Courtesy of the fine folks at TypePad, my blogging platform, I have added some new features to the blog. Given that they are not large widgets, I thought a heads up was in order.
As shown in the picture below, under my byline there are now two new buttons in addition to "Share This". "Tweet This" allows you to directly post to Twitter the title and http:// address of any post you like (or don't like) with comment. "Favorite" is admittedly self-explanatory but it gives me and anybody who has a TypePad profile additional information on the popularity of the post. (Share This is a also a great button because it allows readers to easily share posts on FaceBook, Stumbleupon, email and seven other services.)
One last site note, especially for my fellow bloggers. The "You Might Also Like this" section shows Sophisticated Finance posts related to the post being read. YMAL generates approximately 15 percent of my page views. It's been on the site for awhile, but I just wanted to recommend it to fellow bloggers.
I have been working on this never ending accounting/finance project for a client and I need a change of pace. Therefore, today's post is a lazy man's post on some new blogs I have been reading that may be of interest. It's kind of an eclectic mix but diversity of information improves the quality of thinking.
Dashes is Anil Dash's blog about social media and related topics. Anil has been blogging since 1999 and is a co-founder of TypePad (which powers Sophisticated Finance), which may in part explain his long history as a blogger. His thought pieces are some of the most insightful analysis about social media and the Internet that I have seen. His frequent posts thanking everybody who quotes him are an excellent source of new blogs to add to your feed reader. (Hint: thank people who mention your blog)
A Major's Perspective is written by an active duty major in the U.S. Army who has done multiple tours in Afghanistan. A real American hero! Every day he posts a great quote--frequently related to patriotism. His posts about the people he has served with will bring tears to your eyes. Excellent writing. He should consider a novel.
TechDrawl is a blog written by a group of professional writers based in Atlanta. (For those who do not know, Atlanta is a small city north of 8th street that has more venture capital firms than the entire state of Florida.) The blog covers technology, entrepreneurship and capital raising in the southeast U.S. A frequent theme is how to succeed in a start up outside Silicon Valley.
Intellibriefs covers geopolitics, security and intelligence matters of an international nature. Most of the writing is a compilation of works by other writers and analysts. The pieces are very well done and thought provoking. Think of it as the CIA joins NPR. Highly recommended if you are interested in international matters or tired of the 7 pm news.
This morning I tried a new technique to bring traffic to this blog and it worked really well.
@IndianStartup posted a link on Twitter to a very good post on Entrepreneur Corner about startups and valuations. After reading the article I sent @IndianStartup a Tweet for a link to my blog category for startups with #entrepreneurship. The number of people that hit the blog immediately was noteworthy. Response would probably have been spectacular if I had done it later in the day and not at 715 am.
If you write a blog, you probably have your posts categorized by topics. For example, I have categories for Excel, venture capital,financial crisis, etc. A list of all categories is here (scroll down). Rather than sending people links to a specific post, send a link to a blog category and show off all your work on the topic.
I meet a lot of start up executives in the course of a year. Many are involved in Web 2.0 businesses and unfortunately many do not have a clue about how to get a company off the ground or build a web following for their site. Every once in a while I meet someone who "gets it" and I track the development of their business. Such an executive is Daniel Chow. I have been impressed by the continuous improvement and feature expansion of his "Business & Finance Professional Education Network"--Finance 3.0.
Daniel is a full-time executive based in Hong Kong who works for a leading international media company. He formerly held positions with Arthur D. Little, a world class consulting firm, and Deutsche Bank, where he worked in investment banking. His background is analysis and finance and that may explain why I find the content on the site of such good quality--especially in finance and modeling. I spend a lot of time on business and finance sites and Finance 3.0 is one of those rare sites that combines high quality, correct information with the distinct absence of a lot of self-promotion by the participants. In many ways Daniel has achieved what LinkedIn would like to be.
I had the occasion to interview Daniel by email and his responses to my questions are below.
