Blog is the #1 Word for 2004
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
The top 10 words of the year based on searches of Merriam-Webster Web sites are:

1. blog
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration

Source: Merriam-Webster

See more detail as reported at CNN. Note that the term "blog" will even been added to the dictionary in 2005. I think I may need to go back to school for at least 2 of the other words ...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/11/30/words.of.the.year.reut/index.html

I hereby invoke the common law trademark rules for the "Blog Aside" (tm) marks and designations. Not to be confused with the term "blogicide" I might add. Anyways let's face it - blog properties just went up in value.


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Musings on Blog Searching, Blogging, and Bulletin Boards
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
Haven't quite got down the reading, posting, and browsing aspect of blogs down yet to my liking. Even though my investigations to date indicate that the searching, directory, blogging, social networking, caching, and grid computing spaces are converging, the workflow is pretty inefficient for me. Even simple browser bookmarking for me is getting out of hand.

Now as for stuff that *does* simplify my life, if you haven't tried the Findory site, check it out. In a nutshell Gregory Linden, founder of Findory and a key person formerly involved with personalization features at Amazon.com, has created an offering that personalizes the process of searching blogs through the use of adaptive learning. The platform tracks and learns what you like to read (through browser cookie technology). Then it organizes info in that way for you. What I like. No install. No new browsers. Just rock-and-roll and go. My style all-the-way.

To me, tailored searching is a great thing. Why? Because it draws personally relevant and timely network information flow to me. I use networks as an important part of my learning process because I am involved in a broad set of activities and can't be an expert in every area. For one thing, figuring out which channel to open for information can sometimes be tough because of the number of options. Findory is becoming sort of like Star Trek's Number One to me ... I can just turn to it and say "Open a channel" and "Make it so".

Now changing the subject a little bit, I wanted to comment on putting things back into the network. I find blogging useful, but I was originally surprised to find that the commenting format in blog environments was different from that on bulletin boards. Blogs don't make back-and-forth easy. Bulletin boards do. It is practically impossible to track the back and forth that goes in the commenting section of a blog. This hampers any useful dialogue that might grow out of the original blog post. Perhaps the desired effect. Perhaps not at other times. Problem is, as far as I can tell, there's no option in blogging to take the conversation to a bulletin board environment (e.g., a LinkedIn plug-in, Google scratch space, intelligent eGroups link or whatever). The situation that winds up happening is that everyone meets up in hyperspace, but there's no virtual Starbucks to link up for coffee and take the conversation further. Where's my instant e-Latte when I need it?

Updated: I was told that I should have said "cyberspace" not "hyperspace". Ah well. Tomato - tomata ...


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Mental Map of the Blogging World - A Work in Progress
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
As a number of folks may know, I have been experimenting with blogging to learn more about the detailed dynamics of the space. Blogging is an active area based on a lot of factors such as open source software, social networking, emerging venture investments, searching technology innovation and liquidity events, content management, ASP models, M&A activity, browser developments, standards, CRM, email, marketing, mobile technology, etc. Blogging has an indirect effect on some of the business activities I am exploring, so I wanted to create a mental map of what is going on companywise.

Anyway, here's my work in progress and mental map on the blogging space. I know that the matrix could be built out a bit. Suggestions welcome. Hope there aren't any gross errors in there. I've included source information and indicated where I've made guesstimates.

Updated (blues indicate changes since original post):

Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Why Playing Politics Is Good For Government Officials But Not For Management Consultants
Topic: 2) The Consulting Trade
With the elections behind us now for a couple of weeks, I thought that I would jot down some thoughts about the role of politics in business. Now there are courses taught in business schools (including the University of Chicago) on how power and politics play a role in a organization. Some key aspects of politics are that they are a natural part of having 1) an organizational structure and 2) interdependencies between people in the organization.

Now one can see why there is a tendency for some of the unsavory things (e.g., mud slashing) to happen in an election of the President of the United States. Well for one thing we are hiring the chief honcho. Secondly, there are a lot of interdependencies between us as citizens of the United States and part of the larger world.

