It certainly is a new era in India. As my grandmother in Goa, India told me 20 minutes ago, “Indians are well rounded now….we used to look up to Europeans before, but they look to us, and we have the prettiest girls!” Poonam Pandey has vowed to strip if India won the world cup, and the world now awaits to see if she will follow through. Much better publicity stunt than Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” and something that is unusual in Indian pop culture.
The victory in Mumbai this night, ended by a bold 6 run shot (when a batter hits the ball over the boundary in the air, similar to a baseball homerun) by the Indian Captain Dhoni, who was instrumental in the victory. 5 years ago, I watched India beat Australia to win the 20/20 world cup with new friends in Hyderabad and today after India defeated Sri Lanka, I called them amid a billion-person party. Spirits were high, and it reminded the Hyderabadass of older, simpler days, when cricket was common bond I shared with a people I could barely communicate with.
Today, in Kentucky, I watched the game with my father and hundreds of college students, eager to celebrate Holi with squirt guns, colored paint, and immense amounts of energy since dawn. Crowded in a barn on U of L’s campus, the game was streamed from a laptop to a huge projector, with at least 20 young people wearing Indian jerseys, a Dhol drum playing bhangra beats, and 1 white young man who lead the dance party anytime a big play was made, with pelvic thrusts, fingers point in the air and off-timed shoulder rotations, exactly like my Hyderabadi friends 5 years ago.
I spoke with a professor yesterday who admitted he lost interest in cricket when he moved to the US 30 years ago. It was impossible to follow because of technology constraints – he would have to go to the library weeks later to find a times of india that gave a recap of the game. Worse, phone calls to India would exceed $4 a minute at the time, and you would have to call an operator to make the call, and sit home for hours for it to go through. After 6 minutes, the call would end and you would have to start over. Well, today there are hundreds of websites that streamed the game to probably at least a billion people around the world, and despite annoying ads, slowed bandwidths and glitches, it delivered a real-time experience that was truly global.
It will never be known what that young white man’s connection to India might be, but it was appreciated by all as morale held strong inside the barn for the first half of the Saturday. Food was catered for the event, and a student brought a plate for my father, in a wonderful sign of respect for the only person above 27 in the room. Beyond the electricity in the room from the game, I was amazed how well this group of students organized the event, coordinated the food, technology, and even the fun act of drenching each other in colors to celebrate afterwards. True community, and it was in celebration of a place thousands of miles away, that today is a symbol of pride unlike years past. Now, the world only awaits the stripping, Ms. Pandey!
I came to Washington DC this weekend for an academic conference about entrepreneurship research. I expected to learn from scholars – professors, older doctoral students, World Bank analysts, and social scientists. Little did I know that my weekend education would be supplemented with the wisdom of a taxicab entrepreneur.
This was my first time attending this type of conference. People came from all around the world to share ideas they had empirically tested in countries like The Netherlands, Nigeria, China, and even Canada. The depth of statistical analysis that was conducted was overwhelming for a new PhD student just learning the basics of research design, but I was fascinated with the presentations. I never thought I would see such passion coming from folks debating the use of regression models, significance levels, and sample sizes.
It was also the first time I decided to depend on taxicabs for all transportation. I once lived in San Francisco for 3 months without a car and still never took a taxi because I loved the BART and Muni system. DC also has excellent public transportation, however this particular weekend I felt inclined to pay the premium for getting around. I thought it would be a good way to see as much of the city as possible, but to be honest it was because I tended to be running late on everything this weekend.
It ended up being the best decision I made all weekend. I learned a tremendous amount at the conference, however the highlight of the weekend was a 20-minute conversation with the enterprising driver I hired to take me from Howard University to George Washington University. I’ve been gaining a tremendous amount of optimism about our economic future by the experiences I have had in the Louisville community and my research in social entrepreneurship. Today I learned that this optimism was shared with a Baltimore-based, high school educated, value-driven cab-driving, self-titled CEO.
I knew something was up the moment he picked me up. He had a woman in the front seat, which I thought was odd, and the cab smelled like delicious breakfast food. The driver was a black man with a white five-o’clock shadow who wore a genuine smile for most of this Saturday morning. Soon after he picked me up he pulled over to let the woman out of the front seat. She didn’t pay for the ride and I carelessly assumed that the driver had gotten lucky the night before and I had intruded on his morning-after. He clarified the address I had given him, and we were soon off on our way across town.
