successful startup mapping

An interesting visualization project was started by PandoDaily. Check an interactive visualization here. Keep in mind to use the slider at the bottom as well as refer to the legend at the right bottom.

When the user slides through the years (from left to right), the tool allows them to visualize the expansion of the Fairchild Mafia's startup ecosystem as the multi-nodal network expands.

This is great for the folks studying the startup ecosystem in general and trying to figure out the legacy or pedigree of the folks starting it up.

robin hood of currency exchange

Any consumer app tends to have customers ask for speedier transactions at lesser costs. TransferWise claims to provide just that.

At 0.5% cost, TransferWise claims to charge no hidden fees and provides an interesting service. This is the precise reason why it is being touted as the robin hood of currency exchange and even Peter Thiel is supporting it.

Its direct competitors would be the likes of xoom.com. However, it plans to take head on with Paypal as it has a much broader scope of transfers. In that context, yes, it is providing an interesting service at 0.5%.

Currently, the service offers only the main currencies available in the FX trading world. The concept is to show a willing buyer and a willing seller the market rates from the FX exchange and if they both agree to the quote then they exchange in a P2P fashion.

This disruptive model attributes its low cost of service provisioning to:

- new infrastructure of TransferWise vis-a-vis legacy infrastructure of the banks ( as a side note, I guess ..more layoffs to come in the backoffice IT and business jobs for wire transfer departments to follow as this disruptive model gets adopted)

- scaling facility that the Internet offers when compared to traditional banking and marketing

The company was launched by Taavet Hinrikus, who also launched Skype from idea to first several hundred million users. He has a good network in the tech space to secure further rounds of funding and also, to spread the word for the product to become popular.

Overall, it looks like a promising offering to bet on.

killer healthcare (consumer) app

Today, I received a follow-up notice from Google about my Google Health account. In effect, Google icasked me to download all my data as it will not be accessible because Google chose to discontinue the service. So, here we go.

All the King's horses and All the King's men....

Such is the state of the healthcare laws and regulatory uncertainty that even with its engineering prowess and problem solving Product Managers, Google could not solve the problem. 

Or is it that Google did not find a way to easily monetize it without getting in conflict with US laws? Not so long ago, Google had to settle a matter of illegal pharmacy sales for $500 million with the Justice Department. More details here. 

Microsoft still continues...

Rival tech giant Microsoft ($MSFT) decided to continue offering Microsoft Health Vault. The offering seems to make sense. They have a monetization plan as well. 

The Killer App

Microsoft seems to stick to its path adopted in the quest to establish the ecosystem for enhancing patient care. After all, healthcare is a prime focus in most of the budget deficit reduction debates as it is slated to become 20% of GDP. A ton of self-help consumer apps are in place. Nothing comes as close to a comprehensive set of features and every consumer has to go to various apps for various services. For instance, an app reminds patients on their prescription intake. It coordinates with the hospital and provides reminder-alert service to the patients. 

The quality attributes of the killer app are difficult to gauge and establish until the regulations are finalized. Regulations have been finalized but they are not uniform throughout the country. For instance, Obama care is not going to be implemented or will need Federal help to be implemented in 22 out of the 50 States in the US. Consequently, architecture of such a product will be exposed to serious risks. 

innovation and resources

Is there a cause-effect relationship between resources and innovation?

Nikesh Arora, Chief Business Officer at Google, says Larry Page certainly believes so. I asked this question at the Citi Technology Investor Conference 2012 at Hilton, New York, and he responded to me elaborately. The specific question is at : in the webcast here at 35:20.

In academia, an article from Scott Anthony of Harvard Business Review is presented here with three steps on how to innovate in tough times. The three points are:

1. Lower the cost of testing 
2. Creatively  tap into outside resources
3. Ruthlessly prune the portfolio

Particularly interesting is the fact that Nikesh Arora (Google CBO) mentioned exactly the third point as one of the strategies being deployed at Google.

Detailed transcript of the question I asked Nikesh and his response are below:


Question from Manik Patil: 

From a supply side perspective, for  your engineers or your staff employees, in general, Google is now having over 50,000 employees.

How do you plan to keep the productivity high and stop/avoid complacence kick in?

We have seen history of companies in the past where they have great growth, lot of products...eventually having trouble with growing number of staff employees and eventually having some pockets of lack of productivity.

Response from Nikesh Arora, Chief Business Officer, Google: 

It's a good question, really!

First of all, we are still getting used to the idea that we are 50,000 employees. We see ourselves at Google as Google and Motorola, which we run as a separate entity. For foreseeable future, that is how it is going to be. Dennis has done a great job with getting his arms around Motorola and has a great team. 

Scarcity creates innovation
But having said that, your question is a good question because we are constantly thinking about how do we make sure that we keep efficiency and 'efficiency' not just because we think about life that way but you know Larry (Page) has a very clear point of view that scarcity creates innovation. Having abundant resources -to your point- makes people complacent. They don't think about this...they think about solving bigger problems with lots of people. So, we do and try to make sure that teams have little less resource so that they are forced to think out of the box to solve the problems with constrained resources as opposed to having abundant resources.

Large Scale
Having said that, it does take a lot of resources to keep the engine running with $10 billion in quarterly revenues and billions of searches a day around the world and products like Android, Youtube. So, it's a constant challenge.

No Silver Bullet
There is no silver bullet and one answer to it. It just requires management to be vigilant. And does require for us to keep going back to our portfolio more often than not to make sure that we are not doing things that are not good for us or are not going to scale well.

Balance necessary 
At the same time, you have to be careful that if you pre-judge things to soon then you may be at the risk of killing innovation right when it is about to start. So, it's a fine balance and there is one more overhang of management.

Another leader who thinks similarly is: James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-14/can-morgan-stanley-s-gorman-save-wall-street-.html

I had certainly observed this at several highly innovative clients I had the privilege to work with. 

the nearly-free university & the neofeudal higher education cartel

Guest blog post from OfTwoMinds.com of Charles Hugh Smith with an interesting take on Higher Ed.

The blog post was titled as 'The Nearly-Free University' and is sure to stir up some opposition to the complimentary course provisions from the likes of NYU (Read Damodaran), Stanford, and MIT who contribute to Open Course Ware motion (read OCW consortium).

http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov12/nearly-free-university11-12.html

Although this is a radical point of view, it is not a radically new opinion because a similar opinion was presented by NYU's Aswath Damodaran here where he argued that the monopoly based university business model is a failure.

The guest post is highlighting a new trend, which will take time to establish. The displacement of this cartel will take significant time - may be even decades. However, if debt were to shape up the US as it is attempting to shape up the EU region, then the displacement may be expedited.

As an extension to this vision, it is possible that higher education in US will have majority of foreign buyers. Already, there are rants, which are going viral, about 'Asians in the library'

Although the government is actively dissuading the foreign buyers (amounting to $23 billion in just tuition fees) through a policy-oriented attack, they will still come in hoards. Read an article from The Economist here with a sub-text that shutting out foreign brains is a good way to foster mediocrity.

Enjoy the read. Leave a comment or two if you like.