Politics are bad for management consultants because helping a client needs to transcend the organization. An effective consultant needs to adopt Renaissance capabilities to work up and down in the organization and to cross-connect the organization in new ways in conjunction with the client. This may be of tremendous value to a client because sometimes existing employees may be fearful or reluctant (and perhaps rightfully so) to upset others in the organization (sometimes their peers or bosses). A good consultant should only focus on the goal of fixing things. Consultants are temporary guns to help get an organization through change, and they should be fired or put on the street if not adding value.

Now I've lost myself again ... why can't this goal-focused reasoning apply to political elections too?


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Nobel Prize, Supreme Court, Nobel Prize
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
I expect this to be a pretty high-caliber blog when up an running. The Becker-Posner blog (http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/) just came online. Where else would you be able to find a blog written by both a Nobel Prize winner in economics (Gary Becker) & a potential Supreme Court appointee, Nobel Prize hopeful, and Microsoft antitrust case mediator (Richard Posner)?

If you want some free economics and law schooling outside of the University of Chicago, this blog will likely be the place to go.


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Christmas Comes Early on Dec. 2, 2004
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
The Christmas season is a time about giving to others. In some ways, it is also a time for people to fantasize about all the things you can buy with money. Imagine being able to buy:
- any company in the world
- all 5,000-some IT startups in the Silicon Valley
- your own country
- your own armed forces
- part of the biotech and pharmaceutical industry

The above items are a Microsoft business fantasy outlined in TheDeal.com. The possibilities are something just short of fantasy though as Microsoft prepares to pay out $32 billion (more than 40% of its total cash reserves) in a special dividend on December 2, 2004. It represents the largest cash dividend payout in history. If Microsoft executives and the Board can't find a better use for the money, then straight-up finance theory would say that the company should return money to shareholders as it is doing.

For once, let's all cheer for corporate governance!

Disclaimer: Steve is neither a Microsoft shareholder nor an employee ...


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Some Business Facts Appropriate for Thanksgiving
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
Thought I would post some business facts related to Thanksgiving. The facts:


- the US does not import that much turkey (between January and August 2002 total imports was around $12 million)
- in 2001, the turkeys produced weighed 7.2 billion pounds altogether and were valued at $2.8 billion
- $1 was the cost per pound in December 2001 of a frozen whole turkey (based on the prior fact, those feathers must weigh a lot [smile]!)
- $1.49/pound was the 2004 offering price of fresh Rosebud turkeys by Peapod (for Nov. 19 - Nov. 24)
- 13.6 pounds was the amount of turkey consumed by the typical American in 2000
- my kids have a hard time chewing turkey (based on the prior fact, some people are eating a lot of turkey to compensate for my kids!)
- ConAgra (owner of the Butterball label) had 2003 revenue of $19.8 billion (that's not all turkey!)

Sources: http://www.chiff.com/a/turkey_census.htm, ConAgra financials



Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

3rd Friday, MTBC Session on Early Stage Funding
Topic: 3) Ventures
This past Friday I attended the Metroplex Technology Business Council's (MTBC) 3rd Friday Technical Luncheon Series in Richardson, Texas.

The lunch session began with a hot-off-the-press video from NTT DoCoMo, which depicted a vision of the future in 2010. I have to say that the form factors depicted by the Japanese stir a pleasant feeling. As one of the people eating lunch with me mentioned, the video has an Disney Epcot kind of feel to it. (Source: http://www.nttdocomo.com/vision2010/media300.html)

The main presentation of the day covered "Early Stage Funding and the Future of Wireless Communications". Guest speaker was Roman Kikta, industry veteran and managing partner of Genesis Campus, a seed- and first-round financing venture capital and incubator fund. Genesis Campus is closing a new $100M fund in January (Genesis' second fund). I was struck by the fact that the example liquidity event highlighted by Roman for Genesis Campus (Fund I) was Spatial Wireless (Alcatel to acquire for approx. $250M USD) and that the CEO was also the founder. I mentioned to Roman that having the founder as CEO up to the point of a large liquidity event was very atypical and asked whether he expected to see similar patterns in his other portfolio companies.