Before I knew it he had engaged me in a discussion about real estate and strategies for appraising properties. I wore a suit for the conference, which probably encouraged him to start the conversation about business, but within minutes I found myself asking him for valuation advice. He was eloquent in explaining three strategies that could be used depending on the situation, and immediately qualified himself as an expert in this field.
He took pride in telling me that he was certified in three states for this business. It allowed him to diversify. He explained that he was having some tax problems at the moment, and the reason why he had dropped the woman off earlier. He was asked by the landlord of the building to help find tenants for the apartment units and he had just closed the deal with her to move in and was dropping her off to meet the landlord. He explained to me the hassles that landlords have with Craigslist, and had found a way he could help. He admitted that he had not made too much money off the deal, but the gesture had earned him a long-term relationship with the landlord that would end up being profitable one day. This type of strategy helped him obtain a 4000 sq foot commercial property that he envisions turning into a neighborhood theatre and facility for music and art teachers to give classes at. He is worried that in his neighborhood children and families don’t have safe places to enjoy the arts and he wants to change that.
Earlier I mentioned that this cab driver shared the same optimism about our economic future. We also share the same vision for a business idea to bring back the arts to neighborhoods where they’ve been cut from school programs. I told him about a business idea I had developed that would use a gym membership business model to create a cool space for kids to go to whenever they wanted to play music, take classes, try out new instruments and technology and just hangout with their friends. The profits from the venture would be invested into created classes in poor neighborhoods in the community so that underserved kids could get free guitars and lessons from talented teachers. He loved the idea, and offered some incredible advice about how I could get the funding for it. He believes that funding, something I struggled for 2 years in my last business venture, would be the least of my problems in this venture. He shared some insights about our nation’s current economic struggles, suggesting that he was a believer of social entrepreneurship in the same way that I am.
We had already reached my destination at this point. The meter had been running for 10 minutes while we were parked, brainstorming how we could bring music education to our communities. He told me that driving a taxicab was not his job, but he had been doing it all his life because his father did it, and the money helped his other business get started. It also gave him more chances to talk with different types of people to get a pulse on what was going on in different parts of the city. I found this ironic, because I am also following in my father’s footsteps, and part of the reasons I am becoming a professor is to help me with bigger ideas I hope to someday bring to the world.
The taxi driver told me that he is an entrepreneur, but obviously at this point he didn’t have to. He currently runs 5 businesses, including publishing a magazine for cabs in DC, a gardening store, commercial real estate consulting, and helping connect landlords to tenants. He told me that he hadn’t reached the levels of success he wanted in any of the ventures, but sooner or later something was going to hit. He loves the process of creating enterprises, and is just passionate about all the businesses he is involved in. But, he believes in value-based businesses. He told me that he had an opportunity to go into business with foreclosures, because his neighborhood got hit with it really hard last year. He could have made a ton of money doing it, but while evaluating the opportunity, he realized he would have a tough time sleeping at night. He couldn’t imagine going into another man’s home and telling them they had to round up his wife and children and leave. His reputation in the community was far too important to risk with the venture and decided to pass on the job. The entire time he was explaining his decision-making process, I kept thinking to myself how different our world would be today if the bankers responsible for the financial crisis had evaluated their decisions the same way as this taxi driver. He told me that short-term thinking was “just stupid.”
He admitted that the past two years had been really tough on him, but couldn’t be happier with where he is in life right now because he is proud of his values and is learning more every day. He regrets that he never had a chance to go to college and study business. Instead he has built a strong friendship with his banker and it has really helped him along the way of his entrepreneurial journey. His banker told him that these experiences were more valuable than any college education would have been, but the cab driver is stubborn on this issue, believing that he would a much better entrepreneur if he could have gone to school. To compensate for this, he attends as many training courses and free seminars as possible, but the most valuable thing for his education business is reading case studies in the Harvard Business Review.
This was when I realized how surreal this morning had been. The last thing I expected to hear from a taxi driver taking me to an academic conference was that he was a subscribed reader of the literature that came out of the field I am being trained in. If there was ever a doubt that academic research was not valuable to entrepreneurs, it was lost this morning. My desire to write case studies about entrepreneurs and explore research ideas has been validated, and my future papers might be a resource to future entrepreneurs, not just resume building citations that help with tenure.