1. Are you the founder?
Answer. Yes I am, along with my wife Retha and sister Michelle. The 3 of us are all experienced finance professionals with several years of experience working with Wall Street firms, Big 4 CPA firms and multi-national businesses across the Asia Pacific region. We feel fortunate to have the depth of talent and resources within the family, which allows us to make decisions and respond to customer requests quicker then others.
2. When did it start?
Answer. We started our sister site - Financial Modeling Guide - in June 2007. A community element was added - Financial Modeling Community - in Feb 2008. In Oct 2008, the community was rebranded Finance 3.0. Finance 3.0 is now the "mother ship", with Financial Modeling Guide (and hopefully other finance & accounting sites, with time) forming part of the Finance 3.0 network.
3. XXXXX is your full time job and Finance 3.0 is your night job?
Answer. Not just nights, but weekends and almost all holidays as well :) As much as I would love to work on Finance 3.0 full-time, it is only prudent for us to manage our cash flow as we evolve (and bootstrap) the business. However my wife Retha, has recently left her job to work on Finance 3.0 full-time. She spent 8 years with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Singapore and Jakarta, working across their M&A advisory and assurance practices. She now helps to manage our new product development efforts.
4. Future direction for the site?
Answer. Our vision is to build a financial education resource that every finance professional will turn to whenever they have questions and training needs. We currently distribute professional finance products (spreadsheets, software, books, etc) and sell advertising. We are developing a subscription based e-learning product for finance & accounting topics. With time, we hope to evolve a business model with equal-part contribution from subscriptions, e-commerce and advertising.
This business model can only be successful with continued emphasis on quality and balanced editorial (no bias, no spam). Our customers should associate Finance 3.0 as a premium, world-class resource completely focused on their continuing professional education needs. For this reason, I continue to invest a lot of time on the site as a writer and community moderator.
5. What mix of readers / users do you have in terms of geography?
Answer. The United States and India were our 2 largest markets by far. The United Kingdom, Australia and Pakistan follow closely. In the year of 2008, our page views were in the millions, from 222 countries & territories, of which 75% were new visitors. There continues to be a lot of growth potential from both existing and new visitors. We are excited by the opportunity to build a dominant position in this financial media niche, across both developed and developing markets.
Everybody blogged about their predictions. The best post I have seen is here at This is going to be Big. It's a video collage of comments from some thoughtful and observant people. May have to start using video in this blog.
My thoughts on the future of the Internet are here.
Daniel Marcos is a Mexican venture capitalist and entrepreneur who first blogged in Spanish at Capital Emprendedor. Daniel's posts reflect a fine blend of U.S. and Mexican insights into entrepreneurship and his blog is also a great way to improve your business Spanish. Capital Emprendedor is a major source of readers for Sophisticated Finance and a reblogger of my posts translated into Spanish.
Daniel is now launching his first English language blog--CEO Brain Trust--which serves the interests of startup and early stage CEOs. The blog is here.
Daniel also enjoys the distinction of being one of the few people I have corresponded with online and have actually met in person. Great guy.
Posterous, which is a site for group blogging, has just come out of beta and is available to anybody. If you have ever been involved in an activity where you have to easily distribute different types of information (documents, photos,videos, web links, etc.) to a large group of people, Posterous may be the solution. E-mail anything to Posterous and it appears on your blog/website. Send just a website address and it appears as a hyperlink. Send a document and you have complete functionality with Scribd. Basically, email anything to Posterous and it appears on your own website/blog. The subject line of the email becomes the title of the item posted.
I have set up a blog for my entrepreneurship class at FIU this spring using Prosperous. No more giving out links, no more flash drive copying, no more paper anything. The link is http://roberthackercourse.posterous.com/ . Took me ten minutes to set up and load content.
