform that enables wireless carriers to bring imaging services to their users. Investors, which have given the company $4.5 million, include Hunt Ventures, Oak Investment Partners and Voyager Capital. http://www.ontela.com

7. Planet9 Studios Inc., San Francisco, a provider of 3-D city software and data products for navigation, friend finding and social networking. It anticipates raising an $8 million round to start within the second quarter of 2008. http://www.planet9.com

8. Pudding Media Inc., San Jose, a developer of advertising technology for voice services, mobile advertising and carrier platforms. It has raised $11.7 million from investors including BRM Capital, Opus Capital and individual investors. http://www.puddingmedia.com

9. Rocketbux, Bend, Ore., a developer of technology to deliver location and time relevant offers to mobile phones via the point-of-sale network. The company plans to raise a $2 million Series A round of funding to start in June 2008 and close in the third quarter of 2008. http://www.rocketbux.com

10. TrafficCast International Inc., Madison, Wash., a provider of a traffic science engine for location-based services and mobile devices. The company has raised $3.5 million from investors including Ceres Venture Fund LP, NEW Capital Fund, Phenomenelle Angels Management, Silicon Valley Bank and WomenAngels.net. http://www.trafficcast.com

Mamma Mia spirit

2008-04-28T13:27:00.004+08:00

I went to see Mamma Mia last Friday, and got very impressed by the Mamma Mia spirit. The music is great, the singers and dancers are great, and the whole musical is great. I know there is always a dream for everyone.

I have a dream
A song to sing
To help me cope
With anything
If you see the wonder
Of a fairy tale
You can take the future
Even if you fail
I believe in angels
Something good in everything I see
I believe in angels
When I know the time is right for me
I'll cross the stream
I have a dream

Advice to start-up from Jim Balsillie, the CEO of Research in Motion

2008-04-25T15:14:00.002+08:00

RIM is a company I respect. With all the innovative products, it is hard to focus on one single function, Email. But it succeeded.

Excerpt from GSMA website.

Q: Can you tell of the inspiration behind the idea of Blackberry. What were the technological and market forces at that time that made you believe that this could be a potentially great company?

Jim: Well, the inspiration, I think, really lies in seeing what we thought were the trends and thus anticipating the changes in the market, and doing the work in advance of these things happening. And you got to remember these trends are always obvious in hindsight, but at foresight they are far from obvious. In the mid 90s when we are working o

Q: last question. What advice would you give a young start-up in technology today?

Jim: Trust your original thought. You are trying to look around corners and anticipate what's happening and do original thought. And from that, from the view in the world, there are opportunities going and so you have to form your own thoughts, trust your own thoughts. I think always stay with passion and enjoyment, focus and intensity because that will give you persistence. Sometimes these things are more difficult, sometimes they take longer so, you need to have a focused and energetic approach to it. And the other thing I would say, always, you will have many opportunities where you'll have to make a choice on a short term approach versus a long term approach, or an ethical compromise or not and I found it just being honest and being straightforward and taking a long term approach. You sleep well and it pays rich dividends, and so never lie, never cheat, never take a short term approach...though sometimes it's tempting. But I've seen it and it's not a way to do business and not a way to live. It's actually not very smart because it comes back to you. So whenever one of those reasons is going to motivate you, take a long term, honest (approach)...If you cheat somebody, they basically say this is not someone I can trust. So take a long term, honest approach.

"Scared of China"

2008-04-19T12:59:00.002+08:00

One of the advantages living in the valley is to meet a lot of innovative companies. One of them is Meraki, a Wi-Fi service and equipment provider backed up by Google and Sequotia Capital. They are selling a very well-designed Wi-Fi access point, and having a full data management center. Their logan is to "connect the billion".

I talked to a guy from the company on its business in China. It's amazing that he said "We are scared of China". He referred to the fact that some companies in China tried to learn the Meraki products and then copy it all. "We are so scared of it".

It is a dangerous sign for China's manufacturing industry, especially in the technology sector. As I said before, intellectual property protection is necessary to boost the creativity. There's no free lunch, and people have to design their own stuff instead of continuing the habit of copying others. Or, outsiders will get scared, and China will lost the connection.

The creation of the first newspaper

2008-04-13T17:44:00.002+08:00

From my favorite blogger: Marc Andreessen, on the relations between newspaper and consumer Internet, through reviewing the newspaper history.