Our meeting was nearly up but he closed by telling me a story about an epiphany he had recently about not having a college degree. I could tell that it was something he was insecure about, similar to how I felt about teaching entrepreneurship despite failing at my first business venture. In his story, he describes a part of the city by the airport where the road he drives on goes directly into the flight path of planes that have just taken off from the runway. While giving a ride to a passenger who was a pilot, he told him how much admiration he had for the pilots ability to navigate this particular part of the flight because it requires a precise turn right after take off to avoid city obstacles. The pilot told him that this was all just part of the training, but the real admiration should be for the pilot who was able to land the plane safely in the Hudson River. The education and training meant nothing in that situation. The experiences of the pilot, his ability to stay calm and make good judgment allowed him to save hundreds of lives and be a national hero. The taxi driver said at that point he learned one of the biggest lessons of his life. He realized that not having a college education didn’t have to limit his ability to be successful. He hopes to have his Hudson River moment in his life one day, and he is working on developing all the experiences and personal abilities to be prepared for when that moment comes.
We shook hands, saying how much we both enjoyed the conversation. I offered him money for the trip and he refused to take it.
I left, inspired to someday write a case study that inspires a future entrepreneur like the cab driving CEO. The man who never had an opportunity to take a college class had just taken the role of a professor, and he didn’t even accept the paycheck for the job. I arrived at the university where I was supposed to learn about entrepreneurship on this Saturday, but my classroom today had been a taxicab.
It took an evening in Louisville, Kentucky to realize this. After 8 hours of studying theory, statistics, and banging my head against a library wall, I threw on my finest sports coat and ventured out for my first night on the town in downtown Louisville.
This weekend is Idea Festival. It has been one of the best surprises this town has afforded me in my first two months here. I was looking forward to the event after the kickoff event – Thrivals 3.0 – featuring Jackie Robinson’s son (David), Janelle Monae and her “motown meets silicon valley” label Wondaland Arts Society, Howard Bloom, who spoke passionately about public relations work with Prince and Michael Jackson and several other inspirational speakers who were handpicked by U of L’s Professor Nat Irvin.
I entered the theater with very little background information of the speaker who was scheduled to talk today. I saw something about “Gandhi” on the flyer, and made an assumption that it was an Indian, perhaps someone talking about philosophy or yoga, or something I was half interested in. Within 5 minutes I lost any buyers remorse for purchasing tickets for this event, and realized I was meant to be in this very room, in Louisville, Kentucky, at this exact moment.
Anand Giridharadas was able to articulate everything I experienced in my short tenure in Hyderabad, while enlightening hundreds of us on insightful observations he had made as a journalist in Mumbai (Bombay) India over 6 years. He spoke with charisma, poise, and conviction, and intentionally paused, keeping listeners in check with the realization that we might never get this education ever again in our midwestern/southern lives, before revealing a new idea that kept us asking for more. None of his propositions were left undefended, but there was very little that was academic about his tone.
He clearly ordered his thoughts into a presentation that alluded to things his audience could understand. It felt like I was learning with him – which is a quality I have attributed to some of my best professors and mentors.
I understand that up until this point, I haven’t said anything about his actual message. I am not sure how well I can share the perspective he donated to us tonight, but I will try to summarize what stood out to me. I urge the reader to purchase this man’s book, that will be coming out in 2011. He too has experienced the frustration of not being really an American or an Indian. Referencing a comment made by someone in the audience tonight, Indian’s don’t know whether to charge us 100 rupees for entrance (US prices) or 50 rupees (indian price) so they charge 75. Before I get to his presentation, I need to preface it with a list of the similarities between us, which is absurd.
1. We were born in Cleveland, Ohio to parents who grew up in Bombay, India and visited India every 2 years as children.
2. We attended college in Michigan.
3. Shortly after college we worked in India.
4. We are both the son of a professor
5. This year, we both started Ph.D programs.
Anand described his fears of the future in America, while optimistically proposing what we should do to avoid them. Giving examples of TATA cars that cost under $2000, he suggested we stop limiting innovation to luxury items like ipads and smartphones. He gave a staggering statistic about how there are more people in the world with access to mobile phones (mostly “dumb phones”) than toilets. (6 billion) Manufacturing jobs should be focused to serve the markets that demand products based on need instead of desire. Instead of redesigning existing products by stripping away features to lower costs, we should start from scratch, building a lower cost and useful product designed specifically for the market it is intended for. Not everyone in the US owns an iPhone. Damnit.
The US has always exported culture to the developing world, but Anand argues that the world no longer sees our way of life as an end-goal, but simply as a “means to an end.” Just like our movies, basketball shoes, and Yankees hats are knocked off, so is the culture, and Americans do not see a dime in return.
