I’m not a big fan of MS. If anything, the WPF developer kit installation process was so long that it irked me. That being said, I’m a big fan of Bill Gates and his work nowadays. While the Internet, or more specifically, tools such as Facebook Causes has given arms and legs to the various causes that we stand for, there’re just some problems that are gigantic, but are only being solved slowly due to the lack of market motivation.
Enter visionaries like Bill Gates and Peter Diamandis. Extremely successful people, with significant influence in both public and private sectors across various geographies, they identify the significant problems faced by the world, and am willing to put in not just money, but time and effort influencing others to focus on solving the problems that the world faces.
In the latest talk given by Gates as part of TED 2009, which is an annual conference that brings together thought leaders from the Technology, Entertainment, Design worlds and more, he share about 2 problems that he is currently passionate about solving:
1. How do you stop a deadly disease that is spread by mosquitos?
2. How do you make a teacher great?
Interesting Notes
- More money put into baldness drug development than malaria as the rich man are bald
- Malaria control requires skills from all areas (math, computing, pharma, etc.)
- If US had top tier teachers, gap between US & Asia in Math & Sci would go away in 2 years
- Masters degree doesn’t correlate with teaching quality – Past performance does
- Slightly better teachers leave the system, not the lousy teachers
- Check out KIPP teaching styles through the book “Work Hard Be Nice”
For all current and aspiring leaders out there, What are you doing today (to change the world)?
Side-note: Check out the multi-inbox view on Gmail! Love it!
With so many of my friends involved in a presentation or a pitch recently, I thought I might post some notes that I have from a short lecture by David S. Rose on 10 things to know before you pitch a VC for money. Why is this relevant? One of the worst presentation situation to be in is when you have to ask someone else for money, hence being able to do so effectively would give one wings when in other situations. (I will not discuss the fact that VCs actually need credible entrepreneurs as well to achieve their investment requirements.) And of course, there is a fair number of people actually looking for funding.
Having attended so many such lectures throughout my days in ASES and NOC, and read more detailed commentary on the topic (do check out The Art of the Start if you’re interested), the content wasn’t anything out of the blue, but it was a good lecture nonetheless.
Key Ideas
1. Define your goals – VCs invest in people, keep in mind that you’re really trying to say “I’m the one you’re looking for”
2. Manage Emotions – Grab attention, Wow with solid content, end off by hitting the homerun with something they cannot resist
3. Use Imagery instead of bullet points (I am a huge advocate of this)
4. Go to the point – Give them what they are looking for (adhere to the conventional templates which VCs are used to looking out for)
5. Give attention to detail – It tells what type of person you are when you don’t check for typos
Jumping right back into the great Mac vs PC debate, an interesting take away from the lecture might be that despite Jobs having raised “corporate presentations and product introductions to an absurdly high level”, one can more than make up for the inability to do this by being extremely good in everything else like Bill is.
Enjoy the 15min video and share any comments that you might have!
When I received an email from the Facebook@NUS module teaching team saying that we should all watch Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture before attending the first week of class, it hit me that I really should write down some lessons learnt from the lecture, having watched it 2 times prior to this. (My 2nd thought was, hey, how come it didn’t occur to me that CS3216 was pretty similar in spirit to the Building Virtual Worlds class?) These are what I jotted down while going through the lecture a 3rd time:
1. Dream Big and Celebrate Brick Walls
If only the world celebrated brick walls more. Innovation and entrepreneurship would have progressed in leaps and bounds through the years, but I guess, that’s what make innovators and entrepreneurs special. My corollary to this would be that if an ecosystem were formed to support one another in our quests to break down brick walls, it would seem so much easier. Glad to see that Singapore is finally moving towards this direction through various initiatives and cool modules like CS3216.
2. Educators should learn from Randy
Good teaching imparts knowledge. Great teaching inspires students to have an inquisitive mind towards topics and facilitate their imagination to pursue greater knowledge themselves. Becoming a model of learning and pursuing excellent for the students is one of the best things a teacher could do for students. For me, this seems key in my quest to help others achieve success.
3. “Wait, and people will surprise and impress you.”
Most, if not all of us will have stories from one part of our lives or another that has someone, come out of nowhere to amaze us with what they can do. And this usually happens on 2 fronts, “evil” people doing good things, and people we have written off showing us greater potential than we expected. Jumping to conclusions, especially when it is about people, creates a glass ceiling in our hearts, which should be shattered so that we leave room for these people to impress us.
Last Comments
While my list of quotes that I wrote down and took from the last lecture far exceeds the above 3, I guess the key lesson is to live life passionately, help everyone else around you succeed, and your own dreams and aspirations will be achieved.
