The median age of an Egyptian is 24 years old. While the Egyptian economy has been growing well over 5% a year during recent times it can not keep up with the number of people entering the work force. In fact none of the developing countries with large youth populations will be able to provide economic opportunity to the their youth who want to find work,marry and have children. While Mubarak was certainly more interested in staying in power than providing his country with a future, I doubt that any leader of a country like Egypt can be successful. Eventually there will strife through out the world between youth and the establishment. It could even happen in the USA although our average age is greater than 35.
And the young people are armed with cell phones, Facebook and Twitter. While those in power do not know how to operate a computer and probably have never poured themselves a cup of tea.
Archive for January, 2011
The macro meaning of the Egyptian revolt
January 31, 2011Leadership, Vision and Steve Jobs
January 19, 2011Many of us our thinking about Steve Jobs these days. I know I am. As readers of this blog and and my friends, know that I have mixed feels for Steve, a man that I first meet in 1981when he was 25 years old. And while, I have not appreciated how he has treated some people over the years, I have reluctantly grownt o have great admiration for his leadership and vision. And of course I am sad to think of any person suffering from cancer. My heart goes out to his wife, Laurene and to their three children.
So like a number of you, I have been thinking about what will happen to Apple when Steve can no longer lead the company. That caused me to ponder the relationship between leading a company and having vision. Many companies are founded by entrepenuers that have a vision they are trying to impliment. They are driven by this vision. Most do not have the manegment skills to lead their companies as they grow and are forced out in some form. But when they do have these skils, it can prove to be a powerful force. We have great examples of this in the technology industry. Microsoft, Intel, Oricale and more recently Google (which is a bit of an exception since the founders brought in a professional manager early to work side by side with them). But eventually the founders are either replaced because they can not manage the growth (Yahoo) or the founders retire (Microsoft and Intel).
While a founder that is both the companies visionary and also its CEO is a powerful force, a CEO that is not a visonary leads typically by committee. This kind of CEO asks a bunch of people he/she respects to provide ideas and then he/she tries to reach a concensus. What normally comes out of this is a compromise. Risk taking is avoided as the CEO is not able to internalize the vision and moves to what is more comfortable. And sometimes the CEO/founder can hold onto power but the world changes and the CEO is no longer capable of having a vision for the future. In my opinion that is what happend with Andy Grove when I was still at Intel and Andy could not really graps that the heart and profit of the internet was moving from the client to the the cloud. But somehow, Jobs has not only to continue to comprehend but was also able to shape the future.
There is an interesting discussion of the future of Apple without Jobs here.
Am I the great grandfather of the Internet?
January 17, 2011This blog is a bit more personal than most. Last night I was watching the Golden Globe Awards (which was taking place just a few miles from my West Hollywood home). The Social Network won a great many awards. I have not seen it. That is surprising to a lot of people who know me and my background. Last night someone I was chating with on Facebook asked me why I had not seen it. I said it was too long a story for chat. But frankly, I am not sure what the story really is. For the last ten years, I have slowly reduced my involvement in business which for me means Internet Business. It was very purposful. I think there were two many reasons. The first is that I wanted to use the last third (or so ) of my life exploring my own personal creativity. The second reason was that, I did not want to work my way down in an industry in which I had played a meaningful role. Frankly, I do not know which of these two forces was the greater but I hope it was the former.
I know most of the board member of Facebook. I worked closely with some of them when I was Vice President of Business Development at Intel. I do not know the managment team at Facebook other than Sheryl Sanberg who I think is a very capable, talented person that is also a wonderful human being. I never meet Mark Zukerberg. Frankly, I don’t think I would like him. He reminds me too much of Steve Jobs (I am sorry to write this on a day when we all have to be concerned for Steve’s health).
I have never called myself the father of broadband but I had as much to do with creating it as anyone when I sponsored the development of what became the cable modem and introduced the concept to most of the cable operators both in the USA and Internationally. There can only be one father and since there where a number of people who played an important role in creating residential broadband, I did not find that a good term for my role.
