Marie in Strasbourg part 2

Strasbourg, Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Sunday morning was a rush getting my bags packed, having breakfast, checking out of the hotel and supervising my luggage into a taxi waiting for me per prearrangement. There were now three pieces, plus the backpack, the third being a huge one weighing over 20 kilos (over 45 pounds) which had been fed-exed the week before.  My hostess greeted me warmly on my arrival, we managed all the luggage into her very spacious unit (I think it’s the French equivalent of a co-op), and then I immediately crashed for a couple of hours.

My room is spacious, I have a huge deck right outside, private shower and sink, toilet off of the hallway.  Everything is modern, nicely tiled floor.  Mme. Was also kind enough to allow me the use of a huge glass table just outside my room on which I promptly installed my PC and various documents relating to banking, school and finding my way around Strasbourg.

Sunday everything was closed, except for some restaurants, so I went exploring in search of dinner armed with a large map of Strasbourg. After about half a mile I found a place that seemed marginally serviceable (hamburgers).  On entering I saw an open bottle of Black Label on the bar. Johnny Walker Black is not my scotch of choice, but there being no Dewars I ordered a glass.  The Black Label had much less of a bite than the Black Label I have tasted in the US, but I drank it regardless, ate the hamburger (the fries were good), and returned chez moi with a headache.  Highly unlikely that I will order another Scotch for a while, even if I can find an establishment which sells it.

Mme. had no problem signing the address verification, so armed with her attestation, my passport and some traveler’s checks I presented myself at the Société Générale Monday moring, fully confident of having a checking account following a few formalities.  Monsieur there was very courteous, and after going over the documents presented told me that all that was needed was an attestation from the taxing authority of my city or state validating the fact that I had paid my taxes for 2012.  Seeing my blank stare he suggested that I might write to this organization, explain the situation, and request the attestation. He wasn’t certain that a copy of my tax return, which was in any case locked up in San Francisco, would be sufficient.  I thought Oh sure, Dear IRS, I am a student in Strasbourg unable to open a bank account without proof that I have paid last year’s taxes, so could you please send same ASAP. Needless to say I still don’t have a checking account -- but I haven’t given up.

On to the Orange store to upgrade my cell service, then to the Apple store where I waited for a hour before seeing a very nice tech who found nothing wrong with my Iphone, finally showed up for my 3:00 class.  Madame-l’instructrice was late (no surprise), but instead of going into the course on Théatralités she spent the time explaining the very complicated curriculum for the next two years (I only want to understand the first semester) and fielding questions from my group.  There are four of us in this group, une francaise, a young woman from Colombia, an Italian signorina (I think) and myself. A lot of explanation results in a small increase in my understanding of what’s going on, so I continue to ask questions of whomever and whenever I can.

Tuesday morning the Secretariat was finally open again, so I got there early to pay my deposit of 250 euros.  Wrong place.  I was sent to another building where a cashier took my money, so I was finally “administrativement inscrite.”  I was astonished to learn that this is all I’m going to be charged for the entire year.  This explains much of what I have observed in the last few days.  The school budget has its limits, different disciplines may be combined if the subject permits, the Secretariat personnel are probably paid for only three days a week (hence the Friday and Monday closures).  The restrooms are for both men and women, there are plenty of stalls, they are clean (this is Strasbourg after all), but – there are no toilet seats.

I took the bus back (buses were running despite a 24 hour greve, ie. Strike).  On entering I asked the driver in French if he was going to the Rue d’Ypres.  His reply was “Bonjour, Madame.”  I asked the question again, and his reply again was “Bonjour, Madame.”

Lightbulb moment – I said “Bonjour, Monsieur, est-ce que vous allez a la Rue d’Ypres?”    

“Eh bien, oui, Madame.”