"So just in this first post in the series, we get a sense of the profound wonder that the newspaper was even brought into existence, much less became widespread or had an impact on the world.

And we see the nature of the birthing pains of a new medium -- any new medium -- and obviously, all of the birthing pains of the modern consumer Internet are trivial in comparison to the mind-boggling headwinds the original newspaper entrepreneurs faced."

This will be the future

2008-04-08T14:06:00.001+08:00

from FT

Mobile internet access increases tenfold.

By PHILIP STAFFORD

The number of mobile broadband connections globally has risen tenfold in the past year, lending credence to suggestions the industry is coming of age.

The GSM Association, the global trade body for mobile phone operators, is expected to announce today the 32-millionth mobile broadband connection, up from 3m at the end of March 2007.

It also found that the number of operators offering high-speed internet access through mobile networks had soared 44 per cent in the past 10 months.

The GSMA said operators in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America were all reporting an increase in the uptake of high-speed packet access handsets, which give users access to websites at speeds ranging from 1.8 -megabits a second to 7.2mbps.

It found that of 166 global commercial HSPA deployments, 100 offer speeds of 3.6mbps or above, while of the 27 countries in the European Union, 24 have commercial HSPA deployments.

Rob Conway, chief executive of the GSMA, said: "We are witnessing the creation of a virtuous circle in which mobile broadband is achieving greater economies of scale, driving down the cost of handsets and equipment and enabling more and more people to enjoy easy access to media-rich services."

The growth of mobile broadband services has set internet companies on a potential collision course with mobile and fixed-line network operators seeking to secure potentially huge new revenue opportunities.

In February, Google said it had seen 50 times more searches on Apple's iPhone than any other mobile handset, while Vodafone poached a senior Microsoft executive to head its new internet services unit.

The number of networks offering commercial mobile broadband services has risen sharply in the past year. Broadband on mobile phones is available in 73 countries from 166 operators, up from 96 networks commercially deployed in three countries.

Louisiana, Louisiana, they are trying to wash us away.......

2008-04-01T11:34:00.008+08:00

It is my first Spring break. (since I only got winter and summer break in college). and I feel I've learnt a lot. If one day I am able to improve the education system in China, I will definitely include Spring Break on my agenda, since it is a great time to travel with classmates and learn about the world.

New Orleans is an amazing city. It is definitely different from any other American city I've ever been. The distinctive difference could be seen everywhere. On one side, it has the elegant European-style buildings around Jackson Square and French Quarter; on the other side, it is one of the poorest cities in U.S. with the highest crime rate.

Jogging along the Mississippi river, I feel I sensed the power from the water which has fed one generation of American; Food is good too, with Gumbo, Po-boy, Oysters and all other unique dishes; however, the homeless people sleeping on the street and under the bridge has kept reminding me that this is a poor area. The mix gives me a unique sense of the city, and thus attracts a lot of tourists as well as young generation.

Entrepreneurship

The trip is sponsored by the school as a way to help local entrepreneurs to start their businesses. This is the third year Stanford is doing this. Our task this time is to help select an entrepreneur to open his or her business in a retail space opening in Upper 9th Ward, one of the poorest area and most destroyed places in the city during Katrina. 16 MBAs spent five days to interview the four candidates, analyze their business model, debate among groups on figuring one which one is most beneficial to the community and most sustainable. The new vocabulary I learnt is double bottom line, to balance the business between social benefit and economic return. It's difficult to measure. After hours hours debate/discussion/brainstorming, we finally made our decision on selecting a hair salon business to occupy the space. The hair salon will enhance employment and draw traffic to the area. And hopefully, she will open her store very soon.

Entrepreneurship is everywhere. MBA is not necessary, wealth family is not necessary as well. In the Hope House, a charity organization in town, we learn from Jonika(if I spell it right), a single mother who raised two kids by herself, to start a pasta venture. She sold pasta everyday, and managed to make a living. She didn't go to high school, though she dreamed to go to play basketball there. Her mother went to prison because of drug abuse, and she almost lost her life in the hurricane. However, she survived from all of that and became an entrepreneur. The same stories are heard in New Orleans every day, and it's very encouraging to anyone who is hesitating.