For those who subscribe to blogs, Posterous offers all the usual choices. If you want to subscribe to my course blog, you can get all my presentations, videos and spreadsheets from the course. There will be no voice of the lectures to go with the content to start, but I may record a lecture and post it occasionally. Just like the MIT professors :)
For serious blogging I am going to stay with TypePad, but for mass information distribution Posterous looks like a winner. If you ever needed a quick blog (e.g. missing child, disaster, etc.) Posterous would be a good choice.
Hint: leave your email signature off your posting emails to Posterous or it appears after the object you post.
Yesterday's post on McKinsey's analysis of U.S. healthcare prompted the following email:
Hi, Robert Hacker.
McKinsey Quarterly (McKQuarterly) is now following your updates on Twitter.
Check out McKinsey Quarterly's profile here:
http://twitter.com/McKQuarterly
You may follow McKinsey Quarterly as well by clicking on the "follow" button.
Best, Twitter
Now what does this email tell us:
McKinsey, a very smart group of business consultants, is using Twitter and believe their prospective client base is also
McKinsey has a search set up on Twitter to capture every mention of McKinsey
McKinsey is promoting all their publications through Twitter (you can follow the McKinsey Quarterly on Twitter)
You might be asking how McKinsey found my blog post. It was not through a feedreader. Last week I started publishing Sophisticated Finance posts on Twitter using twitterfeed. If you are one of the readers of this blog who does not use a feedreader or email alerts to find new posts here (about 80% of you), you can follow me on Twitter (rhhfla) and get the earliest notice of new posts. Twitterfeed picks up new SF posts faster than Feedburner, Google Reader or NewsGator. Imagine that.
I also think McKinsey's behavior confirms some of my previous thoughts about Twitter.
Will Price writes an excellent blog. When he lived the leisurely life of a VC he frequently wrote some of the best analytical posts that I have read. Now that he is an operator and the CEO of an early stage company he posts less frequently but his intelligence still shines through. In a post today Will said that Amish Jani is one of the smartest VCs he knows and that Amish was now blogging. One smart guy recommending an even smarter guy, so off I went to read Amish's blog Just Getting Started.
Amish appears to live up to his reputation, with several insightful posts on IT, software, cloud computing, SAAS and PAAS (you need to read the blog to find out what PAAS is). The post on how to beat Google at search is particularly interesting. This man thinks really well about complex issues related to IT and he shares these thoughts in the blog. Not all VCs are so willing to share their insights in their blogs.
I have been using Twitter for a few months. If you do not know about Twitter, an explanatory video is here. I use it basically to follow a few friends and to get quick news on natural disasters, Miami events, etc. As a breaking news source it is on a par with any television network (without video) but it covers everyone's local news throughout the world through its large number of users.
Twitter is basically IM meets social networking or the logical extension of text messaging and email in a Web 2.0 world. Enterprise versions of Twitter are now emerging with restricted access only to a corporation's employees. Yammer is perhaps the best known example, but a post today on Web Worker Daily references twenty "microsharing" applications.These networks are a substitute for email, which has bogged down under heavy volume and little advance in the related technology.
Enterprise Twitter is of course an excellent example of Web 2.0 crossing over to the corporate side. Another good example of Web 2.0 meets corporate is the new features on LinkedIn, such as a Facebook like "status" and feeds for member's blogs. The most interesting example perhaps comes from Lijit. Tara Anerderson, the head of customer service at Lijit, discusses how she monitors Twitter for customer service issues related to Lijit or any other mention of the company. Tara's monitoring of Twitter is exemplary customer service and a leading indicator of where customer expectations will be in a year or two when it comes to customer dialog with a product or service provider. (Somebody please tell Verizon.)
Of course, we should all start monitoring Twitter for comments on the competition. May prove to be a target rich environment for new customers.
Note: the video link for Twitter came from Tara's blog.