Another lesson learned in France.  Greet the bus driver.  In fact greet anyone you interact with.  Everybody does.                                                        

Like Monday, Tuesday is pretty light, I had a one-hour course at 4pm again with la Mme-l’instructrice.  This is Spanish lit (15^th-18^th century) and because her background is theater we are studying Spanish drama, beginning with Don Juan, el Burlador (libertine, seducer) de Sevilla by Tirso de Molina (17^th Century) – should be interesting.  The class is conducted in both French and Spanish, Mme. Switches back and forth between the two.  I understand the French more than the Spanish, regardless I understand neither 100%.  There is no central bookstore on campus.  I will have to go to  the International Bookstore at Place Kleber (home of the Orange ad Apple stores)  to buy the texts.

The streets in the center of town are small, and shared by cars, pedestrians and bicyclists.  The cars are very careful, the pedestrians politely try to stay out of their way, it is the bicyclists who think they own the road. Outside of the center the streets are wide enough to allow cars their own space, the sidewalks are divided into a marked bicycle section, and an unmarked pedestrian section.  Neither the bicyclists nor the pedestrians make it a point to stay in their own section.  Sometimes cars are parked on the sidewalk, which results in a catch as catch can situation.  But I am staying is a fairly upscale section, and everyone is pretty polite.

Guest post from Marie abroad in Strasbourg

I'm very pleased and proud to be putting up this guest post on behalf of my mother, Marie.  Ever since our visit together in France in 2008 (described towards the beginning of this blog) we've been planning to get her set up in France to study abroad here.  You see, she's 70 years old, and happily very fit and also just retired. And get this,when she was in undergrad in the 1960's, she *majored* in French, and so despite having excelled in this language, she's only ever visited a couple times since and at most just for a few weeks! So with a bit of help, she applied (and got into!) a program in University of Strasbourg called "monde roman et neohellinique parcours d'etudes iberiques et latino-americaine", which while roughly translating to "Roman and Neo-Hellenic World-  Program of Iberian and Latin-American Studies" actually has her studying languages including Arabic and Spanish (though she's already fluent in Spanish), along with (I believe) cultural and history courses.  With course paths for professional translators and for researchers, she's taking the researcher route. It's a two year program, and she's there for at least a year of it maintaining option to stick around for a second year if she wants to.

And wonderfully she's gone ahead and been writing up her own journal and taking her own iPhone photos and emailing them over, and so with her permission here it is for the internet :)

Strasbourg, Saturday, September 7, 2013

It’s 2:00 in the afternoon, the first time I’ve had some downtime and not been tired since I left San Francisco.  I spent a couple of days with Teddy in Boston.  Monday we walked (and walked and walked) from Brookline to the North End where we had dinner.  Tuesday I had lunch with Celina Valadao, who used to be a rep for Continental, and is now a fundraiser for the Huntington Theater near Berklee.  Hopefully we will stay in contact.

I arrived at Logan around 6:30 pm Tuesday for my 9:00 flight on Aer Lingus.  Turns out they were overbooked and offered me $650 to give up my seat.  I declined saying I had to be in Paris the next morning.  So then they asked if I could go on Air France, which left at 10:30 pm but arrived in Paris an hour earlier (no changing planes in Dublin).  This was acceptable, the exchange was made, I bought a suspense paperback to read on the plane and waited til boarding at ten.  The flight was very comfortable, I had an aisle seat in a middle row with two empty seats next to me and was served champagne with dinner (no extra charge).  I finally slept for a couple of hours, and when I woke up we were about to land at CDG.

After passport control I taxied from CDG to the Gare de l”Est, and it was there, as expected, that I encountered my first issue with the luggage.  Pulling  the medium sized roller, the small roller, and the backpack heavy with electronics, I had to go up 5 steps to get to the station.  Seeing my struggles, a Frenchman pulled them up for me.  After that I managed reasonably well, but was always grateful for offers of assistance.  These came from people other than the French.  A couple of nice African girls helped me download the bags from the train at Strasbourg, and a Tunisian young man helped me tour around the station looking for the taxi stand (on exiting I  had made a left instead of a right).

Made it to the hotel. The room is tiny, but adequate, with plenty of outlets for electronics.  After setting up the machines I realized my mouse wasn’t working which was embêtant.   In French bête means stupid, and embêtant means pain in the neck.  But I can’t think of an English translation using one single word, so I like this word and you will see me using it a lot.  Bottom line is I had to use the touchpad.  Got settled, had dinner, fell asleep at midnight and woke up at 4 am Thursday morning wide awake.  During the previous 39 hours I had had a total of 6 hours of sleep.

