Jun

29

For-profit corps can change the world

Filed Under changing the world, entrepreneurship, regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

A common trait among forward-thinking Generation Y “millennials” are that they don’t just want to make money (who doesn’t?), but to also do good by giving back some how, by changing the world for the better, by actually making difference. For this group of young adults, they may have struggled with the question of “to work for a non-profit or for-profit?”

The lines between the for-profit and non-profit jobs are blurring, which means that the actual experience gained, and the job compensation, whichever your choice, is roughly the same. Thus, this question can be effectively boiled down to, “which path feels better?”, or “which as a larger touchy-feely” factor?

In light of all the large corporation scandals (wow, Wikipedia has a list here), it’s no wonder that the winner to the touchy-feely question is undoubtly, the non-profits. However, I do think, nay, believe that if executed properly, for-profits can make a larger and more lasting impact on the world.

This is exactly what Bill Gates has done, all “Microsoft is evil”  puns aside. From Anil’s blog:

Bill Gates has pulled off one of the greatest hacks in technology and business history, by turning Microsoft’s success into a force for social responsibility. Imagine imposing a tax on every corporation in the developed world, collecting $100 per white-collar worker per year, and then directing one third of the proceeds to curing AIDS and malaria. That, effectively, is what Bill Gates has done.

Now that, is powerful. Microsoft might as well be a sovereign multi-national government. I think this is a feat tough to pull by a non-profit–simply because it might involve some questionable tactics in business.

I’ve blogged here about a book by C. K. Prahalad, titled “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid“, which essentially concludes with proof that making profit is not mutually exclusive from helping the poor. Prahalad is a distinguished professor of strategy at the Univ. of Michigan.

May

11

iPhone apps for healthcare technology — plus some robots

Filed Under changing the world, healthcare technology, innovation, mobile, regular reads, technology | Leave a Comment

Cell phones, mobile phones, hand phones, whatever they are called, wherever they are in the world–can change the world! We already see it help drive economic development in microfinance, and now, we’re making strides with healthcare technology, another field I’m interested in because I love seeing technology change lives. The convergence of sophisticated UX-centric mobile devices, Internet/Web 2.0, Software as a Service, cloud computing — not to be missed!

From the article:

Despite all the advances in medical diagnostics, two-thirds of the world’s population has no access to imaging technologies. Worse, about half of the imaging equipment sent to developing countries goes unused because local technicians aren’t trained to operate it or lack spare parts, according to the World Health Organization. But thanks to the proliferation of cellular and other wireless networks, researchers are stepping up efforts to deliver crucial medical services from afar. “You go through India, anywhere, in the middle of the road, there’s someone with a cell phone. A friend calls me from the jungles of Costa Rica,” says Rubinsky. “I can see so many applications in which the cell phone becomes an integral part of a medical device. A cell phone can cut the cost of almost every [diagnostic] device.”

We have the $10Mil fbFund for Facebook apps, $100Mil iFund for iPhone apps, $10Mil for Google Android apps, and the to be announced $150Mil Blackberry apps fund — will we see a fund to drive healthcare technology apps?

With the iPhone spurring more handset makers to introduce similarly robust devices, the U.S. market for medical cell-phone software is expanding rapidly. Sales of phone applications for medical professionals are expected to rise from $111.8 million last year to $276 million in 2011, according to consultancy Ambient Insight.

On the “heavier” tech side, we’re definitely making huge strides in having robots that can now operate on people.

Consider this: Suppose there are only 10 surgeons in the world that specialize in this really complicated brain disease, affected by not that many people, but the number of victims dying from it is significant enough (say, 5,000 deaths a year worldwide). There’s only so many surgeons to go around, and with that many victims around the world, even if these surgeons worked themselves to death to save the world, they can’t possibly help everybody with just two hands and only 24 hours in a day. Seriously, it takes almost a day to just travel halfway across the world, and that’s just a one-way.

The solution: remote surgery. In terms of supply and demand, the supply is scarce (the Ph.Ds in this very narrow field) and the demand far exceeds the supply, and the number of victims is probably going to grow at a rate faster than the rate Ph.Ds in this field can be minted. Technology here serves to increase supply, that is, not by letting universities churn out more doctors (although that would work too), but rather by increasing the “utilization rate” of the existing doctors by allowing them to perform their work anywhere at anytime, by saving on travel time and expense. Even if we had an infinite amount of money to spend on the fastest jets, nobody can buy more than 24 hours in a day. 10 hours on a jet spent traveling is 10 hours that could be spent operating on a patient.

