Since then, Umair has become the Director of the Havas Media Lab at Harvard, and I just came across a recent presentation of his that is a must see.

http://www.daytona.se/sessions/vol2/umair

Basically, this global crisis we are witnessing is not just a financial crisis – it’s an “interaction crisis”. The principles that have been driving capitalism through the 20th century have ultimately maxed out, and Umair proposes 5 new principles that will guide the 21st century – that *must* guide 21st century capitalism lest mankind dig it’s own grave.

I’ll share these 5 principles here more for my own notes, but you should really watch the presentation – it really just skims the top of changes to come. (20th century capitalist principle → 21st century principle):

• Exploitation → Renewal
• War → Peace
• Domination → Equity
• Value → Meaning
• Command → Democracy

And the tag-lines for these principles:

“tomorrow is today”
“people, not product”
“connections, not transactions”
“creativity, not productivity”
“outcomes, not incomes”

Q. I know you don’t like to give advice, but do you have any general thoughts on how to cope with hard times?

A. The best plan now is to have as many bosses as possible. I call it boss diversity. If you work for a company and you have one boss and that boss doesn’t like you or wants to get rid of you, you’re in trouble. But if you work for yourself, you have lots of bosses, who are your customers, and if a few of them decide they don’t like you, that’s okay. You can get new ones. Boss diversity is the one kind companies don’t talk to you about, but it can save your career.

Hallelujah

Since one of my current projects is 音レボ (Otorevo), which despite the struggles is growing organically, I eagerly read through the comments. Two in particular that made me think:

commenter 1:

the problem with it is that when you’re a newcomer, chances that your music will be heard is close to zero. their UI is not helping displaying new entries, but instead the popular bands (the one people already invested in, sometimes over 6 months course). last time i logged in there was 11,000 bands. only a few are listened to, and from that, they signed only 18 bands. Less than 1 million dollars in a year. sorry guys, but the model will fail.

When I shared the Sell-A-Band website with a friend a few months ago, we made a similar observation – the contributions curve seems to follow an exponential decline, or a “blockbuster model” if you will.

But the comment, though obvious, that really struck me was this one:

commenter 2:

Agree w/previous. 18 albums in 1.5 years, strange convoluted trickledown biz model that divides a small (currently 18 piece) pie into even smaller pieces. On top of this enough current (amie st) and unsuccessful (weedshare) models trying to get a piece of the market for music that no one’s heard of.

On top of this, enough vc money invested to make anyone feel bloated. Most new unnoticed music gains traction, contracts and sales these days from these kinds of avenues:

1.Myspace etc.

2.YouTube

3.The Blogosphere

4.music recc engines

5. Discovery in an iTunes ad.

The commonality is that none rely primarily on music sales for revenue. Small startups offering a widely available commodity, regardless of the sales gimmick, don’t have alot of chance…

Selling music is not enough. Discuss.

“What if there is a massive earthquake in Tokyo?  Tokyo is reduced to rubble.  Investors in Japan panic.  They are selling yen and trying to get their money out of the japanese stock market.  What do you do?

…what Alexander would do is put money into Japan on the assumption that since everyone was trying to get out, there must be some bargains.  He would buy precisely those securities in Japan that appeared the least desirable to others.  First, the stocks of Japanese insurance companies.  The world would probably assume that ordinary insurance companies had a great deal of exposure, when in fact, the risk resides mainly with Western insurers and with a special Japanese earthquake insurance company that’s been socking away premiums for decades.  The shares of ordinary insurers would be cheap.

Then Alexander would buy a couple hundred million dollars’ worth of Japanese government bonds.  With the economy in temporary disrepair, the government would lower interest rates to encourage rebuilding and simply order the banks to lend at those rates.  Japanese banks would comply as usual with their government’s request.  Lower interest rates would mean higher bond prices.

Also, the short-term panic could well be overshadowed by the long-term repatriation of Japanese capital.  Japanese companies have massive sums invested in Europe and America.  Eventually they would withdraw those investments, turn inward, lick their wounds, repair their factories, and bolster their stock.  What would that mean?

Well, to Alexander, it would suggest buying yen.  The Japanese would buy yen, selling their dollars, francs, marks, and pounds to do so.  The yen would appreciate not just because the Japanese were buying it but because foreign speculators would eventually see the Japanese buying it and rush to join them.  If the yen collapsed immediately after the quake, it would only further encourage Alexander, who sought always to do the unexpected, that his idea was a good one.  On the other hand, if the yen rose, he might sell it.”

- Liar’s Poker, by Michael Lewis

8. Valuations are fiction.

VCs admit that valuations are an artifact. They decide how much money you need and how much of the company they want, and those two constraints yield a valuation.