The brilliance of this speaker is exposed as he concludes his talk. By this time, I have gotten over the fact that he might be a better dresser than me, and has found a more distinguished hairstyle. I start thanking my stars that the New York Times selected him to share these pearls of wisdom with a much larger audience than the Hyderabadass could ever hope to talk to. He talks about community, about culture, and changes in geography that is impacting them. He proposes that our generation is becoming more and more ‘placeless’ transplanting to new places for work and losing identities. We have less in common with each other because technology gives more options. Tivo restricts watercooler conversation because we no longer watch the same tv shows on the same nights. For the first time in the history of the world more people live in urban cities than rural communities. We are desperately longing for communities, which is why our search tools focus on this (Yelp) but we’ve lost a connection from this old way of life, and it will be difficult to recover.
It was a great speech, and I was overall impressed that this went down in Louisville. The timing was perfect, with the controversial premier of NBC’s Outsourced, which was discussed briefly, but also a subject of Anand’s latest piece in the times. A badass, indeed.
I spent 30 hours in NYC last weekend for a wedding and thanks to public transportation I engaged in a discussion about entrepreneurship with an unlikely conversationalist. As indicated by the title of this post, this was a retired crack dealer from Brooklyn who rode the subway with me to Queens on my way to a wedding in Long Island.
Our conversation sparked because we had both just missed the subway from Bushwick to Jamaica. At first, I had certain doubts about his intentions. Normally when people start talking to me on the street in big cities, they end up disappointed that I was not the smart money type they expected. When he found out I was from Louisville, however, his face lit up. He claimed that he just got back from there on a bus. However he was also unable to answer my questions about how long it took him to get there or what part of the city he stayed in…so remained skeptical. I continued to talk to him, but was looking for a way out of the conversation as soon find an exit.
Early in the conversation, he was very vocal about racial tensions he felt in Brooklyn, stating that the police often approached him and made him lift his shirt to check for guns, which made him feel violated. He also complained about Mayor Bloomberg only serving the white people in Manhattan. After 1 month of intense study on theories like resource-based view, game theory, and other economic topics, perhaps this was the conversation I needed.
As we sat on the subway, I succeeded in switching the conversation from politics to business – something that I would be less likely to offend him or any of the other strangers on this train. I wasn’t thrilled that I was talking on a subway in the first place. I’ve never figured out the best way to cut a conversation short. It’s an art that few have mastered, especially during business networking sessions.
The more we talked, the more I believed him. The reason he had taken the bus to Louisville was because his father was in the hospital. His mother and several of cousins live there and all he really wants to do is move closer to his family. It was this point in the conversation that he came clean. The reason he was unable to fly or stay longer in Kentucky was because he was a convicted felon! He had been a crack dealer in the early 90s, arrested and caught up in an ugly situation. He admitted that he had shot people, and been shot in his “hay day.” But he didn’t express any remorse for his actions, besides that he was now stuck in New York and unable to move to where his family went.
I looked around the train, taking notice of our new audience. This was no uplifting Forrest Gump life story, but I had to say something despite the awkwardness of his admission. The first thing I could think about was a chapter in the book Freakonomics about why crack dealers still live with their mothers. It might have been a risky move, but for once in my life, I just couldn’t come up with a non sequitur.
So I asked him outright, “why do crack dealers live with their mothers.”
He laughed, and responded that it was indeed true. I told him about the book, and how an Indian doctoral student made friends with a Chicago gang led by an college educated gangster who kept detailed accounting records that were published into academic research. I asked him what it was lik to deal crack in New York, not thinking until after the conversation such a question might not been a great idea in my very short weekend trip to see my family.
For the most part, he agreed with the a lot of what Levitt talks about. The corporate-like structure of the crack business is similar in Brooklyn than it was in Chicago when the Indian PhD student Sudhir Venkatesh documented it through his field research. Since so many people wanted to work in this industry, the actual wages for the street soldiers were very small, sometimes nothing at all. Only a few people at the top really earned substantial profits, but that tenure could be ended quite abruptly. Or in his words “you could be sitting on a park bench and have three %$#@#’s walk up and put a bullet in your head.”
My new subway friend said that he had no intention of rising up this corporate ladder because it would be too risky. He had dealt drugs and kept a low profile, but he offered some intriguing stories about some of the bosses in the gang at the time. The amount of profits that they made each day according to his story were tempting, but he had mentally calculated the risks of increasing his supply and opted to keep it a “small business.” We talked about territories for dealing being similar to McDonald franchises, and why the guy’s at the bottom of the gang were content with making less than minimum wage. I encourage you to read Sudhir’s book for details.