My orientation meeting was at 10 am in Salle 4307 at the Patio (pronounced pash-she-o).  The campus wasn’t hard to get to, about a  12 minute walk from the hotel.    Finding the room was something else altogether.  As I eventually found out, the number means building 4, third floor, room 7.  Fortunately I had left the hotel early, so I had plenty of time to wander from pillar to post asking questions.   Got to the meeting in time,  met my director, and after spending the two full hours there, determined that I should really be at the meeting the next day.  Saw my director later on that afternoon with more questions, answers to which I did not fully understand.

As I have said several times, the program I  am registered in is entitled Roman and Neo-Hellenic World  Survey of Iberian and Latin-America Studies. Within this program are divisions, sub-divisions, and sub sub-divisions, with names like formation, parcours, specialites, and composantes.  I have yet to find out what these words really mean.  For example Carole Egger is my Directeur de Parcours, and another lady is my Directeur de Specialités, but Carole is the one I will be most in contact with.  The Thursday meeting was for people who want to teach, and since I don’t want to teach I should be in EMOS (Etudes Mediterraneennes Orientales et Slaves) which I think stands for Mediterranean Eastern and Slavic Languages.  That orientation meeting was on Friday morning so I was there Friday as well.

The “curriculum” for two years is printed on three 8-1/2” x 11” papers, folded in half, to resemble a small booklet with a colored cover entitled “Guide Pedagogique”, etc.  It could have been printed by one of the faculty members, although I doubt it, since they all seem more interested in their vacations than tending to business.  Half of the classes for M1 S1 (first year, first semester) have names like Théatralités, Documents Iconographiques, and Methodologie de la Recherche, and one can only wonder how much Spanish is involved.  The departments seem enclaves unto themselves, with very little connection with, or even understanding of who is actually running,  the university.

I still don’t know how much this is going to cost.  Rick did some preliminary checking for me and the information he got was 760 euros or thereabouts, which seems incredible. I have to go to the Secretariat and pay my 249.10 euros entrance fee.  At that time I can get some more administrative information, find out how to get on the school internet, and hopefully determine what the cost will be for the semester.  The Secretariat is closed on Mondays and Fridays.  I guess by now you must be getting some idea of how they do things (or not) at the University of Strasbourg.

Classes start Monday afternoon.  I will be asking more questions and hopefully get a little more understanding of what I’m supposed to be doing.  At the meeting on Friday the word “obligatoire” was used several times.  There is an EMOS website, which we were all exhorted to telecharger (download).  I guess that’s a start.

The rest of Thursday and Friday was spent doing laundry and trying to open a bank account. I say trying because It is not easy.  You can’t just walk into a bank and say you want to open up an account,  you have to make an appointment first.  I finally had an appointment with BNP Paribas,  one of the largest banks in France.  I spent quite a lot of time with Mlle. Michel,  going over my documentation and the various  options available to verify my address.  One cannot open an account without this verification, so I was prepared to wait a few days for this last requirement to be completed. After some 45 minutes and having selected one of the address verification options, Mlle. Walked off with a handful of papers only to return a few minutes later informing me she was desolee, but I could not open an account with BNP Paribas because I had no regular income. I was stunned.

Mlle. Referred me to a bank across the street whose requirements I guess are less stringent.  I have an appointment with them Monday morning.  I am to arrive with a document they gave me, signed by Mme Marques (the lady I am staying with for two weeks) stating that she has the honour to “heberger Mlle. Marie Sheridan” at such and such an address, that she will advise whoever when this arrangement changes, and that if the contents of this attestation are inexact, she is liable for punishment of up to a year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros.

This morning was spent on electronics.  First I went to the “Orange” store to get a cell phone number.  After a contentious encounter with some burly tech behind a counter who refused to talk to me, kept waving his arms in the air and saying “no English, no English” (I wasn’t about to speak to him in French, he was so brutally rude), one of the customers told me in English I had to register first.  Which I did.  Ten minutes later I was sitting down with one of the more civilized techs who set up a cell phone number for me for one month.  I have to recharge it every month.  I cannot get a subscription for more than one month.  Impossible.  I don’t have a bank account.

