*michael parekh on IT*

ON ANOTHER MOTHER'S DAY

SHADOW DREAMS

Thomas Friedman has a heart-felt post about this first Mother's Day after the passing away of his 89-year old mom last month.   The bit that resonated the most for me today was when he says:

"She even came to see me in Beirut once, during the civil war  —  at age 62.

The picture of her in Beirut makes me think back in amazement at what my mom might have done had she had the money to finish college and pursue her dreams — the way she encouraged me to pursue mine, even when they meant I’d be far away in some crazy place and our only communications would be through my byline. It’s so easy to overlook — your mom had dreams, too."

Yes, they did and if around, still do. 

Most of our lives we go through life seeing our moms through the prisms of our own wants, needs and ambitions.  It starts when we're babies of course, since most moms seem programmed to be around at our beck and call at that age. 

Even after we've grown much older and gone on to make lives of our own, our relationship with our mom is still heavily tinted by how our moms have treated us over the years.  It takes an effort to consider sometimes how we've treated them over the years.  And how they saw their lives both before and after our shadows.

I wrote a few years back about how my Mom was surprised by the very concept of Mother's Day, a very Western concept in her eyes.  From her perspective, the very notion of envisioning her life without her two kids seemed very alien indeed. But she had dreams too, as Thomas Friedman puts it so well, and this Mother's Day, I'd like to talk to my mom about them.

Happy Mom's Day, all.

ON CRICKET RE-MADE

SLICE AND DICE

The Wall Street Journal has a great story on how Cricket, one of the world's biggest sports, and almost a religion in India, is being dramatically morphed and gussied up for big-time media commercialization in that country with over a billion fans:

"A new cricket league in India is attempting to take over the sport, backed by nearly a billion dollars, loud music and cheerleaders.

The Indian Premier League, which began its first season three weeks ago, is a massive departure for cricket. In the traditional format, team members dressed in white play eight hours a day for five days, with breaks for lunch and tea.

In the new format, games last about three hours total. During breaks, spectators sing and dance along to Bollywood songs. One team flew in the Washington Redskins cheerleaders for three weeks to train its squad of dancers and perform at matches.

The league consists of eight teams based in different cities around India, and they will compete in 59 games total over six weeks. It is the first ever city-based cricket league in India and the first to allow foreign players. Foreign players make up about 35% of the league, but each team can play no more than four per match. (A team can have 11 players on the field at a time.)"

The money commitment to date is also big, as the article goes on to explain:

"Backing the teams are some of India's best-known names from business and entertainment. Mukesh Ambani, head of part of the Reliance corporate empire and one of the world's richest men, and liquor baron Vijay Mallya each paid about $112 million for a franchise. India's biggest Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan, spent $75 million along with two partners for a team in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta.

The total paid for all eight teams was more than $700 million. Sony Entertainment and Singapore-based sports agency World Sport Group paid $918 million for the 10-year broadcasting rights.

Games are also being shown globally. Willow TV, a California-based company that provides live video of cricketing events on its Web site, owns the rights to distribute the games in North and South America across television, radio and the Internet."

It's too early to tell how successful this venture will be, but there are signs that the new cricket format is attracting new viewers, especially women. 

It also remains to be seen how successful the new format and league team end up being with the broader population of Indians around the world.  In recent years, this Indian diaspora has also been a great growth market for traditional Bollywood movie fare in the form of DVDs, Pay-per-view, and theater exhibition.  Perhaps Cricket 2.0 will be as well-received around the world over time.

ON PEN-COMPUTERS REDUX

TRY, TRY AGAIN

Some readers may recall an anticipatory post I'd done last May on a new "pen-computer" device by a company called LiveScribe.  Well, the product is finally shipping and David Pogue of the New York Times just reviewed the device.  And the results are not happy for LiveScribe.  First, more on the promise of the device:

"Jim Marggraff, a veteran of both Anoto and Leapfrog, is now at a new start-up company called LiveScribe. This month, it introduced the Pulse smartpen, which Mr. Marggraff says is the final step in his vision for “paper-based computing.”

In an anodized aluminum barrel about the thickness of a Sharpie, the Pulse has a camera, microphone and surprisingly loud speaker. It also has a bright black-and-white screen (18 by 96 pixels) that displays messages, menu commands and even little animations. There’s a nonremovable, rechargeable battery (6 to 7 hours a charge), a headphone jack and contacts for a U.S.B. charging cradle.

Oh, and it’s also a ballpoint pen.

The Pulse’s primary power is its ability to record audio while you write. Later, if you tap a written word, the pen plays back the audio it recorded at that moment. (Or, rather, what it heard five seconds before you started writing, to compensate for your reaction time.)

In the special microdot notebooks, the bottom of each page offers little preprinted “buttons” that control the playback speed, volume and so on."

And here's where David thinks the version 1.0 of the device misses the mark:

"Maybe that glorious age of “paper computing” will arrive, and maybe not. In the meantime, LiveScribe has a lot of work cut out for it.