Glass, class

New Orleans is a city to sense the power and class. For examples, there will be seven tables in the room, with only two having glasses and waters, which means higher-class people will sit in those two tables. The city has a higher percentage of Black Americans, which is described by some columnists as "the corner that is being forgotten or tried to be forgotten by the American mainstream". Education is a big problem, since the city has the worst public school system. Luckily, after Katrina, most of the public school system were destroyed, which gave the opportunity for a lot of young educators to come to the city and set up charter schools. A HBS graduate in his 30s is working in a charter school to bring advanced education system to try to get more kids into better schools. "Is it worth"? someone asked me. "Yeah, it is. Imagine how much impact you could make in a big corporate? here, in this school, this 30 something is going to change the lives of 400 kids".

Leadership

How to rebuild the city? Leadership matter, said one of the GSB alumni working in New Orleans. He believes someone with the leadership skill will change the city. The city, once suffered from inefficient leadership of the mayor and unresponsiveness from the Federal government, is on its way to lead itself. A lot of non-profit organizations, such as Global Green and Solar Energy Systems Group, have been to the city and worked on different projects. The Make it Right foundation, led by movie star Brad Pitt, is now building energy-efficient housing for the local people. It's a new and insightful direction, and the city is hoping to become the leader in the next-generation urban planning technology.

To me, the most sad thing is to learn that the New Orleans is sinking. According to NASA, New Orleans will sink about 0.17 inches a year, or near three feet over the next 200 years. Parts of the city are 5-10 feet below sea level now. People are building and rebuilding every year, but there is chance that water will come again and wash everything away. I will pray for the city and hope there will be better solution and technology to protect the city. Hope people will continue to be happy there.

New Orleans, a city above the lake

2008-03-27T05:30:00.005+08:00

Sorry for not updating for long. I am in New Orleans, Louisiana for my spring break, doing a service learn trip to help local entrepreneurs. It's my first time in the city which was once flooded by so-called "man-made error". We visited the most serious flooded area and the broken defenses. The city is still in recover since the flood three years ago; however, a lot of people are coming back with the optimism to reconstruct this area. I am deeply impressed by this courage, and hope I could help them with my strength.

The famous Jackson Square

A very cool street show

Wall Street tumble

2008-03-19T15:54:00.002+08:00

I got lucky or unlucky to be in the U.S. right now to experience a possible economy downturn. The once-prestigious investment bankers on the Street now become the cheap target for deep pocket buyers. Bear Stearns is one example. J.P. Morgan got a favorable deal of only $2 per share, and the whole street is going to wait to see who will be the next one.

It's interesting to watch CNN's Larry King show today when several "financial experts" were talking about how to invest money right now. One expert said people have to keep their money in the stock market in order to enjoy a longer-term return. However, confidence does matter a lot here. When one person said it is crisis, it is usually not; but when seventy percent of the people said this, it is going to be. What I cared most is how U.S. stock market will affect the global market. I have to admit that New York is still the center of the world, while Europe and Asia markets couldn't replace right now. China market including Shanghai and Hong Kong will behave the same way, though the fundamental is different. The consumer industry in China is still pretty strong, while a lot of companies are going to report strong earnings, such as China Mobile. It is necessary to realize it and take advantage of this good opportunity in the market.

Speaking of this, even Premier Wen said the economy this year is going to be tough. However, the liquidity is still high when we see central bank of China still raised the deposit reserve rate for banks to absorb the liquidity. It is a good year to relax and enjoy Olympics. Keep energy to work hard next year, my comrades :)

MII merger

2008-03-12T14:11:00.002+08:00

This will be a big deal to China's Internet service as well as telecom industry.

"A new ministry of industry and information will be created to oversee the cellular phone industry previously under the Ministry of Information Industry. It will also regulate Web- based applications and Internet content, according to the plan. The ministry will combine responsibilities from the information industry ministry and the State Council Information Office."

From Bloomberg(the second last paragraph.)

The online strength of female

2008-03-11T16:00:00.002+08:00

Female doesn like Internet more. I never heard of Bloghim, but now I met two founders of Blogher.The website is a blog community for female, where you could find all information from fashion to relationship. The three founders met each other in a conference in 2004, and got this fantastic idea to do something only for female together. The business model is not new and based on advertisting, but I am sure a lot of consumer product advertisers like the specific demographic of the community. It's interesting to see how they evolve from small to big. More importantly, I found they are passionate towards blogging. One of them currently has six blogs.

Nowadays in the internet, the community is like a tribe where people could find the others with the same hobby. Advertisers love this, while the ads will be more focused and effective.