Next I went to FNAC, sort of a Best Buy.  My first inquiry had to do with my wireless mouse which no longer worked.  After hearing my story and thinking about it for a few minutes, this nice young man took the battery out and replaced it, removed the pin from the USB port in my PC and reinserted it, and showed me how to turn off the mouse to save battery life.  The mouse works fine now.  This is one of the nicer things that have happened to me in the last few days.

Then I bought a transformateur.  All the communication devices have dual voltage, so all you need is an adapter to plug into the wall.  But my electric toothbrush (or hair dryer, water-pik, or some other personal care device) has only 110, so if you just plugged it into the wall with an adapter it would fry.  The transformer, which is also an adapter, takes in the 220 volts in France, and outputs 110 volts for my non dual voltage device.  

I have spoken to Mme Cazenave, and tomorrow at 11:00  I arrive at her doorstep via taxi  with all my luggage.  The next stage begins and I have to start seriously looking for an apartment.

My French gets better every day.  I understand everything I read in the newspapers, and even if there is a word or two that I’m not familiar with, I can figure out what it means from the context.  Then when I try and verify it in my 50 year old Larousse, it may or may not be there. I had thought that everyone in Strasbourg who serves the tourists spoke some English, but this is not the case.  Consequently I am speaking in French with). the bankers, the techs at Orange and FNAC, and people on the street from whom I ask directions.  If the conversation gets too technical I ask them to slow down and explain a word to me in French.  I also speak French to the faculty at the University.  But I’m not yet ready to ask them to slow down and explain a particular word to me, so I just have to wing it. Thus I’m getting more and more comfortable with the language.  This was my goal, and I am content.

There is a Mass at the Cathedral is about 20 minutes, and I will be going there.  It is abour 50 meters away, facing my hotel. The Cathedral is as I remember it,  truly awesome (and I use that word in its original meaning)   The sound and light show is over for the season, too bad.         

Response to Peter Thiels’ course notes and NYT's David Brooks' article

 The New York Times responded to Peter Thiel's nascent teachings at Stanford.  Specifically, David Brooks was addressing the concept of competition located here.  Like the best articles, the comments make for an even better read than the content itself.  I included two I thought would be most relevant to making today's post. 

So imagine my elation that Thiel and the Times' David Brooks alike are talking about a subject that I think begs so much exploring – value creation.  And to show that this discussion has greater scope than Thiel’s blog, look at leading Presidential contender Mitt Romney’s recent comments:   “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”

All three – Thiel, Brooks, and Romney, are very bullish on entrepreneurship in general.  But by contrast to their optimistic theme, look at the comments to Brooks’ article.  The comment I’ve highlighted here is representative of the many that were posted: 

Richard L. from New Jersey wrote
"I guess my first reaction to this fascinating piece is that it really applies to maybe five people in the whole country. The sheer human capital required to consider a competitive impetus and, rather than succumbing to it, decide to put down the war-axe and successfully invent another game, is rather formidable. And extremely rare.

We certainly need the few who can, at least as much as we need the many who can't and instead merely compete (and win). But let's not lose sight of the reality that very few in any population are so incandescent that they can succeed as "monopolists". Most of us have to make do with being better (or more successful) than others at we do.

I'd suggest that "monopolists", while they create the new games that the rest of us play, are too thin on the ground to secure "the future of the country" without a ton of help from the competitive."


Taken in bulk, the comments of this ilk which represented the majority of those popular enough to float to the surface of all the comments posted, accused Brooks and Thiel of occupying an elite class that actually does have a coveted shot at “hitting it big” with a startup i.e. in Thiel’s case, or in Brooks’ case, with overpromoting the chance of success of those who pursue startups.  Indeed, media in general sings the praises of successes for all to read and reference, yet says little of all the startups that failed.  Entrepreneurs usually prefer avoiding talking about their failed startups in the past, certainly at the level of national discourse and pop media.  I’m 0 for 2 myself, and am on my third . . . but I’m not sure I’d like to talk on national media about it. 