As long time readers of this blog will know, a significant portion of my life revolves around three themes:
Capital raising and financial consulting
University teaching
Blogging
Whenever these themes converge, it is almost always a very rich experience. An email yesterday was such an experience. A Dr. Barett wrote to me after seeing the post referencing Robert H. Jackson. He wrote:
I have now learned that there are 20,000 academics and other students of the law who are interested in RHJ
There is a center devoted to the study of the thoughts and writing of someone I referenced in a blog post
Academic study has been devoted to the particular speech I quoted
If I want to learn more about RHJ, I now have a complete roadmap for how to do it
The ease with which I can study RHJ will encourage me to do so
As I have mentioned before on this blog, the greatest minds in history have almost always been multi-discipline oriented, e.g. Descartes who studied mathematics, ethics and science. One small blog post has now given us all the opportunity to become multi-discipline oriented through the further study of RHJ. Thank you Dr. Barrett for the email, the opportunity to learn more about RHJ and perhaps to become better thinkers.
After yesterday's story a reader asked for a list of the blogs I read. A file in OPML format of all the blogs I read is available through the following link Download blog_list.opml To read this file just import it into any feed reader. In GoogleReader click Settings, click Import/Export and upload this file. All my blogs will now be part of your reading list. Delete as you see fit.
Another source of information that may be of interest are my Delicious bookmarks which currently contain about 200 blog posts from others related only to startups, VCs and related themes.The RSS feed for these bookmarks is in the lower left hand corner of the page.
For those looking for more convenience in following what I blog, tag and distribute you can follow me on FriendFeed. You can embed a widget of my FriendFeed in iGoogle for maximum convenience. FF includes my major postings all in one place except for Clipmarks. Clipmarks includes any part of a website that I have clipped, which frequently is tech cartoons. Search under "rhhfla" at Clipmarks.com (if the previous link does not work) and you'll find mostly what makes me laugh. Clipmarks also has an RSS feed for my clips.
If anyone has interest in reading my comments on other blogs, do a Google search for rhhfla. After the first 2-3 pages, the next 10-11 pages include my blog comments. I have not read all 13 pages, so it's possible somebody else uses the same "alias".
After this post I guess I am out of the closet. Geek and Proud.
I believe in analysis. Hopefully by now the readers of this blog have realized this fact. I also believe that new businesses should use a blog as a way to promote their business and establish a dialogue with potential customers. Aiderss.com provides some of the most interesting analysis of a blog that I have seen. They use a proprietary system to rank blog posts by relevance and reader reaction and then classify them in terms of "popularity". Shown below are the top 20 posts from Sophisticated Finance, according to the aiderss methodology.
I would have thought the Excel and modeling posts would be the most popular but they appear not to be. New business ideas, the current credit crunch and technology appear more popular. Also, based on this analysis, I am streaky. Several good posts in a single month and then nothing for several months. I have to analyze this in greater detail. The good news is now I have some data to work with.
The links below work. So if you missed one of these posts, you can click through to the post.
Condo.com,
the on-line marketplace for condominiums, has expanded its services in
the sale of condo projects. Through an alliance with CB Richard Ellis,
one of the leading corporate real estate brokerages, the two companies
will work together for the bulk sale of distressed projects. The
website now has a special section for investors.
In
this blog I try to deal with finance and related topics in a serious
way. However, sometimes we must digress and thereby provide you with
real insight into the world of "high" finance. This morning's lead
story on NPR...
One
of the things that intrigues me is theory that has practical
application, especially as it applies to economics and business. My
students, I truly believe, dislike this feature about the way I teach.
They much prefer to struggle on with no theoretical foundation. One of
the questions they struggle with in my entrepreneurship course is how
to find the idea upon which to start a new business.
Before
I give my workshop on financial models at the FIU Entrepreneurship
Center each time, I review the presentation and try to improve it based
on attendee feedback, classroom discussions from my course in
entrepreneurship and client work. Invariably during this process I
discover some major concept that I "need" to completely re-work. The
concept I am re-working this time is "what is growth". One of the key
objectives of every business should be to grow, but it appears that ...