“If you are looking at the future, it’s hard to envision a hospital not offering robotics,” said Robert Glenning, chief financial officer at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey

Technology, changing lives and making the world a better place–I love it!

May

1

Innovation lessons from Pixar

Filed Under changing the world, entrepreneurship, failure, fear, google, innovation, people i like, perseverance, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

The McKinsey Quarterly has a really interesting piece on innovation at Pixar–the company who brought you Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Ratatouille. Keep in mind that Pixar was purchased by the Walt Disney Company from Steve Jobs, the turn around artist and saviour of Apple (Apple Computer, who brought you the iPod), whose company in turn have Eric Schmidt (the CEO of a small little company despised by the behemoth Microsoft) on their board of directors.

Google and Apple are both well known for being innovators in their respective core markets, and suffice to say that they both share some innovation DNA from the top–and Pixar, through its relationship with Steve Jobs would probably have benefited from some of the common DNA between the two. Here are some of the highlights of this article, in which Oscar-winning director Brad Bird was asked about how he managed innovation.

The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. There was a point during the making of The Incredibles where we had a company meeting. We have them about twice a year, and anybody can bring up concerns. Somebody raised their hand and said, “Is The Incredibles too ambitious?” Ed Catmull said, “I don’t know” and looked over at me. I just said, “No! If there’s one studio that needs to be doing stuff that is ‘too ambitious,’ it’s this one. You guys have had nothing but success. What do you do with it? You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

Read more

Apr

8

Lessons from the Warrior of the Light

Filed Under changing the world, entrepreneurship, execution, failure, fear, goal setting, passion, perseverance, quotes, regular reads, self improvement, startup, strategy, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

I’m definitely a fan of Paulo Coelho, the renowned Brazillian author. He has a unique way of teaching the lessons in life that he has learned through storytelling.

A few lessons from the Warrior of the Light.

Using one’s own madness

A warrior of the light studies very carefully the position he wishes to conquer.

However difficult his objective may be, there is always a way to overcome the obstacles. He verifies the alternative routes, sharpens his sword, and seeks to fill his heart with the perseverance necessary to face the challenge.

But, as he advances, the warrior realizes there are difficulties he had not foreseen at the outset.

If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never move from his position; he sees that a little madness is needed for the next step.

The warrior uses a little madness. Because - in war and in love - one cannot foresee everything.

Life is such that if you wait to gather 100% of every single detail before you can make a decision, others would have surpassed you. If you waited for the fog to clear, then what you see is what everyone else will also see. Given the perfect picture, anyone sane would make the same correct, best choice. This is exactly how *not* to beat the market.

CEOs often make decisions with incomplete data–and that takes a little madness. It’s about making decisions with the best information possible available at that time. Standing still through inaction is waiting to fail–and I’ll fail from action than inaction.

So when do you put yourself out there and wear your heart on your sleeve?
Read more

Mar

29

Technology and Changing the World: Trends roundup - March 29, 2008

Filed Under business, changing the world, entrepreneurship, microfinance, mobile, passion, poverty, regular reads, startup, technology, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

This post consists of my “value-added” thoughts on David Kirkpatrick’s article on Fortune here.

Since I love all things technology and passionately believe that it wields the power to change the world, these numbers are just plain interesting to me. I’ve overlayed on the data some general technology trends on Web 2.0 startups, venture capital, microfinance and poverty, all cleverly slapped into one big fat blog post. Why? Because they’re all inter-connected, and I haven’t written anything all this week (been so darn busy lately!) Off we go.

Indonesia:
- 1 in 100 owns a PC
- 1 in 1,000 has broadband Internet
- 63 million cell phone subscribers, representing 27% of the population (of 234 million)
- Annual cell phone subscription growth rate: 36%

India:
- 166 million cell phone users
- Last year’s cell phone subscription growth rate was 84.5%

Switzerland:
- The Swiss have 85.1 PCs per 100 persons, beating the United States at 80.3 PCs per 100 persons

Global PC penetration is 12.9 for every 100 people. Room for growth? You bet. Many of PC owners are obviously in well developed countries, and not poor countries with lots of people. OLPC’s efforts to reach the billions at the BoP will move the needle here, if they succeed. Not forgetting the “middle” market, more of those who are neither rich nor poor will also buy computers and get on the internet. (Better start loading up on some PC stocks!) But wait, am I sure that the middle-class is not going to get poorer and not buy computers? Well the stats from Hans Rosling’s TED talk show that the overall trend here is that the world is slowly digging itself out of poverty, and I take comfort in that. Actually, read on below as I describe another trend that supports that.

