Greek Complexity

Google TV version 2

I really hope Google succeeds at this:

Google’s smart TV software platform, Google TV, is poised for its first significant overhaul since it launched in Logitech and Sony hardware a year ago. Via over-the-air updates that should begin streaming to hardware devices on October 30, Google TV users will find new TV-optimized Android Apps, an improved YouTube experience, and new features that provide easy, direct discovery of TV and movie content. When Google TV launched, it was supposed to seamlessly co-mingle “live TV” (read: broadcast, satellite and cable) with streaming video services like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Video On Demand. You could also use your Google TV software to search the web, and even access digital content from your home network or attached storage.

via Wired

I am not an investment banker

When I tell people what I do for a living, I sometimes get asked (mostly by people who've heard the term but have only a vague idea what it means) whether I am an investment banker. I generally respond jokingly with something like, "How dare you use cuss words with me!" The joke is often lost on the audience but, for sake of clarity, here is why I'm not an investment banker:

It is curious to reflect that in the London market of 25 years ago, last week’s decision by UBS to maintain investment banking bonuses in the face of a thumping loss would have been literally incomprehensible. Back then, bonuses were paid out of profits. So without profits, where might the money come from? [...] I have written on this hallucinatory procedure before. Suffice it to say that whereas any corporation could in theory adopt it, only the banks have had the brass neck to do so. Then again, only the banks paid bonuses based on imaginary profits of various kinds throughout the bubble years.

from FT: Good old days when bonuses were paid from profits

This is also why I can't imagine myself ever investing in shares of investment banks. I really don't know how to analyse or value companies where profits, cash flows and spending decisions aren't necessarily related, and where the principal-agent problem is so pronounced.

Eyewear online?

Lenskart.com just announced funding from one of our coopetitors IDG Ventures. Maybe I'm not representative of the company's target market but I can't imagine buying spectacles and sunglasses online. Would you?

The name, of course, is directly, ah, inspired by one of India's largest e-commerce portals Flipkart.com.

VC/PE in India vs SE Asia

Interesting piece at VCCircle here. I thought the comparison below of PE in Indonesia to India a few years ago was apt. The writer's estimate of the number of Indian PE funds in the market today is quite extraordinary too.

Another VC investor mentioned in a discussion yesterday -- and I know that he had the same views three years ago -- that although Vietnam presents great opportunities for the canny investor, entrepreneurs there don't yet have familiarity with terminology and structures that VCs are used to in other markets. For instance, in the Vietnamese legal system, loans and equity are understood, but the concept of preferred shares trips them up.

Un-rant

Or

How to Execute A Sheepish Public Climb-down

The Google engineer who mistakenly ranted in public about his employer and his ex-employer Amazon as I mentioned here now posts what's probably best described as an un-rant. After his previous passionate exhortations for improvements to how Google operates, this new post has rah-rah cheerleader (for Amazon) written all over it. Certainly entertaining but not much else.

And Google seems to deserve even more credit than I gave them earlier for taking his original rant in stride so outrageously nicely. Now let's see if they actually act on any of his previous recommendations.

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I think I use too many adverbs. Seriously.