Yet as someone who generally promotes startups and the startup lifestyle - with all of its ups, downs, and more downs – I was surprised at how much negative public sentiment lay in wait for a few individuals’ bullishness on startups.  And I had to wonder if maybe they were right I mean, *everybody* can’t be a Peter Thiel, can they?

After all, it’s a big world with a huge population.  Can a startup culture really sustainably satisfy the needs of everyone?  And by needs I mean, at minimum, sustainably put food on the table every night and pay the rent for all concerned?  All while simultaneously maintaining a shot at hitting the big-time?

Well sometimes I bite off more than I can chew as an amateur blogger and try to think up quantitative solutions to these problems.   I decided to think of 50 startups in the past twenty years and think about the number of people that benefited.  I put together that list here.  Yes, the list manifests all of my biases on how I think about the startup world:  The list is US-centric because I want to compare to the US population, and is centric on either brand names that are well known to consumers in general today, or else only familiar to me and a smaller number of others base on random niche interests.  Yet you’ll probably recognize most of the companies on the list, and hopefully you’ll accept that they represent the bulk of popularly-referenced successful ventures over the past twenty years – i.e. I’m addressing the assumption “These companies’ founders had started a venture one day and look how they turned out, so I’m going to start my own venture”. 

To make the math easy, I estimated most grossly that, on average, 50 people benefited directly in a significantly material, Peter-Thiel-esque way form participating in the early stages of these startups.  So we’re talking founders, early employees, and early investors.  At the extremes of these estimates we have Google where about a thousand people benefited significantly at IPO, and at the other extreme Instagram with about 15-20 people benefiting.   But on average, grossly, fifty.  Well accepted that this metric is very short-sighted, as companies such as those listed can create entire new industries, and in some cases like Google, entirely new forms of economic organization employing millions of people.  But I had to generate some kind of heuristic as a starting point for criticism and improvement, so there it is. 

So 50 companies x 50 people benefiting significantly at each company equals 2500 people.  That’s 2500 people over the past 20 years 1992-2012 of some of the most important technological commercial upheaval the world has ever seen.  So what does that tell us?  Well, just what question *are* we trying to answer?  I offer: “In an age of ongoing and immense tech upheaval, should we all aspire to found ground-breaking companies, or should we take the conservative route and stick ‘conventional’ professional pursuits such as accounting, law, medicine, plumbing, landscaping?” Well, were we to accept the accuracy of the 2500 number (as highly ill-advised as it is to do so), we would have to agree with the NYTimes commenters;  In a nation of 350 million people, including some 150 million non-retired, non-child, bread-winners,  2500 is just such an incomprehensibly small number that it would seem like a fool’s strategy to start a business.

But I think we’re not digging deep enough – we’re dealing too grossly with macroeconomic trends and trying to inform individual value-maximizing decision making with them.  After all, the decision-making individual doesn’t have to succeed in her first business.  She only has to succeed in the last business.  That is – the last of a potentially long string of startups to decide that the philosophy was worthwhile to pursue -  a pursuit that could last decades.   

But the company list is also misleading.  (And I even wrote it).  There were  many companies that one could research that IPO’d or got acquired in the same period that didn’t make my list.  Networking technology in general was huge with a lot of unintentionally low-profile brand names (think Brocade networks, Juniper Networks, Qwest).  In fact, if we somehow had an exhaustive database of companies that either 1) IPO’d, 2) got acquired, 3) just made a large ongoing stream of cash, or even 4) simply achieved a lifestyle-sustaining stream of cash for the founding individual and his/her family, we would find ourselves with a database of perhaps several gigabytes of information. 