It seems to me that a generation in technology is about ten years. The residentail broadband network the now use was developed in the 90s (starting around 1992). The companies that played the major role in creating residential broadband were companies like Yahoo, AOL, Lycos, Amazon and Ebay The next generation was dominated by Google and towards the second half of the second generation, Facebook. We will be entering the third generation soon. And just like the major companies of the first generation played an important role in the second generation, Google and Facebook will play an important role in the third generation. Is if I was a “father” in the first generation, I was a “grandfather” in the second and soon and I will be a” great grandfather”.
Two years ago, I was on a yatch party in the San Francisco Bay with about 30 people. Larry Page, the co founder of Google was on the boat. I had meet Larry at a few parties but obviously had not made an impression. This time he had nothing to do but to talk to me. So he asked me what I did. I said I was pretty much retired but that I had worked for Intel. At that point, I think he lost interest. His whole company was based on technology that I had made happen and he had no idea who I was or what role I had played. He probably did not know that Intel had played such a promient role in creating residential broadband just as he probably had no idea about the role of companies like Broadcom. And does it matter? I think not. Yes, my ego would have been pleased if he had said, “you’re avram miller”. But it is exactly my ego or in particular that ego that I need to leave behind. A few years earlier, I had lunch with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress (which I am using for this very blog). One of his investors asked me to meet him. We had a nice lunch an a fun convestation of no consiquence. I realized that not only was I old enought to be Matt’s father, I was actually old enough to be his grandfather (although people are having children much later than my grandparents and parents).
Last week, I meet with an old friend who knew me at the hight of my career. He worked at the Creative Artist Agency when Intel and CAA creative multimedia demonstration lab. My friend asked me what I was doing. In particular, why had I decided to buy a home in LA (actually West Hollywood). I told him that I came for the sun but he perhaps wisely thought otherwise. He said there was a reason for my coming and imagined that I wanted to continue to work in the transition of the media industry to the digital world. I tried to explain that I wanted to explore my own creativity. I play jazz piano and I have recently started composing again. But it was clear from the discussion that I stil have a lot of passion and maybe too much passion for technology and media. But it also true that I want to explore my own creativity. I though the next day about how I could explain this a bit better. Imagine you want to learn Italian. You decided to take a year off and live in a small Italian village. Once there you discover that everyone there wants to improve their english and so they will never speak Italian with you.
So this brings me back to why I have not seen The Social Media. I think if I am honest with myself it is because I miss the time of my life when I was creating business and developing technology. It is the reason I stay away from conferences. It is hard to let go of something that possesed you so.
And I will always have a love for technology. A love that started when I was six years old.
The American System of Greed: How the smart and greedy take advantage of the greedy who take advantage of the dumb and greedy
January 13, 2011I have posted several times regarding my negative views of the financial value of Facebook. As you may know, Goldman Sachs put together a “fund” to invest $500 in Facebook at a valuation of 50 billion. This structure lets Facebook get around the requirements of going public by having more than 500 investors. Goldman is well know for having creative ways to get around regulations. Just look at how they helped Greece hide much of their debt. But the deal also lets Goldman get even more money then they would get if they just sold stock. They are getting a 4.5% placement payment, a 4% carried interest (they get 4% of any gain in Facebook stock over the 50 billion dollars) and they get a 1.5% a year management fee. Now who did they sell the stock to? To a bunch of greedy people who do not really care what Facebook is worth but think that there are greedy and stupid people that will buy Facebook at the IPO for 100 billion dollars. There are probably terms that will allow the Goldman investors to sell into the IPO or soon after or Goldman will find away to lock in their gains (and Goldman 4% carry interest). Then all the people that have Facebook at low valuations will start dumping their stock. That will not hurt Goldman who will have probably sold Facebook short. I have seen this movie before. It will be ugly.
China Develops Signficant Military capabilities: Can we surrender now?
January 7, 2011See this article. I am thinking that maybe we could save ourselves a lot of time, money and blood if we just surrendered now. Hopefully, china would establish some kind of Marshal Plan for us and rebuild our economy. They would help us create an effective government. They might even put the crooks now occupy our government offices (both parties), in jail and give them some much needed rehabilitation. We could be become the New Germany.
Oh, the Chinese are so lucky. They have a clear enemy (us) which they can fight the old fashion way with military power while we focus on trying to kill some guys that live in caves and tents.