The retired crackdealer on the subway claimed that that there were few alternative options to dealing drug in his youth. He didn’t have the patience for school but his his mother had told him over and over while growing up that he should study more like the Indian kids. He admired Indians for their successes and emphasis on education, and regrets not trying harder in school. He ended our drug conversation, stating that if he had my brains (assuming I was smart only because I am Indian) and his hustle when he was young, he would have been bigger than Jay-Z. We talked about how kids in his neighborhood should learn how to be entrepreneurs in legitimate businesses, and I told him about NFTE, an organization that teaches inner city youth how to be entrepreneurial. As he walked me to the train I had to take to Long Island, he made sure I found the correct one. He ended by telling me that “New York is a city that destroys people, but if I figure out the right moves, I could do very well out there….Don’t waste any gifts.” This is the last thing I expected to hear from a crack dealer that I couldn’t figure out how to stop talking to. I wished him luck on his desire to move to Louisville, and we went on our separate ways.
Almost two years ago I wrote a post about microfinance - “Microfinance 2.0″. I had just heard about Kiva.org and was fascinated with the power of online communities and social media, and on a personal level, I was looking for ways that my driver, Satyam, could finance his business idea. While living in Hyderabad I became friends with a few people that worked for SKS Microfinance, and was involved in a few discussions about moral concerns people had with the popularity of microfinance in the commercial world. There were rumors that part of the reason that default rates were so low was because ‘collection agencies’ hired by banks practiced mafia-like tactics for obtaining repayment of the loans. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it was part of my early perceptions of this system, and thus I have always had a concern for the social benefits through this form of lending to the poor.
While microfinance lending was envisioned to help the poor gain access to capital to start their own enterprises, it has become evident that it is far more complex in today’s world. With several strong examples of social ventures that give micro-finance loans, it is easy to generalize this practice as being social entrepreneurship. However, loans can be given out in several ways through socially responsible investment funds, non-profits, and commercial institutions that operate strictly for profit. Just like I had doubts two years ago, today I am even more concerned about the future of this model with non-profits becoming more commercial. I support social ventures that make a profit because using innovation and business strategies help the ventures stay self-sufficient. However with micro-finance, I am concerned that the entire system might be damaged if the industry becomes too capitalistic. Profit incentives may consequently punish the people microfinance was originally designed to help: the poor.
There are two ‘pure’ microfinance lenders that have made public offerings to raise capital, Compartamos and SKS Microfinance. Several Indian companies involved with microfinance are expected to follow soon based on the success of SKS’s IPO last month (generating $358 million) In a study done on Compartamos’ IPO in Mexico in 2007, no significant negative consequences to the poor were found from the IPO:
The grants supporting Compartamos operations went to not-for-profit non-government organizations (NGOs) and not into private pockets.
Compartamos “overcharged” existing clients for the sake of outreach to potential future clients.
Profits made by the NGO remained at the service of poor Mexicans.
The tension between commercial and social objectives did not begin with the IPO, but with commercialization in 2000.
However I’m still skeptical. With new incentives that are introduced for the business to maximize profits, how long can they afford to keep serving the poor as a priority? The founders of Compartamos became instant millionaires and were accused of profiting off the poor. This surely has given existing and future competitors a window of opportunity to follow and try to claim their piece of the pie. When the microfinance lender suddenly becomes an attractive stock to put in your investment portfolio, regardless of your desire to help the poor, where do the profits of that that transaction go? Essentially, people will be making a profit of the poor even if Compartamos keeps their profits within the poor communities. Competition in this industry will make lending even more competitive, changing the incentives for the firms. It is yet to be determined if this level of competition will raise or lower interest rates for the poor. More lenders might lead to lower interest rates, however lenders with new objectives tied to stock performance may actually raise interest rates.
It appears that in India, banks are regulated to give 40% of their funds to priority sectors. This allows micro-finance lenders to borrow at around 10% interest, while they charge 30% interest to the poor. This is still about 10% cheaper than other forms of lending available to people in these areas. SKS has given loans of $3.2 billion to to almost 7 million people (as of March 2010). They have less than a 1% default rate. Some analysts suspect that this will go up, and may create a “subprime crisis”. While SKS started as a non-profit organization, it became a for-profit venture when founder Vikram Akula came back to run it in 2003 raised $75 million in private equity before the $358 million IPO this summer. The non-profit organization (Unitus) that helped start SKS has recently shut down, which one writer suggests is an live example of ‘seeing what the endgame for social entrepreneurship can look like.’