Now, for some cell phone stats:

United States:
- 77.4 subscribers per 100 people
- Everywhere in Europe (except Turkey) exceeds penetration in US. Italy is at a whopping 135.1 cellphone subscribers per 100 persons.
- Hong Kong beats the US in penetration too, at 135.3

The global average is 41.6 per 100 people.

Cellphone usage growth in fast growing markets last year*:
- Peru: 57%
- Vietnam: 114%
- Pakistan: 170%
- Ukraine: 185%

*numbers might be fuzzy, but they show a general trend

What’s also important to note about this upward trend in adoption is that mobile phones were the crucial piece that first enabled the poor in Bangladesh to get out of poverty (see section on Village Phone). Women built business models around it and turned it into a source of income. These days, mobile phones are also playing another role in microfinance: enabling the transfer of money and information over, well, mobile phones! In poor countries, a brick-and-mortar bank branches with ATMs are hard to come by (ditto for computers and broadband), so mobile phones are serving this unmet need, facilitating microfinance and thus helping reduce poverty.

Other interesting stats:
- 1.3 billion of global population connected to the Internet, compound annual growth of 20.3% for past 8 years.
- Internet ad spending of $40 billion is only 6.6% of global total of $605 billion and is growing at 33%. (Ha, I should double down on this little company while I can!)

Data from 2008 Global Internet Snapshot compiled by Imran Khan, senior analyst at JP Morgan. (hmm, can anyone get me access to that full report?)

That’s why medium and big tech companies can weather the unfavorable US economy trend by going abroad. Fruit trees in your backyard not yielding? Then go after the greener pastures outside of your backyard too. It’s called diversifying. That’s the other thing I love about software is that it’s not a physical object–a computer scientist can create value with merely a laptop (and some coffee!) The cost of making that first software copy is the most expensive, then every other subsequent copy ad infinitum is basically free. This is just the nature of information economics, and has obviously served Microsoft very well. Actually, tiny tech startups can do this too — by leveraging the distribution power of this thing they call the internets.
Read more

Mar

22

The missing middle: SME

Filed Under changing the world, microfinance, poverty, wokai | Leave a Comment

Food for thought: In rich countries, SME’s (small and medium enterprises) represent more than 50% of the country’s GDP and 2/3 of the jobs in private sector. This engine for growth that sits between microenterprises and large corporations is clearly missing, a hamper on a poor country’s effort to bail itself out of poverty.

Google’s success is also because they had access to finance and well developed capital markets. SME’s in poor countries lack access to both. Google strives to bring these opportunities available to silicon valley entrepreneurs and take them global. A global silicon valley, imagine that! Silicon valleys that span nations, uniting the world :)

Opportunities are difficult to come by when you just simply don’t have them. It’s like looking for a job when you have no experience, having all your prospective employers say, “show me some experience.” Likewise, this is a catch-22. I have to say, I know this first hand … and I absolutely value opportunity, never taking it for granted. The one thing worse than wasting money is wasting human potential.

This short video clip says it all. The stories are typical. An entrepreneur goes to the local bank, wanting a loan to open a school and educate children. Banks say, “show me 2-3 years of your cash-flow.”

Cash flow?!?!!!
Read more

Mar

10

Inveneo: The battle against information poverty

Filed Under changing the world, entrepreneurship, innovation, passion, startup, technology | Leave a Comment


While most of us in the well developed parts of the world battle attention poverty (I’ve come to peace with the fact that I will *never* be able to keep up with all of my RSS feeds!), we forget that this is actually a luxurious problem to have. Many in the underdeveloped world face the opposite problem: information poverty–the lack of access to information, which in turn means lack of access to knowledge and education, which really feeds back into the cycle of financial poverty.

As more people hop on the internet bandwagon in the developed world at rates that dwarf technology adoption in the poor countries, this will obviously further increase the gap between the rich and the poor–which we all know is a not a good thing. If you are unable to find food to eat or medicine for your baby, would you consider violence and theft? Decision making under those circumstances are difficult. The poor becomes an easy target for people with bad intentions; can you imagine someone walking up to you with a gun and saying, “Fight for me, and I’ll give you food.”

