Capitalizing on new India

Alumni mailing list has this Bay Area event announcement -
IITMAANA Northern California Chapter
Presents
“Capitalizing on the Rise of India”
A Panel Discussion
December 4, 2005, 3-4:30pm
There is irony in the event title and it’s location.
Best way to figure out India’s potential for profit or non-profit purpose is to book your ticket and land at one of the [...]

Social Investing

(Via HBS) Ronald Cohen is about to start new venture aimed at social investment. Another highly successful venture capitalist - Vinod Khosla is also pursuing social entrepreneuership actively.
This is more than just philanthropy, its a deep realization that the traditional capitalism is hitting its limits and will not work in the larger part [...]

Real estate job growth

NYT has interesting data points on jobs related to the real estate  sector. 
Encompassing everything from land surveyors to general contractors to loan officers, the sprawling sector has added 700,000 jobs to the nation’s payrolls over the last four years..
Combined, the rest of the economy has lost nearly 400,000 jobs over the same span, which [...]

What If

What If ? With roughly 11% of GDP riding on real estate this is a big If !

Softbank moves out of SV

[Via Silicon Beat] Soft Bank putting up a "we have moved sign" and moving their base to China. Their rationale -
U.S. deals are too risky - early stage and expensive to fund, not to
mention technology-heavy. "Let’s say I put $10 million in a U.S.
company - it probably lasts 18 months," said Zhou, "and when [...]

irrational exuberance 2.0

When you see more of  the they-see-something-you-dont-see then that could be a sign of an irrational exuberance 2.0:
A San Diego developer who has built high-rise condominiums in Chicago, San Diego and San Francisco has offered the San Jose Redevelopment Agency $28.6 million for a prime 1.48-acre downtown parcel — nearly four times what Cupertino’s [...]

US based VCs in India

This is definitely a new trend (ok not yet a trend !). Bay area VC firm investing in automotive sector in India -
Gurgaon-based publicly listed automobile components firm Rico Auto
Industries Ltd. is to raise about $24 million (Rs. 103.2 crore) through
a preferential allotment to Morgan Stanley, New Vernon Bharat, and
Bessemer Venture Partners.

Looks like non-technology [...]

Tiecon 2005

Attended the Saturday session of Tiecon. It was a packed gathering full of proven and yet-to-prove entrepreneurs.  I did not attend the Friday session but I could hear people talk about "Flatteners"  every now and then.  Thomas Friedman definitely left behind few good punchlines for people to remember and quote.
Some of the quotes from the [...]

Costly geographies

Sounds like a new restructuring argument:
We are over-invested in high-cost geographies like the U.S., and underinvested in low-cost geographies like India.
I read similar statement from IBM as well.

Get used to this ?

You may not like this but our privacy is as vulnerable as some laptop lying in the server room begging for intruder’s attention. This is lame, UC Berkeley will get lot of flak for this.
Rishi - I hope your Haas adventure wont cost you your identity !
Few years back I made this bet [...]