Thursday, December 30, 2010

personal finance programs

Mesoloan

Now, as for today's entrepreneurs, first up today was Hardika Shah presenting Mesoloan, a small enterprise loan program for Indian entrepreneurs in the $2,000-$20,000 loan size bracket. This is a segment that is well beyond traditional micro-finance, but also somewhat below the scope of the regular financial institutions. Hardika intends to build a financial institution focused on this segment with financing from social entrepreneurship oriented venture funds like Unitus.

It turns out that in my Vision India 2020 book, I have a similar project called FDBI. My personal analysis is that to make a financial institution successful by catering to the said segment will require a tight control of the types of businesses that are financed. This is why I have focused on micro-franchise oriented businesses where a tightly controlled structure is replicated across a large number of small businesses. My recommendation to Hardika is to study the FDBI project

DaisyClip

Next Annette McClellan presented DaisyClip, a non-surgical contraception device for women that she is in the process of syndicating a $1.8 million financing round for. Her market penetration plan is to start with India, and she wanted to know what kinds of options/connections we could provide. Well, there are some government and NGO contacts that I have in mind for her to explore. However, she will, of course, need to clear the clinical trials and get the proper regulatory approvals.

Voices.com

Our next presenter was David Ciccarelli discussing Voices.com, an interesting niche marketplace for freelance voice talent used by businesses and entertainment companies. David has 25,000 freelancers of which about 20% are paying subscribers (a very good number). He also has 120,000 companies using the talent from his marketplace.

David asked how to convert more of his users to paying users. I pointed him to the oDesk case study in which I have discussed the strategy for a marketplace in great detail. David is also struggling with the notion of his community taking the transactions offline.

Well, eLance has experienced similar problems, and I asked David to concentrate on communicating to his user base of service providers the value of building a reputation through references and reviews/customer feedback. Taking the transaction offline would mean the service provider would not get any feedback from the transaction. Nor will she or he get any assistance with dispute resolution, for example. Overall, I felt that making the reputation-building features available only to the premium members would be a good way to convert more free users to paying customers.

Marketing Green Products and Services to Indian Consumers

Then Tarini Kinkar discussed a media concept for marketing green products and services to Indian consumers. The business idea was not very well fleshed out, and needs a lot of work still. One of my key concerns is that the level of awareness about green and environmentally conscious issues is very, very low in India. Also, the business model for the business is unclear.

Klonos

On Monday, I linked to this op-ed from Tom Esvlin, Vermont's "stimulus czar," lamenting the way the money got spent. "Although I'd like to think Vermont did better than many states, much of the money ended up continuing bloated programs rather than providing a transition to a sustainable future," he wrote. That same day, Brookings' Gary Burtless e-mailed in a rebuttal that's worth quoting at length, as it's a very clear description of where the stimulus funds actually went, and why such a small percentage was directly devoted to building things. So here it is, with some edits for space:

The main problem with that silly op-ed is that it refers to only a small slice of the actual federal spending on stimulus authorized by the Feb. 2009 legislation. So far, the overwhelming share of that stimulus has been devoted to three items: Tax cuts for households; direct benefits to people adversely affected by the severe recession, mostly the unemployed or poor; and fiscal relief to state and local governments. Vermont did not need any "Czar" to receive or administer funds under these programs. The money for them quickly left the U.S. Treasury without any effort on the part of the Czar who penned this highly misleading op-ed piece. People in Vermont directly received benefits from the stimulus as: (1) lower federal tax withholding from their paychecks; (2) extended unemployment benefits; (3) premium subsidies so they could maintain their health insurance after they were laid off from a job in which they received health protection; (4) miscellaneous benefits (e.g., for college costs) under one provision or another; and (5) aid from the Treasury that permitted Vermont and its localities to finance their Medicaid and K-12 education programs without hiking taxes or lowering other public spending. The kinds of infrastructure spending for which the WSJ's "Czar" had some responsibility constituted a small percentage of the stimulus the Congress authorized for 2009 and 2010.

In FY 2009 and 2010, the EXPECTED spending on infrastructure and other items for which the Vermont “Czar” may have had partial responsibility accounted for just 11% of anticipated spending under the stimulus legislation. The other 89% had nothing to do with the programs criticized by Vermont’s supposed Czar. Thus, all of his complaints – even if justified – are essentially irrelevant to the programs mainly supported by the stimulus law … at least so far. Obviously, in the years 2011-2019, that kind of stimulus spending would have accounted for a vastly larger share of outlays. But (and perhaps Vermont’s Czar has not kept up with this because he does not read a daily paper) the Congress just passed and the President just signed ANOTHER stimulus program consisting of more than 90% personal and business tax cuts and less than 10% extensions in unemployment benefits. So far as I know, very little additional spending has been authorized for those hated infrastructure / technology investment projects. Below is the CBO’s year-by-year analysis of the spending authorized under the Feb. 2009 stimulus law:

My own private view is that the country would probably have been better off if MORE of the original stimulus had been devoted to infrastructure / technology investment (more of it would have been spent on goods and services produced in the U.S. rather than China, East Asia, and Europe). Setting aside that consideration for a minute, what infuriates me about the piece cited in your blog is that it reinforces the very widespread but totally erroneous impression that Congress and the Administration were unaware of the administrative hurdles to fast spending that the “Czar” points out in his op-ed. Those hurdles were understood from the very beginning, which is precisely the reason that infrastructure/technology investment projects constituted such a small percentage of the total package. It is perfectly legitimate to criticize the pace of spending on these projects, but it is utterly deranged to think that the slow rate of spending on the projects constitutes a serious indictment of the spending authorized under the Feb. 2009 stimulus program. Very little of the expected spending under the stimulus program (at least so far) was supposed to be devoted to those projects.