All of the principals behind these businesses at some point made a startup oriented decision – whether they wrote up the PageRank algorithm at Stanford or opened an ice cream shop on their local Main Street.  The number 2500 looks silly now, don’t you think? I’d reckon we’d be up to several million to several tens of millions of individuals benefiting directly from a startup oriented approach to life.  How many precisely?  I don’t know.   Maybe it’s only 250,000 individuals, and maybe it’s 25 million individuals.  That’s two order of magnitude, and that’s still too large a range to say, inform policy or even a political / economic debate.  And are there losses along the way? Of course.  Do lifestyles, relationships, expectations get disrupted for many along the way?  Of course.  Can we as a society soften the blows while also increasing the chances of success?  OF COURSE.  For example, #1: 

Eric Ries and his ilk at Stanford and elsewhere champion means of starting up companies that minimally risk valuable resources like cash, time, motivation and focus.  Such entrepreneurship strategies (i.e. teaching entrepreneurship as a science / a rubric that can be roughly followed ) simply were not taught before the most recent decades.  So despite that their potential for increasing startup success rates (or at least reducing rates of unplanned-for failure rates) are still being borne out, they could have huge impact on our economy and entrepreneurial decision making. 

And #2:  another individual’s comment from the NYTimes article is illustrative:

Kenneth B. from Ashland, OR wrote
"There are probably people who have inventive ideas but are not able to carry them out because they lack funding. That's where the federal government can have a role, in the form of federal grants through the National Science Foundation and other agencies. There can be problems with such grants, though, in that peers who review proposals are not necessarily innovative thinkers themselves, so they may turn down the most innovative proposals because they're "too far from the mainstream."

There should be a mechanism to fund very innovative ideas that are outside of mainstream thinking. I can envision a special federally funded program dedicated to the most innovative research and development, with evaluations carried out by our most successful innovators: such people as Bill Gates, the Google founder, and Peter Thiel. Candidates would still have to compete for funding, but they would have a better chance of getting their truly innovative ideas turned into tangible results."

Agreed: Basically, many, if not most startups require funding beyond the Eric Ries lean variety to even show proof-of-concept or demonstrate market demand for an innovation.  And it’s the only solution to out-and-out socialism I can think of in a tech-dominated economy that continuously disrupts industries and professions that rely on some stability of cash-flows to responsibly sustain families over such long periods as the rearing of a child.  And yes, I know there are a million arguments against this approch– government competing with private industry, or effectively causing wealth transfer from taxpayers and the wealthy to startup employees and their CEOs.  Why benefit this class (incidentally, ‘my class’)? 

Because I think a nationalized venture funding approach is the only means to satisfy our national narrative of entrepreneurship that we can still call marginally responsible, without resorting to old Soviet-style property appropriations on an unprecedented scale or widespread, extremely undignified lifestyles such as similarly unprecedented volumes of people living in the streets.  To simplify it to a phrase, if the national motto is encompasses the freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then summarize this approach as “Give people the means to pursue happiness, or else . . . “ 

Here’s a quick nod to the libertarians among you – why can’t the private market solve this problem with more venture creation?  After all there is a venture capital industry and even the likes of Kickstarter for crowdsourced venture funding.  My response is, you guys the private, free market, aren’t working fast enough.  Many so-called VC firms only make one investment per year after reviewing 400 business plans, all backed by dedicated, motivated entrepreneurs.  Moreover, the Occupy movement is demonstrating that unemployment is way too high for the free-market-solves-all model to act fast enough at sufficient scale.  So you can either fund the crowds with welfare payments from your own taxable purse (something I know you find revolting), or ask them to start self-sustaining businesses stimulated from your, you guessed it, taxed funds / income.  

It’s just that I think it’s irresponsible for a society to plan on startup capital – the most vital capital needed to fuel a modern nation’s economy – to come from Mom and Dad.  Why?  Despite after achieving the best, most widespread adoption of Eric Ries’ teachings, I think we’re still going to see high startup business failure rates.  The gains to entrepreneurship are socialized, yet the losses are individualized. (Incidentally I wrote on this topic during studies back at INSEAD). 

So I’m afraid the New York Times commenters are right.  A single individual’s decision to start-up, for the average person (including myself among this lot) is a really stupid idea even under the most forward-looking of today’s norms and resources. 