Speaking of this, I still think they should expand a little bit more international. The strategy has yet to come. When I introduced myself as a Chinese blogging for four years, one of the founders was surprised: "That must be really tough since all blogs are blocked in China?".

Well, it's not true, I answered. .

Everything is unlimited in wireless

2008-03-03T17:33:00.004+08:00

I've been quite busy for the past two weeks. B-school is a place where you either choose to study to die, or have fun to die. I feel I am stuck in between. Mid-term was just done, while final term is on its way. Who told me I could have a two-year break? That's not true at all.

Back to serious topic. I got this gut feeling that everything is unlimited in wireless industry in U.S. these days. Customers already have the choice of unlimited data plan for quite a few years, and now suddenly the voice became unlimited plan as well. (remember when broadband usage changed from charging based on hours to unlimited monthly, now here is the same thing).

A wrap up from businessweek:

"On Feb 19, Verizon Wireless announced a new pricing plan that offers unlimited calling for $99.99 a month. Later, AT&T announced a similar plan, while T-Mobile went one better by including unlimited text messages for the same price. The move is a big change from the wireless model in which customers pay for limited buckets of minutes. It's the latest sign that carriers are viewing voice as a commodity and data service as the future growth opportunity."

However, mobile carriers still bear the bad reputation on not being creative in the data service. In fact, mobile should be just a platform like Internet, where everyone could freely create a website, and share information. Mobile carriers should be just like broadband service providers, where they couldn't control the content. It's all grassroot content works. We couldn't imagine Comcast create a facebook, while AT&T couldn't possible create a killer web app too. This new era encourages creativity from all the people, instead of monopoly.

I feel encouraged by this unlimited plan, because I know the era of mobile creativity is coming.

Apple's business model in China

2008-02-18T16:37:00.003+08:00

I talked to a friend in China last week, and he is expecting that his friend is going to bring him an iphone from U.S. later. "Could u use it in China?", I asked. "Definitely, a lot of my colleages have been using it for a long time", he said.

The fact that the decoded iphone has become very popular in China. According to unofficial data, there are already 400,000 decoded iphone running on China Mobile's network. Of course, it is illegal, but people seems pretty much enjoy the service....(not sure if all the applications will work, but definitely surfing on the internet is the best attraction).

Speaking of this, Apple and China Mobile are still yet to start the official negotiation. I guess the point is that Apple is stick to the profit sharing model it was using in the collaboration with AT&T or some European Carriers. However, in China, the dynamics between carriers and service providers are not quite the same. And more importantly, China Mobile dominates over 60 percent of the market, which has much more market share compared with AT&T in U.S.

Besides sharing profit with carriers, Apple should focus more on selling the content to users via iphone, such as music or video. In some extent, it's more like printer business. firms make 90 percent of the money from cartridge instead of selling the printers along.

In addition, China is going to issue mobile licenses to fixed-line operators such as China Telecom and China Netcom soon this year. Apple's iphone is definitely a big attraction to customers, which will help carriers increase the user loyalty. Some investment bank in Hong Kong said Apple shouldn't partner with China Unicom, but I don't think it is 100 percent true. China Unicom definitely needs iphone more compared with China Mobile, which may lead to a better deal for Apple.

For emerging markets with more carrier monopoly, Apple should change its strategy to a more user-friendly one. Users are everything, and it's better to provide users service sooner than later. There is also chance to cooperate with small/new carriers in those countries, if Apple could assure the service quality of customer support is the same.

It's always not wise to wait for things to change. Better change something first, my two cents to Apple.

iphone's Chinese sister

2008-02-14T12:21:00.003+08:00

You may not believe this, and I don't believe it as well. But according to this website, some Chinese manufacturers developed a phone called Hiphone with the similar interface and application. It is only sold for less than US$125.

First, they have to watch out the certain legal lawsuit from Apple. But I have to admit those manufacturers become more and more innovative and creative. In fact, they have enough ability to develop their own design, instead of copying others. That's why China should implement IP protection regulation strictly. The law itself will help push manufacturers to be more creative, instead of trying to steal sth from others.

Facebook Mobile

2008-02-11T17:00:00.000+08:00

I signed into Facebook Mobile last week. It's very convenient to receive and send updates for the Facebook mobile. However, the service is kinda of expensive since my AT&T carriers will not only charge me messages I send, but also messages I receive. I would call the second charging "passive payment", since I couldn't really control on how many updates I will receive from facebook every day. It's a business model which expels customers from using the SMS service more.