…

If valuations change depending on the amount invested, that shows how far they are from reflecting any kind of value of the company.

Since valuations are made up, founders shouldn’t care too much about them. That’s not the part to focus on. …

So why do founders chase high valuations? They’re tricked by misplaced ambition. They feel they’ve achieved more if they get a higher valuation. They usually know other founders, and if they get a higher valuation they can say “mine is bigger than yours.” But funding is not the real test. The real test is the final outcome for the founder, and getting too high a valuation may just make a good outcome less likely.

The one advantage of a high valuation is that you get less dilution. But there is another less sexy way to achieve that: just take less money.

9. Investors look for founders like the current stars.

Ten years ago investors were looking for the next Bill Gates. This was a mistake, because Microsoft was a very anomalous startup. They started almost as a contract programming operation, and the reason they became huge was that IBM happened to drop the PC standard in their lap.

Now all the VCs are looking for the next Larry and Sergey. This is a good trend, because Larry and Sergey are closer to the ideal startup founders.

Historically investors thought it was important for a founder to be an expert in business. So they were willing to fund teams of MBAs who planned to use the money to pay programmers to build their product for them. This is like funding Steve Ballmer in the hope that the programmer he’ll hire is Bill Gates—kind of backward, as the events of the Bubble showed. Now most VCs know they should be funding technical guys. This is more pronounced among the very top funds; the lamer ones still want to fund MBAs.

If you’re a hacker, it’s good news that investors are looking for Larry and Sergey. The bad news is, the only investors who can do it right are the ones who knew them when they were a couple of CS grad students, not the confident media stars they are today. What investors still don’t get is how clueless and tentative great founders can seem at the very beginning.

…

Investors have no idea how much they damage the companies they invest in by taking so long to do it. But companies do. So there is a big opportunity here for a new kind of venture fund that invests smaller amounts at lower valuations, but promises to either close or say no very quickly. If there were such a firm, I’d recommend it to startups in preference to any other, no matter how prestigious. Startups live on speed and momentum.

I realize Paul Graham’s words are not gospel, but he’s definitely giving food for thought.

It would be interesting to see actual numbers on the land-mass differences between real and visual.

UPDATE:  I’m getting all this through Daring Fireball, who posted an update on the real source of these images.

I’m posting these here as both personal reference and to share with others who may be interested. Most of them are short snippets of only a few minutes length rather than your typical 1-hour lecture, so they’re all quite digestible.

Enjoy!

• Kleiner Perkins Vinod Khosla Discusses Strategy for Building and Recruit a Winning Team
• Kleiner Perkins John Doerr Helping Teams Work Together
• Kleiner Perkins John Doerr How to Negotiate Valuations with VC’s
• Kleiner Perkins John Doerr Mercenaries and Missionaries
• Garage Ventures Guy Kawasaki How to Find Soul Mate for Startups
• Garage Ventures Guy Kawasaki Who to Recruit (not Large Company Types)
• Genomic Health CEO Recruiting an ALL-Star Team
• Danger  15 Videos on Products, Customers, Services, Mobile Market
• Palm Founder Jeff Hawkins 20 Videos on Products, Startups, Vision Etc.
• Google Founder Larry Page 25 Videos
• GluMobile CEO Discussed How to deal with Internal company Arguments
• Palm Customer Segmenting

I whipped up the spec as oDesk requests,
and posted one night to hire.
Next mornin’ I woke, and to my delight,
The response put my Inbox on fire!

Coders from Russia, India, China,
even a few from Brazil,
all wanted to work on my wonderful plan,
an Internet service to thrill!

Their rates were amazing; I could not believe
this world of outsourcing pleasure.
Of course, there were issues of trusting the hire,
but cost was the trump and the treasure.

$10 an hour?! $10 an hour!
The first of my thoughts was “no way!”
My hour of time in Tokyo is higher
than some programmer out in Bombay.

So I hired an Indian programming guru,
who’d finish in two to three weeks.
And during that time I’d watch his progress,
all of his code and mem leaks.

“How do you manage from so far away?”
Ask many who still disbelieve.
That is the beauty of oDesk’s great toys,
which temper the chance to deceive.

You see …

Each 20 minutes, a screenshot appears,
of the desktop for the guy I just hired.
At the end of my day, I can view on a page,
the events of his day that transpired.

But oDesk knows that there’s more to manage,
and throws some treats in the mix,
a vertical bar beside the photo,
counting all his mouse clicks!

So props to oDesk for a wonderful service,
without which my project was hopeless.
Just know that you’ve got at least one fan in Japan,
“making geeks rich and famous”