PS. In researching for this post, I found this reference helpful / motivating:  "The Market System: What is is, How it works, and What to Make of it" by Charles Lindblom  .  And thanks to Charles R. of Moscow who highlighted this text in the same NYTimes article. 

PPS This post would ordinarily go to my normal blog for economic subject matter at http://prodigalmba.rstoem.com  but my Wordpress install won't let me put up new posts for some reason, so here it is on the Walkabout blog.

ProdigalMBA

Hi guys! Rick Sheridan here - that's right the until recently anonymous author of this blog. I've got a new set of posts up at http://prodigalmba.rstoem.com . They describe a pretty different way of transacting than we're used to, but they may also reduce unemployment a little. I'm trying to get as much feedback as possible on them. Check out the posts starting from "Roll Your Own Currency", but be prepared for some long reads. . .!

Passing on a China Christmas

(note the site is moving to http://prodigalmba.rstoem.com . . . !)

Well I've participated in a few competitive grant program recently - and actually won one of them. The first was GreenStsrt. It's an incubator right in the middle of San Francisco. Unfortunately I didn't make that one. At that point the pivoting was undeveloped enough that I had to half-a$$ the application, and I'm sure they knew it.

However, separately I also got introduced to the fine folks at HYSTA (Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association). It's a Silicon Valley organization of Chinese American entrepreneurs and investors that counts AliBaba's Jack Ma and Yahoo's Jerry Yang among its participants.

A lot of the folks at HYSTA work as unpaid volunteers - so good for them, their work is appreciated. The program is to send entrepreneurs to mainland China to network with investors and go to all the tech parks. In fact I've visited a lot of these tech parks before, but only one in any kind of official capacity. Basically the park administrators try to convince you to rent space in the parks, which is fine.

I had more time and help to prepare than with Greenstart, so two weeks ago I found myself pitching Really Solid Technology over on University Avenue in Palo Alto to a few VC's acting as gatekeepers. That was really fun because all of the kibbitzing was in Chinese. There were about twenty other entrepreneurs pitching that same evening. Turns out they thought my pitch was one of the best there! I was really stoked about that, especially since I hadn't converted my slide deck into Mandarin. Just goes to show that substance still matters, not just the sheen.

Anyways, HYSTA organized grant-seeking from the city of Guangzhou to its participant who had pitched well - where the grant wasn't guaranteed. A close friend helped me translate my bio into Chinese, submitted it, and lo and behold last night I found out I was awarded a $1200 reimbursement for flying to Guangzhou and visiting the convention there.

So I felt fantastic, but I already knew I probably couldn't go: you see HYSTA would pick up most of the rest of the expenses (food, lodging, domestic travel) throughout the Chinese cities, provided I was able to commit soon enough. And a commitment equaled paying a previously unannounced $100 fee for their volunteer efforts. It took too long (precisely one day too long) for Guangzhou to come through with their reimbursement response. Since I had to count on the Guangzhou subsidy before I could even *consider* going, HYSTA had to pass my opportunity on to the next person. Whatev, they're still nice people and they had already extended the deadline for the better part of a week on my behalf; and i appreciate that.

I felt ok overall. After all I enjoy the chance to connect with investors as much as the next overly-optimistic entrepreneur, but I've got bigger fish to fry in the form of executing on a bootstrapping plan. (NB Bootstrapping = don't need investors).

So good luck to the Chinese-American entrepreneur who got my spot - ya better make the most of it!

(and don't forget, I continue transitioning to the blog to http://prodigalmba.rstoem.com , so have a look, bookmark it or rss it (click the big orange button on the right of the opening page), and let me know what you think!

Harvard curriculum change : HBS now equals "start a business in a developing country"

I'm a *big* fan of a stalwart like Harvard doing this with their business school curriculum http://www.economist.com/node/21541045

Why? Cuz I, well, did it - and still rockin' and rollin'. Just have to read this blog to see how it all has been playing out. Stay tuned for more, and bookmark The Walkabout Blog's new site at http://prodigalmba.rstoem.com !