That's the situation in the fragmented U.S. mobile market. Since there are many carriers, the interconnection cost is so high that customers have suffered a lot of benefit. In the terms of MicroEconomics(which Amy is studying on), the high price of interconnection(such as SMS between different carriers) have created a dead weight loss in the whole revenue map. Both carriers and mobile users leave money on the table.

Internet could help change all this. There was once a website which has the potential to challenge the whole situation. It is the skype. However, since Ebay itself doesn't have a lot of operating experience in telecom, Skype now becomes something stuck in the middle without any future innovative move.

For Facebook Mobile, I would suggest them learn from Tencent in China, which provide the service of Mobile QQ to customers. (5 yuan per month for unlimited messages between online and mobile chatting service, that's the price I remember). It is the only way to attract users to the SMS service, since we know customers always want to control on how much they gonna to pay.

Happy Chinese New Year

2008-02-09T16:28:00.000+08:00

Amy has been busy with her mid-term.......

So forgive me for the late New Year wishes. Hope every wonderful dream will come true in the year of rat.

What could we do?

2008-02-02T06:52:00.001+08:00

I remember one thing impressed me most of Stanford Graduate School of Business is its mission to "change lives, change organizations, and change the world". Students come to school with strong feeling about this mission, and they are willing to bear the mission in their mind for the whole life.

It's easier said to be done, people always say. I feel the same way, especially in the current moment that China is experiencing the worst-ever winter storm in the southern part. (pic from Red Net) It's horrible to see a lot of people suffer from the cold weather. The direct loss already reached 54 billion yuan today. It is so unusual for South China to have snow, since I know a lot of my friends from south China never saw snow before. Now the whole public transportation system, including railway and flight, has been affected, and millions of people may not be able to make it home to celebrate with family for the Spring Festival. The Chinese government spent a lot of effort in securing people and arranging transportation, but the situation has been difficult.

What could I do? It's hard to change the world this time because the weather is out of my reach. It's definitely not an easy call for a MBA student. It feels bad to think in that way, but it is the fact. However, I am now thinking of the reason for the terrible snow storm, and more importantly, what I could do to help in the daily life, such as how to stop a warm earth, or how to reduce the use of "dirty" energy. I believe the effect will be big if everyone on the earth could do a small thing. and I will start doing it now.

I will be involved in organizing a service learning trip of 20 people from Stanford GSB to West China, focusing on environmental protection and clean energy. Let me know if you have any contacts or advice. Thanks for supporting our first step.

Start-ups in the valley

2008-02-01T16:16:00.000+08:00

It's amazing to meet a lot of creative and sharp entrepreneurs in the valley. Everyone has a lot of wonderful ideas, and more importantly put them into reality. I met two great enterpreneurs tonight. Amar Goel and Rajeev Goel set up an online advertising agency connecting publishers and ads network, using auction strategy to serve the advertisers more efficiently. I used to think it's hard for Internet people to understand traditional advertising, but I know I was wrong when I met them. People talk about online advertising more like a thief who stole revenue from newspaper and TV, but that's not true. Pubmatic does provide the service that no one provided before. It is easily set up to target at certain users group, and more importantly, advertisers easily know if they get a good deal.

It reminded me of the managerial economic lesson I learnt today. There was once a fish market in Indian that people only trade verbally. The volatility of the price was very high. However, with the cell network coming to the village, the fish men could call around to look for the price, and then trade. The price became stable since then. It's amazing to see how communications change the village. Now, the same thing applies to Internet advertising: every thing becomes transparent, which means more capital will be willing to come in.

So that's the future.

Whistler beauty

2008-01-20T13:05:00.000+08:00

It's amazing to see how pretty Whistler is. White mountains, snow trees, an amazing view connecting the sky with the snow. Oh, I feel relieved from the super busy study and business, and fell in love with this pretty place immediately.