This digital divide is not a newly discovered problem, and is actually one of the initiatives of the World Economic Forum. I’m passionate about technology because I believe it’s an enabler for a better quality of life. I’m excited that I’m not the only one who thinks so, and there is a real startup with real products with that same vision (imagine that!).

Inveneo says it well in their mission page:

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can:

  • help save lives (rural healthcare and relief)
  • provide better economic opportunities (agriculture, market access)
  • help enforce human rights (monitoring/reporting)
  • offer a better future for children (education)

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Feb

21

Don’t be afraid of the machines!

Filed Under automation, changing the world, geeky, ideas, innovation, technology | Leave a Comment

A BINARY STEP COUNTER?! OH MY! This is *amazing*, you have to see it. This reminds me of a rudimentary transistor, and how we keep cramming more and more of them into a piece of silicon we call a microprocessor, on top of which we have this thing called a computer, on top of which we have this thing called web two dot oh, … and ..

From TED. Watch his commercial here:

Feb

20

Ridiculously sick work ethic

Filed Under career, changing the world, did you know, execution, goal setting, passion, people i like, perseverance, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. I’ve viewed myself as slightly above average in talent. And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping? I’m working. While the other guy’s eatin’? I’m working. While the other guy’s making love, I mean, I’m making love, too. But I’m working really hard at it.

You can look at the first six episodes of the Fresh Prince and I was so hell bent on not failing that I memorized the entire script. And you can see in certain shots they try to cut around it as much as they can, but I am mouthing the other actor’s lines.

Nuff said, this guy is my hero and role model.

More from CBS.

Feb

13

A simple solution to a difficult challenge

Filed Under changing the world, did you know, ideas, innovation, poverty | Leave a Comment

A simple solution that impact the lives of others by solving a seemingly difficult problem!

From the blog of Guy Kawasaki.

Feb

9

Randy Komisar

Filed Under business, career, changing the world, innovation, mentoring, passion, people i like, quotes, self improvement, stanford, startup, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

Randy Komisar, when asked in an interview about how he would ever make his mark at VC firm like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers when they have a track record of investment home runs like Google says,

It’s a high bar, there’s no question about it. But I don’t feel competitive against that. I mean I think that the goal for me is to help create great talent in great companies, and what I’m hoping that in the process, they create wealth and opportunities for others. That being said, trying to measure up against something like Google as an investment return, that would just make you anxious. I don’t feel very competitive with that. I just hope that I continue to do good work and contribute.

I think that’s great advice. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of benchmarking yourself against a rare one time astronomical success. It only makes you more anxious and cloud your judgement in decision making, spinning you into an uncontrolled perpetual fall downwards. The negative energy just feeds back into the system and snowballs.

I think I have fell into that trap of focusing on the wrong thing. I think the reason why I fell for that is because I am very competitive. It’s only natural that when I see someone doing better than me, that I only want to do even better–to win. I’m not a life-is-a-zero-sum game guy, but I am competitive.

I think the other reason is because sometimes I care too much about what other people think of me. And it is so easy for external parties to view you from the outside and say, “Why can’t he accomplish this feat? Someone else has already done it, and therefore it’s possible. If he can’t do it, then he must be a loser”. It’s easy to benchmark others against the best. Not so funny when others benchmark you the same way.

That’s exactly what happened in that interview. The interviewer asked Randy a question that same line of external judgement: “how do you think you are going to beat the record?” In my opinion, Randy’s answer was perfect, “Look, I know it’s difficult, but I don’t ask myself that every time I go to work, or in every investment decision I mae. I focus on what’s important really here: contributing, creating wealth and opportunities to the best I can” I think I would have bombed that test. I would have said something that displays my naivete like, “oh, that’s nothing–I’ll beat it.” Sounds Dilbert-ish.

Towards the end of the interview, Randy was asked what his recommendation was for people who starting out and looking for a profession. The interviewer asked if he would recommend his own career trajectory he took, for instance. Randy says,

You should question authority, question convention, question other people’s expectations. We live in a day and time when all things are possible for people who have the raw intelligence, energy, and dedication to reinvent things. And that includes reinventing themselves. The shame of it is when smart people conform to conventional expectations and miss out on the opportunities to live a creative life. Within that confine, almost anything can be a great profession and can be a good and purposeful life’s work. But first and foremost, it’s gotta be important to you.