The screamingly obvious limitation is the requirement to write on special paper. True, LiveScribe has priced the pads fairly reasonably ($20 for four 100-sheet perforated notebooks), and says that in June, you’ll be able to laser-print your own microdotted paper from a downloadable PDF template. Still, the real fun won’t begin until digital pens work on any kind of paper. (Iogear has one, but it doesn’t record audio.)

Another problem: when you use the pen’s built-in microphone, you record not just your own voice but also the scratching of the pen itself on the paper.

When you’re recording anybody else, or recording a telephone call, you’re supposed to wear the Pulse’s earbuds, which contain microphones. When you play the recording back, you get an enhanced 3-D spatial audio experience.

Unfortunately, these earbud-mikes are big, hard and uncomfortable. My first set didn’t even work, and had to be replaced.

I found software bugs at every turn — on the pen, in the Windows software and on the Web site. The company promises to fix them promptly.

Beyond the basics, the Pulse is also jaw-clenchingly hard to learn. This itty-bitty thing actually has menus and submenus.."

So we're not quite where the device should be at this juncture.  I think I'll still wait for the unit I ordered a while ago and reserve judgment until then.  But would have liked to have seen the eagerly awaited version leave a better first impression.

ON BEIRUT 2.0

NOT AGAIN

While we're just coming to grips with the over 100,000 casualties from the cyclones in Burma (aka Myanmar), another heart-breaking tragedy is ensuing overseas.  This one is man-made, and it's the seeming lurching of Lebanon into a second civil war, with the current Sunni-Shia fighting in the capital Beirut.  As this Reuters story explains:

"Fierce clashes raged in Beirut on Thursday after the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah said the U.S.-supported Lebanese government had declared war by targeting its communications network.

Fighters from Hezbollah and the allied Amal group exchanged assault rifle fire and rocket-propelled grenades with pro-government gunmen in several areas of the capital in the worst domestic fighting since the 1975-90 civil war."

This like most things in the Middle East is just a symptom of the on-going proxy political wars that have been underway for some time now.  The piece goes on to state:

"The airport was barely functioning with only a few flights arriving and taking off, airport officials said.

The fighting in Beirut erupted minutes after Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told a news conference that the only way out of the crisis was for the government to rescind the decisions and to attend talks aiming to end a 17-month-long political conflict with the Hezbollah-led opposition..."

"Hezbollah has led a political campaign against Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's anti-Syrian cabinet. The crisis has paralysed much of the government, left Lebanon with no president for five months, and already led to bouts of violence.

The group was the only Lebanese faction allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war, to fight Israeli forces occupying the south. Israel withdrew in 2000 and the fate of Hezbollah's weapons is at the heart of the political crisis."

There are no easy, quick answers here, like most political conflicts in the region.  The U.N. and various western governments are of course are involved as well.  But it's truly sad to see Beirut and Lebanon take a step or two back after so many years of relative peace and re-building.

ON THE FREEDOM AND OIL CORRELATION

OILY POLITICS

Thomas Friedman has an op-ed titled "The Democracy Recession" that quotes some interesting data on the connection between oil and freedom around the world:

"The term “democratic recession” was coined by Larry Diamond, a Stanford University political scientist, in his new book “The Spirit of Democracy.” And the numbers tell the story. At the end of last year, Freedom House, which tracks democratic trends and elections around the globe, noted that 2007 was by far the worst year for freedom in the world since the end of the cold war. Almost four times as many states — 38 — declined in their freedom scores as improved — 10.

What explains this? A big part of this reversal is being driven by the rise of petro-authoritarianism. I’ve long argued that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation — which I call: “The First Law of Petro-Politics.” As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up.

“There are 23 countries in the world that derive at least 60 percent of their exports from oil and gas and not a single one is a real democracy,” explains Diamond. “Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Nigeria are the poster children” for this trend, where leaders grab the oil tap to ensconce themselves in power."

Energy prices have obviously not been the only contributor to these trends in these oil-producing countries.  Each has unique political and social considerations that also have been drivers of their control-oriented domestic politics.  And these things tend to move in cycles, so the pendulum at some point will start to swing the other way.  But it's an important snap-shot of the current affairs of states to keep in mind for now.

ON DUAL-CLASS STRUCTURES FOR TECH COMPANIES

TEN FOR ME, ONE FOR YOU

Marc Andreessen has a post well worth reading today explaining why he's gone from being an opponent of dual-class share structures for companies to being a support of them, especially for young tech companies with passionate founders interested in creating a major long-term franchise. 

It's a comprehensive and well-argued position, covering everything from how it's worked so far for companies like Google and how it may have changed the merger dynamics between Microsoft and Yahoo! had Yahoo! had a similar structure.

Marc makes a particularly seductive  argument on how the current public market environment has short-term forces that can be truly distracting to creating long-term shareholder value.  And how dual-class structures would insulate world-class, deserving tech companies from these nasty market forces.