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News - Queen Elizabeth Welcomes First Great-Grandchild! - Moms ...

Peter Phillips' wife Autumn gave birth to a baby girl Wednesday.

Larry Kramer: This Is Why Fox News Continues To Roll

People are getting lazy about forming their own opinions.

Police: Fox News Flubbed 'Granny Terrorist' Story | TPMMuckraker

Law enforcement officials says Fox News' report of a probe into a Indiana grandmother for alleged terrorist ties was taken out of context and that the reporter based her report of an investigation off her own tip.

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Making Money Ebay

In 1995 I remember waiting in lines to buy Windows 95. It effectively ended the design lead Apple had for 11 years in personal computers.

From then on Microsoft had both the thought leadership and the market share. Apple ended up with less than 10% market share. Microsoft had most of the rest.

Lots of people think that Apple could repeat 1995 in 2011. This time with iOS instead of Macintosh OS and with Google in the place of Microsoft.

We forget one little thing: 1995 was different.

Here’s how.

In 1995 Microsoft had a HUGE marketshare lead with DOS. That meant it had a huge army of developers who didn’t want to switch over to Apple’s system, which they saw as very closed and inflexible. I remember developers coming into the consumer electronics store I helped run in the 1980s and they’d complain bitterly about Apple’s policies (Apple was far less flexible back then than it is today and forced developers to fit into a “look and feel” set of guidelines).

But I look at who is making money. Back in 1995 developers were mostly making money from DOS. Remember, this caused WordPerfect and Borland to make bad bets. They bet on DOS for too long, while Bill Gates went and built some of the first and best Macintosh apps. The lesson, though, doesn’t pass from 1995 to 2011. Today where are most of the developers making their money? iOS (according to Sephora, Starbucks, OpenTable, eBay, and many other developers). So, Android has to convince developers to switch, or do both platforms at same time. That’s quite different.

Plus, back in 1995, who owned the best distribution and supply chains? Microsoft did. Today? Apple does. Apple didn’t have stores back in 1995 which will ensure its products get seen in the marketplace. Back then Microsoft could outspend Apple for shelf space at Frys and other retailers. Plus, Microsoft’s model of having many OEMs building hardware for its OS was far superior to Apple’s approach. Today that’s not really true, because the OEMs aren’t really able to bring that much value to the table and Apple has the best supply chains in China locked up (I visited one of them about two years ago and keep in touch with the folks there and that’s still the case). So, it’s not very likely that a Google phone will ship with better screens or better materials. At least not in volume. That is a huge difference from 1995 to today.

Other differences? Apple has outspent Microsoft on Advertising around the world. Look at this picture. It’s in Paris subway. Apple bought every square inch of advertising space (it bought the entire subway system’s advertising space, it seemed, iPad ads were plastered down the entire trackway). Google isn’t able to get its message there. That didn’t happen in 1995. Remember how dominant Microsoft’s advertising was back then? Microsoft even convinced the Empire State Building to change its colors that evening.

Let’s go back to how closed Apple is. Most apps this month got approved in less than a week. Some even got approved in less than four days. During the Christmas rush. Is this as good as Android’s (you can ship in minutes) policy? No. But, on the other hand, there are quality controls which consumers appreciate. The apps — overall — ARE better on iOS than on Android. Just check out TweetDeck. It crashes every few minutes on my Android phone. Twitter isn’t nearly as nice. Facebook isn’t as nice. And most apps aren’t as well designed, nor crash resistant, as on iOS.

I am sensing a switch, though. Fred Wilson is leading the charge. But other developers are grumbling about Apple and want there to be an alternative and they are all comparing notes with each other. “How’s Angry Birds doing with its advertising-only Android apps?” they ask. Very well, the answer comes back. So that means more developers will take the bet on Android, but so far I haven’t seen many go “Android only.” Why not? Because they know most of the PR comes from journalists who use mostly iOS devices and most of the best users are on iOS devices too (Sephora’s lead mobile developer told me 80% of the users who pull out a mobile phone in her stores are using iOS, that is echoed by nearly every developer I talk with). Even Swype, which has been kept from delivering their keyboard on iOS devices showed me a prototype of it running on an iPad and the inventor whispered “if Steve Jobs wants to talk, we’d love to ship this on iOS.”

So, when someone says that Apple is repeating the mistakes of 1995 (yes, I’ve been guilty of saying that in the past couple of years too) you should tell them that 2011 is not even close to the same set of conditions as 1995 has.

All this morning, I kept seeing a video of ALF pop up on my Tumblr and Twitter news feeds. Of course, I didn’t click on them because…y’know, ALF…but I totally should have. The video is outtakes from the series ALF in which you can hear the character’s creator and puppeteer, Paul Fusco, entertaining the folks on set by saying some truly offensive things. Serves me right for assuming it was mere needless nostalgia.

The tape was discovered by YouTube user biohazardgraphics who claims he bought it off eBay 10 years ago. He or she posted it on YouTube a year ago where it went without much impact until earlier today when Badtvblog discovered it and brought it to the world’s attention. Hooray! Now we can all enjoy ALF saying the N-word and making filthy come ons to the Tanner’s teenaged daughter!

It’s pretty amazing. But, for my money, the best foul-mouthed outtakes from a dearly missed TV series remains the “dirty takes” from Better Off Ted’s insult episode. Oh. And this, of course.

(h/t Gawker.tv)

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Mesoloan

DaisyClip

Voices.com

Marketing Green Products and Services to Indian Consumers

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Consumerist Budget Spreadsheet Balances Your Money, Encourages Your Nest Egg

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Wednesday Worries – Ireland “Fixed” – Who’s Next?

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Embracing New Opportunities Is Being Defeatist?

from the please-explain dept

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