Twitter - the "Bank Assassin"

November 5th is something called "Bank Transfer Day". It's getting especially propagated on the likes of Twitter with hashtags such as #banktransferday.
        If I were either among BofA, Citibank, or Chase, (we can simply call them by their industry association name, the American Banker's Association or ABA) I would be shit-scared right now. Not necessarily over the Bank Transfer Day itself, but what it represents: decentralized-yet-coordinated mass bank runs. Today we have an added twist, and to understand it I need to explain to you the meaning of something called "reserve requirements".
        Banks earn most of their money from interest paid out by us consumers and business operators on loans we take out, whether for homes, student loans, or for our businesses. There is a limit imposed by federal law to how much money a bank can loan out. If a bank is fortunate enough to maintain, say, a hundred million dollars in the form of 'demand deposits' which is to say, cold hard cash readily available for consumers to take from the ATM at their leisure, then that bank is equipped to issue one billion dollars in interest-earning loans. In issuing those loans, the bank is maintaining something called a 10% "reserve requirement". This means that the demand deposits are 10% of the loan book's size.
        Now the reserve requirement is something that the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke has control over. As opposed to the example above, it's not fixed at ten percent exactly, but varies, generally between ten and twenty percent. It's one of a few levers of monetary policy the Fed has to influence the nation's economic activity. (Yes, the Fed wishes those levers were more effective than a rusted car's unhinged steering wheel, but that's another story for another time).
        If a bank's reserve amount compared to it's outstanding loans falls below the federally mandated reserve requirement too far for too long, then we're far beyond the mild inconvenience of reduced earnings. Instead, now the FDIC is required by law to send their agents in, discharge the bank's managers, and put the bank into receivership. Particularly their goal is to find a new buyer for the bank. Remember Washington Mutual bank? This happened to them in September 2008, and they were bought by Chase. FDIC did it's job well.
        Now for the twist: Like most businesses, banks rely on a certain degree of historical statistics to stay afloat. They know from long experience that on average, the masses don't simultaneously come knocking on their door demanding to withdraw their funds. The exception to this rule is something called a Black Swan event. A Black Swan event is glibly summarized by any unlikely scenario that suddenly becomes unexpectedly inevitable. Where this happened in the form of the Depression and its associated bank runs, the big banks now feel (at least they certainly hope) that the government's Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation formed post-Depression to guarantee people's deposits up to a couple hundred thousand dollars, reduces peoples' tendencies to get panicky and initiate a bank run.
        Twitter changes all that. Twitter followers via hashtags such as #banktransferday (just search for that keyword, pound and all, on www.twitter.com) can initiate a Black Swan event at the stroke of a key. Historical statistics be damned: How will banks expect themselves to carry on normal business under the current regulatory regime when they can be shot out of the water after a few short weeks of spontaneously-initiated Twitter-based word-of-mouth-building?
        So what does the future predict? Well, the #OccupyWallStreet-ers will withdraw their funds from the bank, but the effect will be modest enough that banks will have time to react - including reducing teller availability to stem the rate at which people can close their accounts, as well as initiating periodic traffic 'outages' on their online banking for outgoing transfers. These inconveniences would have the effect of discouraging the non-die-hard Twitter-organized bank runners. However the #Occupiers will have successfully forced the banks to originate fewer new loans, and thus their new revenue generating capability will have been effectively stifled.
        On November 5th The ABA will learn this sting of a lesson in social networking, and will know that their member banks came dangerously close to getting raided by the FDIC, getting put into receivership. So I highlighted what ABA would probably initiate among its member banks in the short run, but what will they do in the long run? Well over the next months, expect the ABA to lobby hard on Ben Bernanke's Fed as well as Congress to loosen reserve requirements or otherwise allow them to temporarily swing below the minimum requirement level for longer durations. This can give ABA member banks time to get new infusions of cash from the Fed (or from Warren Buffett ).
        And they'll be doing all this quietly because they don't want to provoke another, larger Twitter-juiced bank run . Who's got the upper hand in this struggle? The #Occupiers by far. It may be the only ace they have to keep bank fees and interests rates reflecting the true costs of administering loans and money circulation instead of the ABA member banks' shareholders' inflated sense of expected returns. But boy is it a damn powerful one.