The whole argument works only if the founders turn out not to be bozos in the long-run, so ensconced in their own cocoon that they truly don't work in the best interests of their majority, long-term shareholders.

It works only if the founders stay wise and visionary, and are able to execute through both the short-term and and long-term challenges of running a large, fast-growing, world-changing technology company.

And the history of the markets, both public and private, have taught us that those folks are few and far between to be found.

And even visionary, extraordinarily capable founders invariably run into periods where their very successful companies are in a long period of funk.  In the world of technology, Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison come to mind.  Not to mention Steve Jobs, who got in to trouble enough to have to leave the company he founded.  And go through a  unique set of circumstances to be invited back and save the day.

And all those successful and rewarding companies where both founders and  public share-holders did just fine without dual-class voting structures.

Problem is, no one is immune from turning into a bozo at least one time in their life.  There's no guarantee that they won't do evil things regardless of any initial promises.  People change, motivations change and so do the most initially aligned of shared interests.  There are not guarantees, and dual-voting structures merely fore-stall and prolong the inevitable as in the case of the New York Times, which Marc eloquently discusses.

The other thing that is trouble-some about a dual voting structure is that goes against the very spirit of the compact with public market shareholders, regardless of whether these investors are large or small, short-term or long-term in their investment horizons.  It's about creating efficient marketplaces after all, with all the bad that they sometimes entail with the good.

To paraphrase Ian Malcolm, the mathematician in Jurassic Park, "Markets find a way", despite all the best-intentions of visionary founders.

Marc goes on to explain how Google today is a poster-child for dual-class voting structures in tech companies.  It is a good example in the here and now.

And there's no question that in the near-term, some emerging tech companies that are next in line to go public will be sporting dual-class share structures in their IPO.  It'll be the fashionable thing to do for a while, until it isn't.

As an aside, it's interesting to bring up Facebook here, which has been fast emulating all things Google, hiring Google folks as fast as it can, including Google's global head of PR today.  And if as Kara Swisher also reports today that Marc Andreessen has verbally accepted an offer to go on Facebook's board, a dual-class voting structure is almost a certainty for Facebook as and when it goes public.

In the meantime, the debate about the pros and cons of these structures will continue, I'm sure.

DISCLOSURE:  I remain a long-time shareholder in dual-structure public companies like Google.

ON THE DAY AFTER AND BEYOND

MSFT/YHOO DAY 2

After the dust settled on the first trading day post Microsoft withdrawing it's bid for Yahoo!, 279 million shares traded hands, and the stock closed at $24.37.  That's a touch under $7 billion dollars worth of Yahoo! at the closing price, and compares to the average trading volume in Yahoo! of about 34 million shares a day.

The topic of course lead Techmeme all day, including this post by Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang on the company's corporate blog.  To Yahoo!'s credit, they've kept the comments open on their blog, and most of the hundred comments I went through seemed to reflect some pretty unhappy shareholders.

Many existing Yahoo! shareholders seem to be jumping directly to Anger on the seven stages of grief, whilo folke selling the shares in presumable disgust.

At the same time there seem to be quite a number of folks (and folks at institutions), who're already at the final stage (Acceptance and Hope), amongst the buyers of Yahoo! shares today.  Presumably, these shareholders are a patient lot, and likely less concerned with where the stock closed today, which was the subject of a post by Fred Wilson yesterday and today.

Following Fred's lead though, I thought I'd ask the following question here*.

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

I picked eighteen months because presumably the remaining and new shareholders of Yahoo! have a longer-term horizon for going with Yahoo! in the wake of the Microsoft bid.

Feel free to re-post this quiz on your blog.  As Fred points out in his post on "Distributed Polling" today:

"The poll I did yesterday on Yahoo!'s closing price has been taken almost 2,200 times in about a day. How did it get so many takers? By being distributed on many blogs at the same time."

Let's see what the Wisdom of the crowds has to say how well (or not) the folks on the buy-side of today's 279 million shares will do over time.

* There's a typo in option 2 in the poll above.  The official original Microsoft bid price should read $31 instead of $32.  Editing the Quibblo quiz would erase the existing poll and results, so I'm highlighting the error in this footnote.

ON A YAHOO! VICTORY OR DEFEAT

BINARY OUTCOMES

The big discussion today on Techmeme of course, is the news of Microsoft officially withdrawing it's offer for Yahoo! over the weekend (and Yahoo!'s official response).  The bid-ask at the point of break-down of the talks was apparently $33-$37, with some large Yahoo! shareholders rooting for a result at least in the middle.

Fred Wilson has a post with a survey question on where Yahoo! might close Monday afternoon, which is an interesting short-term exercise.

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

More critical for longer-term shareholders is whether a future without Microsoft promises higher or lower returns in a reasonable time-frame.  Unquestionably the Microsoft bid has instilled a higher urgency in Yahoo! management and board to prove this to be the case. 

Now we go from one waiting game to another.

Disclosure:  I'm a long-time Yahoo! investor.