Roman had a very good response. He mentioned that while each situation must be treated on a case-by-case basis that founders get swapped out too early in many cases. Founders provide the vision for a venture, and the vision can get killed off too early if a new CEO is brought in.

Maybe a good topic of research for the academics reading along. That'll be $0.05 please.


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

If Your Employees Play Foosball This Well It May Be A Bad Sign
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
This link gets credit from Paul Brown, a friend, my former boss, and founder and CEO of FiveSight Technologies. Now I've known a number of early- and growth-phase companies that have adopted foosball (table soccer) tables. On the one hand, foosball does help to build company culture and get team sprit up. Foosball also can also get the blood rushing before important business meetings where competitive drive and hunger play a big part.

That said, if your employees play foosball at this level and better than they can articulate learnings about the sales process or where the company is at maturity-wise ... well you'd better watch operations more closely! ;)

Source: http://www.here.dk.nyud.net:8090/listarchive/jokes/Garlando.wmv (filming location not known)



Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Research by Ljunqvist and Wilhelm: Prospect Theory and IPOs
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
There is an interesting finance, organizational behavior, and initial public offering (IPO) puzzle addressed at the following blog.

The puzzle stems from the following. Why is it that many IPOs are dramatically underpriced? How can it be that in a matter of 30-90 days that companies (e.g., Google) can be trading close to 100% more than than their original IPO price? Did the company actually undertake some activities in 30-90 days that could double its enterprise value by billions of dollars? Hard to imagine in the absence of big news or other dramatic market changes.

Now aside from investment banking mechanics of making a market for taking a company public, it seems as though company shareholders would be somewhat upset by leaving so much on the table. If an IPO could have raised $2X billion for a company instead of $X billion, wouldn't you be upset as a CEO of that company?

Apparently not according to academic research. According to the blog article referenced above, "In trying to explain IPO underpricing, Loughran and Ritter (2002, RFS) suggested that CEOs may not be concerned about leaving money on the table in IPOs because the losses are netted against the rises in stock price in the secondary market." The article goes on to say, "Ljunqvist and Wilhelm now test this and find that it seems to hold ... They find that when the CEO wealth increases significantly in the IPO process (and hence presumably the CEO is a 'happy customer'), the firm is more likely to stick with the same underwriter, even if there was significant underpricing in the IPO ... In more technical language, the idea that the CEO is less concerned about what is left on the table because (s)he is making money anyways is essentially prospect theory."

I'm not arguing with the research. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but whatever happened to fiduciary responsibility?


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Not Quite Friday Cat Blogging ... Its the Hairy VC Deal!
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
Thought I would resurrect a venture capital cartoon from the bubble days. Credits to http://www.thevc.com/.

Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

New Private Equity and Venture Capital Research
Topic: 3) Ventures
There is some new research by the University of Chicago GSB's Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance Steven N. Kaplan. Although so far I've only had the chance to skim the presentation and cross-ref some of the paper details, some interesting aspects to note are:

- the fact that some new data not accessible before through Venture Economics is utilized
- the sad story on returns (slide 12) since 1999 ... all average returns across all quartiles of performers is negative ...
- the Public Market Equivalent (PME) measure (slide 19) used to gauge partnership returns against the S&P 500 is kind of a novel measure which I've not seen before (the measurement is useful in terms of making the measurement of returns more invariant to sequencing)
- one finding (promising story) is that some GPs *do* persist superior returns over time ... factors and explanations probably include the access to proprietary deal flow and evidence of better negotiated deal terms against early-stage company owners, founders, etc. (gee whiz, the story is getting sad again since I have mostly represented operating companies in the past ...)