Growing an Entrepreneur
Lessons:
1. Try, Fail, and Learn, Grow – Try Fry Cry
a. Find Your Passion (What are you good at?)
b. Hang on the edge of your comfort zone
c. Failure Teaches Fast
2. Social Media use to network, build your identity and try out projects
a. Facebook – Launch Tool, Events, Fan Pages, Podclass.com
b. Twitter – Follow people in your field of learning
c. Blogs – i) Start your own blog ii) RSS Feeds of people in your field iii) Find advisors
d. Organize Local events – i) Meetup.com, barcamp.org, mobilemondays, wikiwednesdays, startupdinners ii) Volunteer for events to surround by smarter people where you can learn
3. People, People Technology
a. Find your team
b. Find your team style
c. Find your team, Style your team likes
d. Find your team, Style your team, Likes that breeds success
Info about Sudha
Ignorance to breed success. The first woman to raise venture capital in the New England states. 120 people and met in 40 days to get first million. She didn’t know about it, might have been scared off if she did.
Advices
When you think about what you don’t know, get to know it.
A milestone to live and die by – measurement of success.
Its about the people. An important milestone – find people.
The more you try, the luckier you get
When you know how to do something, get someone else to do it. Go find something else to do
Practice scaling and “doing business for others” as an exercise
Marketing to Students – Facebook Marketing
Hand around and find or create a group to network with people
Find local meetups to evangelize to people, these people have the local knowledge on the market
If you don’t ask busy people exactly what help you need, they can’t help you.
One Lesson: “Find Great People. Not just people who mean well, but GREAT people who can help”
Always be looking at the people, give a chance to people
Growing an Entrepreneur
Lessons:
1. Try, Fail, and Learn, Grow – Try Fry Cry
a. Find Your Passion (What are you good at?)
b. Hang on the edge of your comfort zone
c. Failure Teaches Fast
2. Social Media use to network, build your identity and try out projects
a. Facebook – Launch Tool, Events, Fan Pages, Podclass.com
b. Twitter – Follow people in your field of learning
c. Blogs – i) Start your own blog ii) RSS Feeds of people in your field iii) Find advisors
d. Organize Local events – i) Meetup.com, barcamp.org, mobilemondays, wikiwednesdays, startupdinners ii) Volunteer for events to surround by smarter people where you can learn
3. People, People Technology
a. Find your team
b. Find your team style
c. Find your team, Style your team likes
d. Find your team, Style your team, Likes that breeds success
Info about Sudha
Ignorance to breed success. The first woman to raise venture capital in the New England states. 120 people and met in 40 days to get first million. She didn’t know about it, might have been scared off if she did.
Advices
When you think about what you don’t know, get to know it.
A milestone to live and die by – measurement of success.
Its about the people. An important milestone – find people.
The more you try, the luckier you get
When you know how to do something, get someone else to do it. Go find something else to do
Practice scaling and “doing business for others” as an exercise
Marketing to Students – Facebook Marketing
Hand around and find or create a group to network with people
Find local meetups to evangelize to people, these people have the local knowledge on the market
If you don’t ask busy people exactly what help you need, they can’t help you.
One Lesson: “Find Great People. Not just people who mean well, but GREAT people who can help”
Always be looking at the people, give a chance to people
Market Marketism
Banks – Great 14 people
Global financial non-regulation as sovereignty can’t control the situation
Risks were “unknow-able”, Board doesn’t understand the risk, incapable of doing it, opaque systems of modern securities structures – we need to enforce old regulations of board controlling risks Vilfredo Pareto – the 80/20 rule, a billion people affected by 200m people
More than half of people live on $2 a day – poverty struggles
Cross ownership causes concentration of power
Military power concentrated – less war = good or bad?
Religion concentration
“As scale play a bigger role, and technology allowing for democratizing (though not always – Google, Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace)” Consequence: 1. Astonishing rapid growth in inequality – absolute poverty going down, real improvements at the base, BUT middle class shrunk especially in India and China
Top 11000 people (billionaires) assets are almost double of the bottom 2.5billion people put together – same as with other examples
3billion salary for the Hedge Fund managers
Growth no longer to be tracked by economic growth? causing political tension?
Backlash – globalization causing backlash
Therefore look at Superclass:
People who have influence over millions, international, on-going
60% from atlantic, 60% from business
Under-represented demographic – Women 94% of super is male, 6% is female
20% of these superclass went to top 20 universities – networking for multipliers
Ethics of leadership not trained in this class of people
More Transcient, but not necessarily more of a meritocracy – instead Geography, Luck is a huge part of of this
People less worthy might be more successful – other factors play a part
Etc parabos but all things are not equal, hence the reason for leadership and government to put rules into place
Other things:
Geographic location of these people (superclass) – fastest growing is Asians (Russia, India and China): 100 billionaires in China over the past few years (but bubble?)
Interest of these superclass align will drive how things are done
DAVOS – Have business leaders come together and talk things through so that through influence, things will be run the way people want it to
Power is skewed, disproportionate, and tools like government don’t exist on the global stage anymore – much harder problem than cancer or global warming
Community – now global as we can communicate and do business
however difference in cultures still cause problems
Inequality is unsustainable – hence all the whacky ideas like terrorism, etc.