It's also amazing to see how many people come to Whistler for skiing. A lot of them are from either U.S. or Vancouver. The canteen on the tops of the mountain is fully packed, which means the occupation rate may possible reach over 90 percent for the whole capacity. Hotels, lifts, private lessons, food, equipment sales and rentals.... seems this is a very health business. Maybe I should buy some of its stock. So I did a little research and found some interesting stuff. The whistler mountain is managed by Intrawest ULC, a Vancouver-based company. Intrawest used to be listed in NYSE and Toronto Exchange, but went private in Oct 2006. An alternative investment group named Fortress Investment bought the whole company for US$2.8 billion. Not sure how they are going to exit the investment, possible doing an IPO again or sell it to another big resort development firm. To me, it is a very good investment, at least from the fundamentals.

My only suggestion is that they should improve the quality of the instructors. Some of them are really bad.

What makes online shopping fun?

2008-01-18T12:50:00.000+08:00

One good thing living in U.S. is the convenient online shopping. You could almost buy everything online. My favorite part is to buy clothes. There are a lot of websites selling designer clothes such as bluefly.com. The wonderful interface design made the online shopping very enjoyable. Victorial secret also had a pretty cool online shopping site. I used to believe in going to the real shop to buy clothes, but now it seems not necessarily.

Several days ago, I started to shop ski clothes. My friend recommended the website www.sportsbasement.com. It is founded by a GSB alumni as I overheard. The pricing is not bad, though the quality of those pictures are not perfect. I have to go to websites such as Northface.com to find the high-quality pics to compare different clothes. But it's a great fun, and in fact very time consuming. Now, I got one Northface alpine jacket and a Salomon waterproof pants from them. The bad thing is they don't really update their stock often. So there is a big chance that you buy something online, but they don't have it in stock. It makes a really bad customer experience though they will give a 20 percent discount and free shipping fee.

Just read from Lightspeed blog that female is the major force in social networks. that's very true. I believe in the online shopping space, it's the same thing. Especially in China, when female has more money and more independence to spend the money. hmmm, good business opportunity.

Google Naps

2008-01-11T16:56:00.000+08:00

I had my first tour in Google today, and of course, free Google dinner. (They do have a lot of chefs) but I would suggest better Chinese food. (I tried Italian though)

It is a very casual place, kinda of like a school with a lot of cool gadget, from the almost-real spaceship as well as the massage room. The most interesting thing to me is the Google Naps. It's a little bed(or chair) with a big white round "hat". You could sleep inside while nobody could see you from outside. (maybe they could only see your legs)

Walking in Google, I feel strongly the engineer culture. A lot of cool stuffs, and a lot of smart people. No wonder they are doing something great to change the world. However, the company grows so fast right now, and a lot of workers have to share rooms. For example, three people will share one little room. Personally, I do like a bigger space, because you couldn't have a free thinking in a very limited room. So Google should buy more real estate right now to expand the space, and it's also a good time to invest in real estate in U.S. right now.

Growing from a small company to the world's largest one must be a tough process, and I believe Google is on its way, not easy.

Online Fraud and social network

2008-01-08T16:15:00.000+08:00

Hom important is online security? It is very important. Just read an interview with Max Levchin, the cofounder of Paypal. He said the biggest competitive advantage for Paypal is it knows how to deal with online fraud. Now I experienced it in the real life.

I have been doing researching on buying a used car. The site my friend recommended me is Craigslist, which is very popular in U.S. for the listing of various selling stuffs. I look for the cars I am interested and usually write to the email listed in those posts. One day, I found a Lexus car in a good shape but very cheap price. So I wrote to the guy, and got a very detailed email. This guy named Tom sounded very sincere. and the pictures of the car looked perfect. Here is some of the quotes:

"I am now located in London, UK and I feel very comfortable using a service like eBay. I need to know if you are interested to buy my Lexus because I want to use their service. I just moved here a couple of months ago and I can't use it here because it is a left side wheel car. The car is still registered in the States. It might look strange but my price for it is $4, 000.00 in US dollars. If you want it I can arrange a shipping process with Lufthansa (paid by me and my wife) for you to receive it in less than 3 days. Shipping will not cost me that much, as my wife used to work for Lufthansa here and now, although she is not working there anymore, she still has great discounts with the company. That is why i offered to pay for shipping. With all this being said and in order to get this started please let me know your delivery info (where to send the car to) and your full name. "

I almost fully trust him, before I started a little search on Ebay. Since this guy would like to use Ebay, then there must be some post from him already, and I would like to see the bidding price right now. Then something unexpected happened. I found a piece from a U.S. dealer in midwest of the country posted the exactly same pictures of this car. Totally the same pictures from the same angle and in the same places. It means at least someone, either Tom or this Ebay dealer, is cheating. So I wrote to Tom on this, and nobody replied me on this.

