October 25, 2008

Whassup commercial for Obama….

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Brilliance – the same cast is back…

October 17, 2008

Andrew Lahde’s goodbye letter (and what’s wrong with our country)

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One of my next posts, that has been coming together in my head for a while, will be on the role hedge funds play in our economy and what responsibility, if any, they should assume for current conditions.

This farewell letter was sent to me recently by a friend in the industry.  Andrew Lahde is a guy who formed a relatively small hedge fund, made an enormously successful bet on subprime (his fund is up 1,000% this year) and is now calling it quits.  His insights are simple, yet profound and I find his comments about our government and legislation policy of particular interest.


Andrew Lahde’s Farewell – Get more Business Documents

October 17, 2008

Andrew Lahde’s goodbye letter (and what’s wrong with our country)

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One of my next posts, that has been coming together in my head for a while, will be on the role hedge funds play in our economy and what responsibility, if any, they should assume for current conditions.

This farewell letter was sent to me recently by a friend in the industry.  Andrew Lahde is a guy who formed a relatively small hedge fund, made an enormously successful bet on subprime (his fund is up 1,000% this year) and is now calling it quits.  His insights are simple, yet profound and I find his comments about our government and legislation policy of particular interest.


Andrew Lahde’s Farewell – Get more Business Documents

October 14, 2008

NYC: Technology Rising

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There’s been a lot of focus recently on the macro economy, sub-prime debt exposure and a recessionary or even depressive economic outlook.  A quiet, but growing sub-plot though on a micro level, is what this means for the technology industry in New York City.  So far this year, the city comptroller estimates 40,000 jobs have been shed on Wall Street and it’s expected that this number may rise to 50-60,000 before it’s all over. Large Wall Street firms have dominated the New York economy for much longer than I’ve been relevant.  There’s been plentiful discussion in tech circles, over the past few years, that one of the pitfalls of growing the tech industry in NYC is the difficulty in luring IT professionals away from deep-pocketed Wall Street firms.  Now that there are two fewer Wall Street firms though and far fewer jobs, the local economy is poised for a transformational repositioning.  An obvious sector to absorb some of that vacuum is technology.  Crain’s NY reported a few weeks ago that New York added 1,100 technology jobs in the first half of the year to bring the overall number to 42,700. While the broader economy purges jobs by the minute, we’re adding them in droves. This is super exciting.

The WSJ reported that, in the first six months of this year, there were 67 NYC-based startups who received VC investment totaling $828 million compared to $480 million in the same period last year.  I believe that growth rate will accelerate.  With the flood of newly unemployed financial markets-focused professionals, there are more smart, hungry and creative people looking for opportunity than ever before.  As the few i-banks remaining recast themselves as bank holding companies and accept federal funds and the compensation limits that come with those funds, high pay-grades that once lured many of the best and brightest IT professionals and managers may no longer be as significant of a factor.  Compensation reform, generally on the verge of sweeping through all facets of our economy anyway, is only one more factor encouraging the aspiring business owner to finally go for it. The alignment of incentives that once made the leap difficult are severely diminished and in some cases (for employees of Lehman or Bear as examples), eliminated.  Also, as other areas of the local economy decline – real estate prices fall, office space becomes more affordable, etc – other historical barriers to starting a company here also diminish.  With the city’s history around financial services and the experience of the recently unemployed, I think financial services technologies is one area, in particular, that will likely see a lot of innovation in the coming years. When you combine this new reality with recent trends, NYC becomes an increasingly attractive market for VC investors.  We’ve been ranked third behind the Bay Area and Boston for several years and while our growth has been accelerating versus Boston for a little while, I think these recent local developments lend reason to believe that we will inch even closer to them in the coming years.

As recently as August, I had continued to consider a professionally-motivated move back to the Bay Area.  I’m convinced it’s something that every young aspiring technology professional occasionally thinks about.  At the moment though, those thoughts are diminished as I see enormous opportunity for NYC early-stage technology.  Boston should be on high alert because New York is biting at its heels.

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October 3, 2008

Barack Obama, the patron saint?

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On sixth avenue today, I passed a street vendor who offered the standard wares – statuettes of nyc scenes, the statue of liberty, the empire state building, photos of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Mother Theresa, Barack Obama and even one of the entire Obama family. I stopped to ask him why (and to also express my displeasure) and he explained that he offered them because they sell.  Every day.  In fact, they’re some of the first photos to go.

I voiced my displeasure despite my political support of Barack Obama as a candidate because I find this dangerous, on so many levels. First, Obama hasn’t yet fulfilled even a fraction of what the others pictured accomplished in their lifetimes. I hope he does and even exceeds the expectations being set, though as those expectations continue to rise, in part as a result of such displays, that becomes a more and more distant possibility. Second, and even more importantly, several of the others pictured met unfortunate fates, taken from us before their times, largely because they were fighting for wholesale change against the establishement. Grouping Obama in the same camp concerns me because it fuels the ire of those most resistant to his candidacy and what an Obama administration may represent.  Selling photos of a senator and presidential candidate on the street rubs the possibility of his leadership in their faces, almost daring them to do something about it.  I can’t think of a single example where excessive pride or hubris ever helped a cause.  More often than not, it’s a cause of downfall.  In this case, let those of us supporting his cause display a  quiet pride and a quiet excitement for what may come. Let’s avoid rubbing it in others’ faces.  Doing so does nothing towards advancing our own efforts, but rather puts them further at risk.

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