1 philosophy and won’t have another until crazy people come out with new ones that may tip the balance and cause world to change in revolution style
DAVOS problem is that the fastest growing component is not represented (China and rest of Asia)
Scandinavian better wealth distribution than US
Europe is a museum, not much
Sweden wants to get off fossil fuels and be green
Traditional markets are not really market if supply and demand are done by the same people
European model maybe blended with the Singaporean or Chinese model with more government control to resurgent
Green tech
Government policies play a big role in Germany being better in green, US likely to follow once the next President takes over
Last energy bill are ridiculous as its done by random, causes wind and solar subsidies to reduce
Interest tug of war, so not really best policy comes through
Power dynamics
Constantly changing and different in each situation and influence level
Manifests in different ways
Roman Abromavich is a governer of a province in Siberia while he lives mostly in Chelsea
Agenda setting will change with the introduction of Asians
Disagreements with americans mainly due to fact that most countries do not agree with how things are run in US after Guantanomo
Lots of countries in asia have different values of states, how they interact, and what kind of things these states do (e.g. Sudan)
Structural Change within the year – incremental change
Global Financial Markets
Climate change going to motivate the change of the world in green tech emphasis
People rising to the challenge – big challenge is big opportunity
Burden sharing with US and China whether it can be resolved
Survival over climate change issues
Political division tension and not so much social unrest may be a result of how US is run now
CEO salaries and regulatory legislation
Compounded Advantages
Market Marketism
Banks – Great 14 people
Global financial non-regulation as sovereignty can’t control the situation
Risks were “unknow-able”, Board doesn’t understand the risk, incapable of doing it, opaque systems of modern securities structures – we need to enforce old regulations of board controlling risks Vilfredo Pareto – the 80/20 rule, a billion people affected by 200m people
More than half of people live on $2 a day – poverty struggles
Cross ownership causes concentration of power
Military power concentrated – less war = good or bad?
Religion concentration
“As scale play a bigger role, and technology allowing for democratizing (though not always – Google, Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace)” Consequence: 1. Astonishing rapid growth in inequality – absolute poverty going down, real improvements at the base, BUT middle class shrunk especially in India and China
Top 11000 people (billionaires) assets are almost double of the bottom 2.5billion people put together – same as with other examples
3billion salary for the Hedge Fund managers
Growth no longer to be tracked by economic growth? causing political tension?
Backlash – globalization causing backlash
Therefore look at Superclass:
People who have influence over millions, international, on-going
60% from atlantic, 60% from business
Under-represented demographic – Women 94% of super is male, 6% is female
20% of these superclass went to top 20 universities – networking for multipliers
Ethics of leadership not trained in this class of people
More Transcient, but not necessarily more of a meritocracy – instead Geography, Luck is a huge part of of this
People less worthy might be more successful – other factors play a part
Etc parabos but all things are not equal, hence the reason for leadership and government to put rules into place
Other things:
Geographic location of these people (superclass) – fastest growing is Asians (Russia, India and China): 100 billionaires in China over the past few years (but bubble?)
Interest of these superclass align will drive how things are done
DAVOS – Have business leaders come together and talk things through so that through influence, things will be run the way people want it to
Power is skewed, disproportionate, and tools like government don’t exist on the global stage anymore – much harder problem than cancer or global warming
Community – now global as we can communicate and do business
however difference in cultures still cause problems
Inequality is unsustainable – hence all the whacky ideas like terrorism, etc.
1 philosophy and won’t have another until crazy people come out with new ones that may tip the balance and cause world to change in revolution style
DAVOS problem is that the fastest growing component is not represented (China and rest of Asia)
Scandinavian better wealth distribution than US
Europe is a museum, not much
Sweden wants to get off fossil fuels and be green
Traditional markets are not really market if supply and demand are done by the same people
European model maybe blended with the Singaporean or Chinese model with more government control to resurgent
Green tech
Government policies play a big role in Germany being better in green, US likely to follow once the next President takes over
Last energy bill are ridiculous as its done by random, causes wind and solar subsidies to reduce
Interest tug of war, so not really best policy comes through
Power dynamics
Constantly changing and different in each situation and influence level
Manifests in different ways
Roman Abromavich is a governer of a province in Siberia while he lives mostly in Chelsea
Agenda setting will change with the introduction of Asians
Disagreements with americans mainly due to fact that most countries do not agree with how things are run in US after Guantanomo
Lots of countries in asia have different values of states, how they interact, and what kind of things these states do (e.g. Sudan)
Structural Change within the year – incremental change
Global Financial Markets
Climate change going to motivate the change of the world in green tech emphasis
People rising to the challenge – big challenge is big opportunity
Burden sharing with US and China whether it can be resolved
Survival over climate change issues
Political division tension and not so much social unrest may be a result of how US is run now
CEO salaries and regulatory legislation