So now I got to the conclusion. Tom is cheating. Since there is no feedback on Craiglist, I would never who tells the truth and who is cheating. The only thing I could do is to try my good luck and do more research.

How to solve the problem of online fraud? Paypal uses technology to solve this problem. There is another way, through social network. People will give feedback or even rate the sellers who are honest, and discredit those cheating people. I have the experience in looking for a auto mechanic shop on Yelp.com, and people's recommendation does provide a lot of insightful information. (You could even learn who out of the dozens of repairers you should go to in a specific auto shop). There maybe cheating too, but the power of a wide social network is so strong that you are unable to hide your bad online behaviors. Someone will always point you out.

That's how the real society works, and the same to the "virtual society".

Happy New Year, everyone

2007-12-31T15:49:00.000+08:00

It's been a long but fruitful year for Amy. Hope you also had a wonderful 2007.

Now everything is new in the coming 2008. Please do enjoy and have fun.

Here is my best wishes from California. (pic is the beautiful Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles)

"Walking along the beach, breathe, relax and let your mind wander"

pics for the LA/NY trip

2007-12-28T09:17:00.001+08:00

Remember the scene in Desperate
Housewives. It was shot here in
Universal Studio in LA.

Shooting in the corner of a street in LA

New York Time's new fancy building. shot after the meeting with Bill Keller, one of the most important news person in U.S.

Five Horrifying Women, Picaso's most inspiring arts work, gave me a different angle to enjoy the modern arts. (Shot in Museum of Modern Arts in Manhattan)

Link to our media trip to LA/NY

2007-12-27T17:57:00.000+08:00

Finally our crazy-busy media trip finished, but it will stay in everyone's memory for a long time. I wrote the blog for the trip, which could be seen here

Media is a huge asset in U.S. After talking to creative Hollywood writers/producers and the critical media such as New York Time and Newsweek, I got a sense on how the media has shaped the American culture. People in media pursue independence, creativity and fairness in producing their works. A lot of them consider it as a life-long career and a hobby. We see how Disney changed people's view towards the world, and how New York Times generated daily topics on the table.

Also, the media industry changes very fast, while no one could predict the future, even including the executives in big media companies, which has made media industry a quite fun place to work in.

It's difficult to run a media organization in this stage, but there are still a lot of smart and hard-working people working on this. I am sure media will go back to the central stage very soon.

Visiting Hollywood

2007-12-19T17:09:00.000+08:00

Amy is on the trip visiting Hollywood. It is very impressive to see how passionate people here work on their production. Intellectual Property rights should be well protected everywhere, including China.

Studios here are very amazing, such as Sony Entertainment and Walt Disney. With over one hundred year history, Hollywood is not only a brand, but also a resource of creativity. It is from the creativity that global audience gain. There are a lot of models that China could learn from, and there are a lot of things China could do to tell about Chinese culture to the world. Hopefully we will have our center of Chinese creative business later.

Winter is coming?

2007-12-10T17:24:00.000+08:00

When everyone outside China is enthusiastic on the opportunities in China, some candid Chinese enterpreneurs said they are preparing for the winter's coming. Here are some quotes from the 6th China Enterpreneur Summit held in Beijing on December 8(in Chinese).

Ma Yun, the president of online B2B portal Alibaba.com, who just raised $1.5 billion from its IPO, said:

"The reason why Alibaba is preparing for a listing is to prepare for the winter. In 1999 and 2000, the Internet suddenly turned into winter when everyone was still talking on its exciting future; the same is happening now while something is going wrong with so many concept of web 2.0 or 3.0. So I want an IPO now to be ready for the winter".

Liu Chuanzhi, the president of Lenovo Group, whose private equity fund got over 8 times return in the past three years, said:

"We are doing a quick research on our industry investment now. We are not afraid of the coming winter, and we will do what we should do in the winter. The most important thing is what will happenin the winter and what we could improve to adjust the winter."

I don't really care when Wall Street Journal and Financial Times say winter, because it is always the media's job to give critical view. But if the "winter" comment is from two of the most respective and successful enterprenuers in China, I give a lot of credit on this. It is a good thing that they are still rational, and working on what they are due to do, instead of what they are imagined to do.