Greek Complexity

Another inspirational cycling story

No commentary necessary.

The school we recently visited in the Bihar village of Bumbuar, where we were encircled by a fleet of ambitious young girls on bikes, was also full of success stories, and since the scheme began, regular school attendance among girls has shot up to 90%.

In these girls' families, and for the rest of Bihar's rural poor, bicycles used to be reserved either for parents in their daily life, or for older brothers. But now, as many of Bumbuar's girls are attending school more regularly, not only is their knowledge of academic subjects improving, but their hunger for knowledge and a professional future is also increasing.

One keen young cyclist we met echoed the opinion and aspirations of many of her schoolmates, saying: "Every morning I look forward to going to school. When I'm older I want to go to university." This leap in the village girls' education and aspirations represents a quantum leap from their parents' era: just four of the 70 schoolgirls we met have mothers who made it to the tenth grade.

via How cycling set deprived Indian girls on a life-long journey

Grab a bit of Netflix. Add steroids. Produce Kaggle.

More in the Big Data vein. Just spectacular.

Kaggle is a platform where companies, researchers and governments can host competitions to help solve huge data-related problems. About 50 competitions have been run to date and members take just days to solve problems that have stumped scientists for years.

"To date Kaggle has crunched data on dark matter, predicting which used cars are likely to be bad buys, improve the World Chess Federation's official chess rating system, and predicting the likelihood that an HIV patient's infection will become less severe, given a small dataset and limited clinical information," Kaggle claims.

[Founder Anthony Goldbloom] spoke to many CIOs who all said they wanted to do more predictive modelling but their enthusiasm didn't match actual adoption. Goldbloom concluded that the problem was that the product was too technical and the barriers to entry too high."I just became obsessed," said Golbloom. "It was so much better than trying to predict unemployment next month and getting it wrong."

via From Bondi to the big bucks: the 28-year-old who’s making data science a sport

The title of this post, of course, refers to a contest by Netflix some years ago.

The ideas of competition, wisdom of crowds, and cross-disciplinary analysis themselves are not particularly new but the application of these ideas to big data analytics is new, driven by advances in storage, parallel processing, cloud computing, etc, and by the increasing imperative for organisations to be smarter about what they do with the data they possess.

The coolest X-man

Wired Magazine summarised this story as: "Woman loses use of legs, becomes 3X world handcycling champion, has accident, REGAINS use of legs, now pro cyclist. She, in fact, may be the coolest X-man."

Now if that isn't inspirational, I don't know what is.

More here: Rabobank Women's team signs miracle athlete Monique van der Vorst

When NOT to go with a (big-name) VC

Old post by Chris Dixon but, heck, I just saw it. If it's new to me, it's bound to be new to someone else. Quote:

Suppose there is a pre-profitable company that is raising venture financing. Simple, classical economic models would predict that although there might be multiple VCs interested in investing, at the end of the financing process the valuation will rise to the clearing price where the demand for the company’s stock equals the supply (amount being issued).

In practice, the equilibrium states for venture financings are: 1) significantly oversubscribed at too low a valuation, or 2) significantly undersubscribed at too high a valuation. ...

When you invest in early-stage companies you are forced to rely on very little information. Maybe you’ve used the product and spent a dozen hours with management, but that’s often about it. The signals from other investors who have access to information you don’t is an extremely valuable input.

So what should the smart entrepreneur do? They should read The Importance of Investor Signaling in Venture Pricing including the comments that follow the post, separate the wheat from the chaff, and then turn theory into practice.

A different kind of start-up event

I was attending a closed-door, fairly free-wheeling discussion last week here in Singapore hosted by one of our coopetitors when someone brought up the topic of events for VCs and entrepreneurs. Now, if there's one measure of commercial activity in Singapore that's always flashing bright GREEN, it's the number of conferences, seminars, fora and networking events held for tech start-ups. So when this person asked the rest of the group whether, in our opinion, Singapore has a sufficient number of platforms for VCs and entrepreneurs to meet each other, the answer seemed pretty obvious. Even if one doesn't go to all the events, going to a few every year is sufficient to get to know pretty much everyone else in the space. Singapore's VC industry isn't that big after all. It's essentially the same in India as well.