Recently
I have met with several people in their late twenties and early
thirties who are involved with technology startups in South Florida.
They all either grew up or went to school in the northeast and
universally lament the lack of an organized support network for
entrepreneurs in South Florida. I would agree that we have to improve
the support network for entrepreneurs, but we do have the resources to
create a meaningful support structure, such as:
Many
of the pundits say that there may be a credit crunch as a result of the
continued fallout from the sub-prime mortgage market. Personally, I
think there is too much liquidity in the money markets and only the
collapse of a major financial institution or rumors to that effect
could trigger a major adjustment in risk return expectations and credit
availability. The 1 month Treasury bill yield has increased by 34 basis
points since the beginning of 2007, which ...
The
real conclusion from the numbers is that Florida lacks an adequate
number of venture capital firms to properly develop its economy.
Entrepreneurs should probably consider locating in Massachusetts or
California where VC firms exist in abundance. (Note: Remember VCs like
to be close to their early stage companies.) When you look at the great
concentrations of venture capital in Boston and Silicon Valley one
noticeable similarity stands out. These cities both have great
universities with strong scientific research traditions ...
When
I wrote my most popular blog post ever (1100 readers), Microsoft Yahoo
Makes Little Sense, I struggled with how to describe Yahoo's failing
strategy. Finally it came to me. Yahoo failed to realize the change in
the Internet to where people now "live on the web". No longer is the
Internet about portals, static content and pushing information to
readers. Today the Internet is the place where people have their
social, intellectual and professional lives on display, in large ...
Now,
if we were to ask what are the two or three most important questions
that a business plan or financial model should answer, somewhere in the
top three would probably be "how much money do you need and for what".
Now this question, by its nature, appears to me to be an obvious
candidate for a numerical answer or an exhibit. Yet, half the business
plans and models I see do not answer either question and a surprising
number ...
Maybe
the thunder and lightning constantly rolling through Miami the last few
days has affected my brain, but I am thinking of joining the Creative
Commons licensing program.
Over
the last few months I have been working with several new clients and I
have noticed an interesting correlation. The tighter the company's
restrictions for access to the Internet, the more poorly managed the
company. (Note:companies that do not...
Two
Harvard Business School professors, Diego A. Comin and Bart Hobijn,
have just published an interesting paper entitled An Exploration of
Technology Diffusion. The paper basically looks at the rate at which
fifteen technologies have been adopted by 166 countries...
The
distinction between a business strategy and a business model is
particularly important and appears to be frequently neglected in most
of the business plans I see. A business strategy deals with the
allocation of resources and I would define it as "the allocation of
resources to increase shareholder value in an economically efficient
way". The key resources are capital, people and time. The business
model is the practical translation of the strategy and focuses
principally on the revenue model, ...
I
have spent the last two weeks working on a prospectus for a company
that is backing into a public shell as a means to get a public listing
and additional capital. This is not my usual type of client...
The
McKinsey Global Institute, the economic research group of McKinsey
& Company (leading international consultants) have released a
report--The New Power Brokers: How Oil, Asia, Hedge Funds, and Private
Equity are Shaping Global Capital Markets. The report analyzes
petrodollar investors, Asian central banks, hedge funds and private
equity funds and focuses on their collective impact on global capital
markets. The findings include:
All
of your user generated content is actually creating a brand for you.
All of your postings, writings and photos on the Web create an image
much like advertising for Coca Cola. Collecting all the content from
the Web on a person gives one (or a prospective employer, client or
mate) the opportunity to profoundly understand how that person thinks,
what their values are and what they do 24/7. If you think about how
carefully, for example, Coca Cola guards ...