Here's the presentation and paper (the latter for the benefit of the academics!).
(presentation)
(paper)

Although Business Week magazine and others have always ranked Professor Kaplan as one of the premier professors in Entrepreneurial Finance using traditional means, from my perspective Professor Kaplan has always done a great job at making academic research and papers accessible by the general business community. I'm sure as I dig further I will find more of the same caliber work.


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Some Favorite CEO and VC Blog Posts
Topic: 3) Ventures
A lot of folks have been asking me about CEO and venture capital blogging as of late. Thought that I would point out a few of my favorite posts. Note that there are not that many VC bloggers out there (last number I saw was around 12). That said, there is growing interest by VCs in blogging investments. August Capital recently put in Series B money to Six Apart (see webblog Mena Trott, co-founder and President of Six Apart). Additionally, Sequoia Capital's LinkedIn investment (which some might argue is not quite a blog) recently drew Series B monies from Greylock (LinkedIn release).

But I digress. Here are some recent VC and CEO blog posts that I like quite a bit (some of these blogs I read semi-regularly):

- on Running an Efficient Board Meeting see http://www.beyondvc.com/2004/09/running_an_effi.html by Ed Sim, Managing Director of Dawntreader Ventures

- on the Sales Learning Curve (SLC) see http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2004/10/the_sales_learn.html by Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext

- thoughts on the Feature, Product, or Company thing that VCs need to tease apart as they analyze prospective investments, see http://due-diligence.typepad.com/blog/2004/01/vc_feature_prod.html by Tim Oren, partner at the VC firm Pacifica Fund

- "It's the Feed Stupid" (this is a bit of a technical subject but an important one related to blogging), see http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2004/05/its_the_feed_st.html by Fred Wilson, managing partner at the VC firm Flatiron Partners


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Primordial Soup and Getting the Stars, Planets, and Moons to Align
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
Well this is going to be a cryptic post for many, but it is intended to be a non-confidential brain dump of business things that I have touched in the networking flow within the past week (some things touched on deeper than others):
- technology transfer
- electrically small antennas (RFID)
- breakthrough, high-stakes presentations
- offshore software development for growth companies
- signal compression technologies
- hanging wireless antennas off of electricity poles and exploring job opportunities
- management consulting opportunities
- chemical cleanup of chemical warfare agents and potential terrorism agents
- oil additive that improves heat transfer of air conditioning units
- radio broadcasting for truckers
- MLM schemes
- business plan development
- psychology and use of organizational behavior theory in insurance marketing and program pilot and rollout
- process operations for backoffice to eCommerce companies
- new venture capital research on returns, etc.
- venture capital and CEO blogs
- judging for MBA case competitions
- the 16th floor
- STARTech Foundation (gazillionth time - I need to investigate this time!)
- buying celebrity talent
- wiki and RSS-based software companies
- buying and selling homes in the Park Cities
- publishing articles and books
- the difference between doing lunch and networking
- oh yeah ... and the election!


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

A Brief Intro to the Process Flow Mapping of Operations
Topic: 2) The Consulting Trade
Starting to get some things off the back burner that I started but haven't had the chance to complete until now. Here's another short business note entitled, "A Brief Intro to the Process Flow Mapping of Operations". (pdf version) (html version)

Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Some Business Facts Appropriate for Halloween
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
Thought I would post some business facts related to Halloween (as inspired by a comment from my mother about spending). The facts:


- as reported at www.shoppingblog.com , Halloween spending is estimated to reach $3.12 billion, and the National Retail Federation (NRF) Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey results indicate that the average consumer plans to spend $43.57 on Halloween merchandise this year (approximately 34% of this is on candy and 35% of this is on costumes)
- the population in the United States is estimated to be 293 million (July 2004) as reported in the World Factbook of the CIA
- the revenues of Wrigley exceeded $3.0 billion in 2003, and more than 90% of its revenues are from chewing gum sales worldwide
- *neither* of my kids got a single stick of Wrigley chewing gum for Halloween
- health care spending is on the order of $1.7 trillion (so off-the-cuff I'm guessing that dental care spending is in the range of tens of billions of dollars)