Randy Komisar one of the mentors at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

Feb

4

Dominant Logic

Filed Under business, changing the world, did you know, poverty, startup, things to remind myself, wokai | Leave a Comment

C.K. Prahalad writes on the powers of Dominant Logic,

All of us are prisoners of our own socialization. The lenses through which we perceive the world are colored by our own ideology, experiences, and established management practices. Each one of the groups that is focused on poverty alleviation–the World Bank, rich countries providing aid, charitable organizations, national governments, and the private sector–is conditioned by its own dominant logic.

Makes sense to me. We’ve all had different paths, and each of our paths has shaped our thinking in different ways. This reminds me of something Paul Buchheit said some time ago about the limitation of our own thinking.

In his presentation at Startup School 2007, Paul reminded us that when someone tells you, “That’s impossible” it should be translated as “According to my very limed experience and narrow understanding of reality, that’s very unlikely.” Everyone continuously builds a different set of experiences in their respective lives, and therefore everyone’s understanding of reality is fundamentally different.

I covered that here. Back to the story on why for-profits are generally viewed and treated negatively in their genuine endeavors to do good (and inhibiting them from achieving real success). Prahalad continues,

The policies of the [Indian] government for the first 45 years since independence from Great Britain in 1947 were based on a set of basic assumptions. Independent India started with a deep suspicion of the private sector. The country’s interaction with the East India Company and colonialism played a major part in creating this mindset.

The dominant logic, built over 45 years, is difficult to give up for individuals, political parties, and sections of the bureaucracy. This is the reason why politicians and bureaucrats appear to be vacillating in their positions. Most thinking people know where they have to go, but letting go of their beliefs and abandoning their “zones of comfort” and familiarity are not easy

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Feb

3

Steve Jurvetson: Failure is the magic sauce

Filed Under business, changing the world, failure, fear, innovation, people i like, perseverance, quotes, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Failure is the magic sauce in entrepreneurship, it’s the magic sauce in innovation.

In the venture business, we look at thousands of business plans every month. The majority of them will fail, the majority of them will go out of business, but its the few that succeed that really change the world.

And you have to be prepared for that, as an entrepreneur, that on average, you’re going to fail. And not to take that too deeply, to realize that that’s okay, and luckily at least in America, there’s a culture that welcomes that; that says its okay to fail, especially in an entrepreneurial endeavor.

Embracing failure and failing early enough are positive aspirational goals. As venture capitalists, we often argue that we should often fail early enough to learn about new industries and learn to do what we do.

From an interview with Steve Jurvetson

Jan

28

Unbundling production from delivery can change the world

Filed Under business, changing the world, did you know, innovation, mobile, product management | Leave a Comment

From this article from the McKinsey Quarterly,

Technology helps companies to utilize fixed assets more efficiently by disaggregating monolithic systems into reusable components, measuring and metering the use of each, and billing for that use in ever-smaller increments cost effectively. Amazon.com, for example, has expanded its business model to let other retailers use its logistics and distribution services. It also gives independent software developers opportunities to buy processing power on its IT infrastructure so that they don’t have to buy their own.

Interesting, but that (Amazon Web Services) seem like an obvious application since IT assets are consumed remotely/virtually, i.e. one isn’t actually physical interacting with it. Does unbundling apply outside of the virtual world too?

Unbundling works in the physical world too. Today you can buy fractional time on a jet, in a high-end sports car, or even for designer handbags. Unbundling is attractive from the supply side because it lets asset-intensive businesses—factories, warehouses, truck fleets, office buildings, data centers, networks, and so on—raise their utilization rates and therefore their returns on invested capital. On the demand side, unbundling offers access to resources and assets that might otherwise require a large fixed investment or significant scale to achieve competitive marginal costs. For companies and entrepreneurs seeking capacity (or variable additional capacity), unbundling makes it possible to gain access to assets quickly, to scale up businesses yet keep their balance sheets asset light, and to use attractive consumption and contracting models that are easier on their income statements.

Read more

Jan

26

Entrepreneurship Week 2008

Filed Under changing the world, ideas, innovation, people i like, stanford, startup, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

At Stanford, nonetheless. Best youtube clip I have seen all week :) The star-studded cast in this short video clip includes the likes of, Tina Seelig, Ann Winblad, Steve Jurvetson, Randy Komisar, Guy Kawasaki, and many more. I had the opportunity of meeting Ann Winblad from Hummer Winblad Ventures. She’s so nice, knowledgeable, and totally driven. I like her.