But it struck me that one thing I (and my portfolio companies) continue to find difficult is finding good mid to senior staff to join existing start-ups. I think there's an opportunity for a platform specifically targeted at people who want to move into the tech start-up space but don't want to start one of their own for whatever reason. Yes, this exists to a small extent on online fora but I have yet to see an event specifically created to allow start-up teams to get to know their brethren from larger organisations and vice versa. The opportunity exists across all roles -- sales, finance, technology, HR, operations, you name it. Put a critical mass of qualified people in a room and I can practically guarantee that it won't be seen as yet another start-up networking event.

Who wants to do this?

How many Indian Internet users?

Short answer: no one knows. Estimates vary widely according to 45 mn or 121 mn Indians on internet? Who is the bluffmaster?

The article quotes a few people for their views. I am with Alok Kejriwal, who says simply, "Who cares?" For most entrepreneurs, the actual number doesn't matter beyond a point. What matters more is what they do with it. I think India has long since gone beyond that point.

But, at a pinch, I'd have to say that 45 million users does seem to be too low an estimate -- and lo and behold, this estimate (by Comscore) doesn't include users at cybercafes or on mobile phones.

Fry and Dawkins on giving respect and taking offence

Loved this short video clip. Really doesn't say as much about Hitchens or even about religion as it says about logic or clear thinking.

Dawkins and Fry on Hitchens' Penchant for the Offensive

Hiring: venture capital associate

We are seeking to hire an associate to join our South Asia venture capital team. The actual title will depend on the profile of the candidate eventually chosen.

Job description:

• Entry-level investments role but with considerable responsibility, exposure to C-level executives and prospects for growth
• Work across the entire spectrum of investment activity including market analysis, evaluation of investment opportunities, preparing investment proposals, driving legal completion of transactions, reporting on portfolio companies and assisting on exits
• Report to the head of the South Asia team covering India and South-East Asia
• Based in Singapore with some travel

The ideal candidate:

• Undergrad or greater qualifications in engineering, science or related technical disciplines
• Good commercial awareness gained via work experience of 2-5 years
• Basic understanding of financial statements; MBA welcome but not necessary
• Strong cultural understanding of India
• Highly self-motivated, comfortable with ambiguity and exceptional at time management
• Good sense of humour!

Leave a comment on this post with your email address, phone number and a brief description of yourself. Your comment will be seen only by me and will not appear publicly.

No recruiters please.

Hang on a sec

A report in the FT today made me stop short. Quote:

John Canally, an economist for LPL Financial, says at least one bit of good news from the Jolts survey: the proportion of people leaving jobs who chose to quit is now back up to 50 per cent. That level is getting close to the pre-recession norm, and if people have the moxy to quit a job of their own accord, says Mr Canally, it indicates some confidence in finding a new one.

from High US joblessness puzzles economists

Why? I didn't know what the word "moxy" meant, though I could guess from the context. Just to be sure, I looked up the one online resource I use more than any other: TFD. Whoops, word not found. How about Dictionary.com? No luck there either.

Ok, if all else fails, there's Google. Which led me to two definitions. The first one being the name of an album by some heavy-metal band. I don't think Mr Canally was referring to this. The other was the only place I could find a definition that fit the sentence: Urban Dictionary. Do not click if you're the type who's easily offended. I mean, really. Do not click!

I thought it was hilarious that the FT, a fairly stuffy business newspaper, used a word that isn't found in the dictionary and seems to be used, even in its most benign form, only in informal settings. Interesting!

Seeking telecom salesperson or channel partner

High-growth firm seeks salesperson with telecom background. Must be a self-starter with minimum ten years of experience and extensive contacts with telecom operators in Asia and/or other emerging markets. Channel partners will also be considered. Attractive upside offered including commissions and ESOP. No recruiters pls.