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

The 2004 Election Debacle ... A Premonition Or Happening Before Our Eyes?
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
Today I was part of a conversation with some of the faculty at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU), and we lightly touched on the subject of the election. Now I have a technology and operational process bent to me, so perhaps my concerns about this election are just a combination of reading CNN news about e-voting security (here), hearing rumors that people are voting multiple times simply by identifying themselves as another person at other voting locations (since people don't have to provide photo ID in some cases), getting secondhand information about mechanical ballot completion being misleading in terms of some districts allowing people to vote with one punch (but where the detailed ballot doesn't follow that instruction perfectly), and seeing that the polls are so close between Bush and Kerry (does statistical significance play a role in vote counting?). To top my heightened sense of anxiety about the election, I couldn't even take advantage of voting early in the University Park area of Dallas ... the lines were like one to two hours long at 10:20AM today.


This stuff is all starting to sound very troublesome. Can we just let the folks at JibJab settle this (here)?


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Thaler and Fama ... We're All Organizational Behaviorists Now ... Sort Of ...
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
The perfect news for my "A Random Walk" blog category ... Richard Thaler (my wife's doctoral advisor back at the University of Chicago) and Eugene Fama duke it out for the readership of the Wall Street Journal. Since I can't automatically link to the article, I thought I would link to an article by Stephen M. Bainbridge (an academic in the blogosphere) posted just an hour ago.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/102004D.html

Rather than comment on this article, I think Stephen Bainbridge has done a nice job here.


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

The Size of the Corporate Blogosphere
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
David Sifry, Founder and CEO of Technorati, a company watching and cataloging 4.3 millionish weblogs, published some interesting statistics on the size of the corporate blogosphere.

http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000390.html

Although the details on how the figure was obtained were not published at the time of my entry here, David pointed out that some 5,000 people are blogging in official to semi-official capacities for their companies. This number is consistent with other numbers I have seen around the Internet on business blogging. Clearly an emerging area, but one with very interesting possibilities when one considers the power of the network, the informal nature of the blogging channels, market timing, and the search for customer intimacy and high-tech touch.

What I think David forgot to mention is that there are actually 5,001 corporate blogs. The S4 Management Group Perspectives link could neither be catalogued nor counted by Technorati because I couldn't apply my two engineering degrees to figure out where to paste the Javascript and HTML code suggested by Technorati into the weblog format code ... these kinds of technical issues (not specific to Technorati) are the kinds of things that will make bridging blogging technology to the business community challenging.



Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

DallasBlue Power Networking Lunch Gets Rave Review
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
Hats off to Marc Freedman, Founder and CEO of RazorPop, for organizing a great DallasBlue (http://www.dallasblue.com) luncheon talk and networking event this past Thursday at the Blue Mesa Grill in Addison, TX. Ran smoothly, on schedule, and with good attendance. Excellent job, Marc!

Lunch talk was by Michael Greeson, President & Principal Analyst at the Diffusion Group. Lots of stats, strategy, and branding talk made Michael's talk unique - it was the first comprehensive dialogue I had participated in that covered the converging space of broadband, networking, PCs, home entertainment, and consumer electronics. If I had to sum up three perspectives that will make convergence interesting, they would be 1) increasing power of the service provider (I got my home network from SBC/Ameritech), 2) saturation of the traditional PC market with excess horsepower (when will I ever need a new PC again? And did anyone notice the recent announcement by Intel on capping the clock speed of the Pentium for the near-term?), and 3) importance of brand name in terms of winning in the living room (I love my iPod and Sony stuff). I think we are seeing signs that partnering and M&A plays will become more and more prevalent in this space.

As for the networking environment at DallasBlue, well if you are a networker, DallasBlue is great because Marc has allocated good time for people to socialize. And this is important because networking takes time. Networking is more than doing lunch. It's more than getting business cards. It's not about selling to people. And networking is definitely not about getting business from your friends. Networking is first about developing rapport and helping people. The rest may follow given time and dedication.


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com