If
we look at early stage companies, there is a certain consensus on the
stages of development, which are described below: 1. Proof of
concept--revenue less than $1 million 2. Commercialization--revenue
from $1-3 million 3. Scaling--revenue from $3-10 million
About
half of the readers of this blog originate from Google searches. The
most popular searches involve Excel, financial models for startups,
sources and uses, CAPEX and headcount plans. In the interest of being
responsive to readers, and in an effort to fill the apparent void on
the Internet related to complete financial models built with Excel, I
have posted a model which includes examples for all of the frequent
search terms
Much
has already been written about the Microsoft's acquisition proposal for
Yahoo, so I will not bore you by repeating the financial terms, posting
Steve Balmer's letter to the Yahoo Board or speculating on the private
equity firms considering to bid against Microsoft. I do not think that
the deal makes sense strategically for Microsoft. Despite the fact that
the acquisition would be a significant departure from Microsoft's
organic growth strategy, which is always a loud warning bell (see this
...
I am not a person who makes a lot of friends. I have gotten better at it over the years probably as I became a better listener, developed some empathy and learned to be less serious about things. Raising my daughter probably taught me more about how to deal with people and build relationships than any other experience. (To clarify, my wife raised my daughter, but there were times when I was very involved.)
My good friend Colleen has started blogging. I met Colleen at the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at FIU where she is an Adjunct Professor. Colleen's background includes a degree in theater and an active effort to get a PhD in business. She is not your run of the mill business type or professor and never boring. She has an energy level that would rival small armies and sincerely cares about the students and would be entrepreneurs at FIU. I will admit that I have a fondness for wonder women. My wife is another one.
I am sure Colleen's new blog will be eclectic, funny and well written. Check it out.
When I started this blog I really had no idea how it would evolve. HubSpot's Website Grader says I have almost 10,000 subscribers, which seems high but who knows with all the ways to follow a blog--Technorati, Bloglines, Stumble, etc., etc. Compounding this are a series of very nice people that translate my posts into foreign languages, with Russian the most popular and a soon to be released series of my posts in Spanish. More on this in a future post.
Maybe the thunder and lightning constantly rolling through Miami the last few days has affected my brain, but I am thinking of joining the Creative Commons licensing program for Sophisticated Finance. If anybody has thought through the whole issue of copyright protection for blogs, is knowledgeable about Creative Commons licenses, or has proof that lighting can cause delusions, please comment below or send me an email.
Many of the blogging platforms, TypePad, WordPress, Movable Type, take the position that their technology not only provides a blogging platform but also serves to provide website functionality. I believe that their technology is probably an easier way to create a website for something simple like a consultant or professional services firm. The big advantage over a typical website is that one easily combines a dialogue with potential customers and the required corporate or personal information.
A nice example of a blog that also serves as a professional services website is Sandra Bessamra's blog. I like the way she used a widget to segregate most of the French language posts from her main posts which are in English. Simple way to show two of the four languages she speaks. Also, nice use of other widgets including Sophisticated Finance. Always a good widget choice!! Besides the previous link, the Sophisticated Finance widget is available from the lower right column of this blog.
Note: 50 readers read my blog through my widget on Saturday. Have to watch this statistic more carefully.
Forbes, the business magazine, is organizing a new network of blogs called the Business and Financial Network. Initial reports indicate that there will be 400 blogs in the network, which will be housed within Forbes.com.In return for joining the network, members will be required to run ads that they approve from Forbes and other advertisers. Sophisticated Finance has been asked to join this network.
When I started this blog I never expected for it to have advertising and merely hoped for the readership to grow to a size where it would ...... Now I think I have a chance for the readership to increase significantly but I have to accept ads from Forbes.
Thoughts from readers on whether to join this network would be appreciated. Leave a comment or email me.
Setting aside my new apparent conflict of interest, Forbes.com is actually a pretty cool site with a very neat wiki for org charts and a nice selection of widgets that you can use.
A few blogs and websites that I think you may want to consider visiting.
