Showing posts with label Sweden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sweden. Show all posts

Saturday, February 02, 2013

The Viking Lead


It seems like goodness follows once you finally manage to manage your fiscal house.

The Economist: The Nordic countries: The next supermodel
So long as public services work, they do not mind who provides them. Denmark and Norway allow private firms to run public hospitals. Sweden has a universal system of school vouchers, with private for-profit schools competing with public schools. Denmark also has vouchers—but ones that you can top up. ...... The performance of all schools and hospitals is measured. Governments are forced to operate in the harsh light of day: Sweden gives everyone access to official records. Politicians are vilified if they get off their bicycles and into official limousines. The home of Skype and Spotify is also a leader in e-government: you can pay your taxes with an SMS message. ...... they employ 30% of their workforce in the public sector ...... They are stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies: Sweden let Saab go bankrupt and Volvo is now owned by China’s Geeley. ....... focus on the long term—most obviously through Norway’s $600 billion sovereign-wealth fund ..... look for ways to temper capitalism’s harsher effects ..... a system of “flexicurity” that makes it easier for employers to sack people but provides support and training for the unemployed, and Finland organises venture-capital networks. ...... Their levels of taxation still encourage entrepreneurs to move abroad: London is full of clever young Swedes. ..... When Angela Merkel worries that the European Union has 7% of the world’s population but half of its social spending ...... Norway is a particular focus of the Chinese. ..... The state is popular not because it is big but because it works. A Swede pays tax more willingly than a Californian because he gets decent schools and free health care. The Nordics have pushed far-reaching reforms past unions and business lobbies. .... inject market mechanisms into the welfare state to sharpen its performance. You can put entitlement programmes on sound foundations to avoid beggaring future generations ...... root out corruption and vested interests ..... abandon tired orthodoxies of the left and right and forage for good ideas across the political spectrum
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Sunday, February 12, 2012

Apple Doing Well

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBaseDaily Mail: Apple is now bigger than Microsoft and Google combined - and worth more than the gross domestic product of Sweden
- The tech giant's stock is worth more than the market capitalisations of rivals Google ($196.8bn) and Microsoft ($256.1bn) combined.
- Apple's profits recently passed $1 billion a week and the company now sells a million iPhones a day.
- Apple's stock is worth more than the gross domestic product of Sweden - $458 billion.
- Apple is worth more than all the gold in the American Federal Reserve - $350 billion
- and all the illegal drugs in the world, $321 billion
- sold 37.04million iPhones - its flagship product - and 15.43million iPad tablets, doubling from a year earlier.
- its war chest of cash and securities to almost $100billion - more than enough to plug December's U.S. budget deficit.
- Apple's iPhone business is now bigger than the whole of Microsoft .... The company's smartphone division generated $24.4 billion of revenue in the quarter up until December, whereas the whole of Microsoft generated $20.9 billion in the same quarter.
Clearly Apple is an iPhone, iPad company like Microsoft used to be a Windows, Office company.
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Thursday, February 09, 2012

Spotify Vision Specialist: A No Go


My pitch two days ago (over email) with Spotify has ended up being a no go, and that's okay. One has to be Vision Specialist to one's own startup. For me that is microfinance. I am thinking six months. Max six.

Spotify Now Advertising On Netizen
+ 20-25 hours a week, rare week 30, 6 months
+ $100 per hour plus an equivalent in equity, 5K sign up bonus
+ 20 hours of face time with the CEO, 1-2 hours at a time, spread over
the final 4 months
+ 10 hours each with the top 10 people in the company - face time (not
phone, not Skype)
+ A few trips to Sweden in Spring/Summer
+ Interacting with as many employees as possible mostly in party settings

Vision Specialist
Spotify right now is headed to becoming a mid-tier company.
Noone thinks of it as a future Google/Amazon/Facebook.
My job would be to create that vision and inject it into the company.
I think Spotify could end up a truly big tech company.

Hardware (IBM) -------> Software (Microsoft) --------> One Site
(Google/Facebook) -----> Content/Mindfood (music/movies/books)

I hope to launch my own microfinance startup later this year.
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2011/02/googlefacebook-of-microfinance.html
That is why I never thought in terms of going full time with you guys.
Otherwise it would have made tremendous sense to do so. You guys are
pre-IPO.