I love this quote from Tina Seelig: “Entrepreneurship is an extreme sport. You gotta get out and do it!” Maybe that’s why I have a thing for this! :D Tina’s voice sounds familiar to me although I’ve never met her. That’s because her talk at STVP is one of my favourite that I listen to over and over from time to time. Tina is awesome, I hope to meet her in person one day.

Jan

12

Poverty myths busted by Grameenphone

Filed Under changing the world, microfinance, mobile, poverty, things to ponder about, wokai | Leave a Comment

Myth: Government needs to provide economically viable services
What Grameenphone proved: Private companies can provide them

Myth: Government needs to subsidize private companies
What Grameenphone proved: Private companies can help government with taxes

Myth: Poor people are recipients
What Grameenphone proved: The poor are a resource

Myth: The poor are uneducated and can’t do much
What Grameenphone proved: They are eager learners and capable survivors

Myth: Poor countries need aid
What Grameenphone proved: Businesses raise GNP far more than aid

From the a slide at Iqbal Quadir’s TED talk.

Coincidentally, Courtney from Wokai has just posted her thoughts on this CNN article about mobile money transfers taking off in Kenya–where not everyone has a bank account or even a home address. I believe the saying that creativity can’t flourish without constraints is true. In well off countries like the United States, *everyone* has a bank account and home address, so it’s quite natural to see why the average normal person would care much about being able to conduct banking sans a bank account or home address.

Mobile/cellular technology is a great example. What cell phone users are offered here in the US make us look we’re still living in the stone age–when compared to oh say, Japan.

Sometimes having good things in life can be a burden, in the sense that they might block you from seeing other opportunities. Ever felt that way?
Read more

Dec

13

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission

Filed Under business, career, changing the world, goal setting, passion, people i like, perseverance, quotes, regular reads, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

I love quotes! And here’s a good one I picked up today from Marc Andreessen’s blog post today:

Marcus Loew, founding father of the motion picture industry and founder of Loews Theatres and MGM:

Ambition!

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission; you must be as ravenous to reach it as the wolf who licks his teeth behind a fleeing rabbit; you must be as mad to win as the man who, with one hand growing cold on the revolver in his pocket, with the other hand pushes his last gold piece on the ‘Double-O’ at Monte Carlo.

As quoted in Neal Gabler’s outstanding An Empire of Their Own.

On another note, today I learned that OLPC’s Linux-based operating system was available for download, and so I wanted to check it out for myself. It’s pretty neat. Now I know what my blog looks like when rendered on an OLPC:

times-jliew-olpc
Also interestingly enough, when I uploaded the above screenshot on Flickr, the admin of a group (on Flickr) for the OLPC: One Laptop Per Child group asked if I could use this picture, to which I said yes. Do check out their gallery for more pictures of this laptop.

Nov

23

If at least one person on this life has breathed easier, ..

Filed Under changing the world, microfinance, quotes, san diego, startup, things to remind myself, wokai | Leave a Comment

And today’s quote is .. *drumroll*

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”

–- Ralph Waldo Emerson

And on a related quote, by an unknown author:

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.”

Speaking of changing the world, the non-profit microfinance startup, Wokai, that I am currently assisting on a volunteer basis is having it’s inaugural meet-and-greet for the San Diego team (and anyone interested). We’re hosting it tomorrow at Roger’s place at 2pm PST. Contact me for details (I’m not going to randomly posting someone’s home address on the web!)

Nov

18

Wyclef on 1 world, 1 race, and the American Dream

Filed Under changing the world, did you know, passion | Leave a Comment

Did you know that Wyclef Jean (yes, the rapper) was appointed as a goodwill ambassador to Haiti and was awarded a diplomatic passport?

Famous performing artists wield quite a bit of power, and it’s not surprising that they sometimes help drive political agendas. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger. Who would have guessed that he would one day become the Governor of the great state of California?

Leaders are great salespeople. They can tell a great story, to move people. Here’s Wyclef’s 7 minute story of 1 world, 1 race, and the American Dream.

This land is the land of opportunity. There’s books, there’s libraries. You get a bus card. You can take the train.

Wyclef, thanks for keeping the dream alive.

Nov

16

What would you die for?

Filed Under changing the world, fear, passion, quotes, stanford, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

And even if he tries to kill you, you’ll develop the inner conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
– Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech at the Great March on Detroit

MLK would willingly die with no regrets for a cause worth fighting for. Do you know what cause you are fighting for? What would you die for?

From the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford

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