Spark Plug is written by my friends and former students Kevin and Russell Otway. They operate Veteran Energy Services, which provides energy audits and installation services for home energy saving technology. In addition to helpful posts on "green", the environment and clean tech, they also have the occasional post on patriotic themes. Go Navy!
Tyler Yuniarto blogs at On Discovery Path about the Web--social, consumer and enterprise. He has a real knack for finding articles that I have not seen before. Tyler is an Indonesian by birth and now works for a high tech company in the U.S. This combination of backgrounds gives him some unique insights.
BabySpot.com is a social networking site that caters to expectant and new mothers. The site offers all of the standard social networking features-blogging, forums, photos, etc so that a mother can share her experience with friends, family or the world.The site just launched so you can expect a stream of new developments over the next few months. The Founders are graduates of FIU but somehow managed to miss taking my courses.
In a temporary period of delusion, I actually thought about starting a second blog--Sophisticated Finance Excel. Hundreds of people have visited this blog through Google searches for "startup model", "excel model", "debt schedule" and "headcount plan". My post Startup Excel Model is the second most popular post ever on this blog. Based on my students, I imagine that a lot of people need practical guidance to build financial models. (Did I mention my workshop this Friday that will cover building financial plans in Excel? ;)
A post on The Extreme Presentation Blog saved me from the foolish idea of starting a second blog. The Extreme Presentation Blogis an excellent blog I read regularly on presentation and design. Their post Presentation Wisdom-Search Engine talks about a new feature from Google--custom search. Custom search allows anybody to create their own search engine that only searches the websites and blogs you include in the searchable sites list. The folks at Extreme Presentation created a custom search engine called Presentation Wisdom that searches only ten very good sites on presentation and design.
I am now pleased to announce the Sophisticated Finance Excel custom search engine. This search engine is devoted to Excel and financial modeling. Today it searches only three blogs. The other two blogs I have mentioned here several times before--Juice Analytics and Microsoft Excel. I can add additional blogs and websites to the searchable site list. If you have a good site for Excel or financial modeling send me an email and I will consider adding it. On the home page for Sophisticated Finance Excel Google provides the code to embed this search engine in other blogs. A directory of Google custom search engines is here. The number of custom search engines is small today but it will grow quickly.
Yesterday I discussed ad widgets. Today I have a branded search engine. Next I'll be thinking about starting the Sophisticated Finance social network on Ning.com. (Hmmm, maybe that delusional state is returning.) Quite amazing the number of branding opportunities available through Web 2.0.
Note: Sophisticated Finance Excel has Google ads which I can not eliminate without paying Google an annual fee or claiming to be a university or government agency. My apologies for helping Google to cover the very high marginal cost of hosting my custom search engine, which must be about two cents per month. I do not endorse any company or person that may be cited in an ad.
I have worked in many, many countries and the number continues to grow. Much of my business experience has been gained in the third world markets of Asia and Latin America. My interest in things international was spawned in part by the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when I discovered that the world extended beyond the small town in upstate New York where I grew up and Little League baseball. The fact that my father was born in South Africa was probably also a contributing factor.
A recent post, Startup Excel Model, has proven quite popular, in part because it was highlighted in a blog called Startup Cube. In addition to a really cool name (I like the mix of business and database), this is a Russian language blog that covers entrepreneurship amongst other topics (according to one of my Russian speaking students). Given that I have benefited so much from my international experience, and most of us read blogs in English about American thinking on business and entrepreneurship, I want to extend an invitation to the readers of Startup Cube to send me their thoughts on entrepreneurship, startups, new business ideas, etc. and the difference in perspective on these subjects between Americans and Russians. Submissions in Russian, English or any other major European language will be fine. I will get the submissions translated and post them here. (My email is rhhfla1at yahoo.com )
Maybe this is a bit of a wacky idea, but it's Monday morning so hopefully you will cut me a little slack. If this works maybe the readers in La Paz will follow up with a similar submission.
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