Today the nobel-prize winning Muhammad Yunus is criticizing SKS Micro-finance from profiting off the poor. He initially trained Vikram Akula at the Grameen Bank, but Vikram wanted to tweak the model, introducing strategies borrowed from Mcdonald’s and Starbucks to drive growth. Vikram’s vision to have the venture free from government grants and charitable donations is a shared goal of at least 20 social entrepreneurs that I have spoken with at length. Social entrepreneurship walks a fine line sometimes between capitalism and altruism, and the debate whether they can coexist is ongoing. With early indications that we might soon be seeing micro-finance lending becoming popular at home in the US, I think this is an area worth thinking about more. NPR did a great story on the Latin Economic Development Corporation giving micro-loans to a small business owner unable to get financing after the economic crisis.
While there are several forms of microfinance loans, and very successful organizations that operate from commercial capital, social networking, or generous grants, this field is about to change significantly in the next few years. My hope is that with change come progress, and the people within the industry can find ways to self regulate the forms of corruption that may emerge.
Next year you might have a chance to buy the first commercial flying car. Developed by MIT grads, the Transition by Terrafugia is planning on launching a vehicle that can fit in your garage, is street legal, yet can fold out wings in 30 seconds and take off for flight for up to 500 miles. Take-off and landings must take place at airports, and pilots must have 20 hours flying experience from earning a Sports Pilot license. 2 people can ride in one, and they boast that their is storage room ideal for golf clubs. It runs on premium unleaded fuel, and will likely start at around $200k.
There are several other projects designed to help us become more like the Jetsons. Will police to monitor this new form of traffic, and if so where do you go if they pull you over? What will insurance premiums be? Will Nascar evolve? Will there be smog tests? How much more will mechanics charge? Will the big auto companies get into this? So many questions, So many questions…
In August, I deactivated my facebook account, and temporarily cut myself off from almost 1400 people, becoming a facebook refugee. I chose ” I do not understand how to use facebook” as my reason for deactivating from the choices shown above and did not explain further. One month later, here is the explanation.
I had become fed up with the dependence on the website to keep in touch with people. I had traveled across the country the week before, reconnected with several old friends who I haven’t seen in years, and developed a theory that facebook had cheapened conversations with my normal correspondences. In addition, while watching the previews for INCEPTION, in Omaha, I was disturbed to see that there is a movie coming out about this thing very soon.
I think that social networking might be getting out of hand, and wanted to see what life was like without it, at least for a month, and thus deactivated my account. The short term absence from it gave me some ideas for new academic research that I might collaborate with my mentor at U of L. The alienation from the community is definitely impactful, especially to someone who has moved to a new place with limited contacts in the area. I realized in my first month, facebook-less in the city of Louisville, that the people I started meeting were forming an impression of me because I wasn’t eligible to be their online friend. Mostly, these impressions were not favorable. And it’s this behavior that is fascinating to me. Too often journalists warn about negative impressions employers, co-workers, friends and lovers form of us based on what we do on the book, but I have yet to see anything talking about the consequences that the offline community faces. I estimate that less than 2% of my friends are not on facebook. They’ve missed out on seeing thousands of pictures, getting early notices on earthquakes, invitations to exclusive parties, status updates about their friends dog, and other information that fascinates us in our online lives.
In the process of deactivating my account, I backed up my pictures, obtained email address from 25% of my friends who responded to my going away status message, and did some research on other facebook refugees. What i found was quite interesting….
Apparently, 1 million people a year try to delete their facebook accounts, but stop when they get to the page shown in the screenshot picture in the beginning of this post. I found that page to be quite manipulative, showing pictures of me with close friends, and telling me that we will not be able to keep in touch. Some nerve! The people shown in this picture include some of my best friends from California, former bandmates, family members, and a business partner. I tested this out a few times, and somehow they managed to keep the same formula, but replaced the people with my mother, brother, former boss, and best friend from kindergarten. The notion that I would no longer be able to keep in touch with them is outrageous, and an indication of how this website has outgrown itself. Mark Z once made a statement about how facebook can do more social good than non profits and individual people…
There was a time when if you typed the word “Delete” into Google, the automated text following would be “facebook account.” To counter this, facebook made it very difficult to deactivate, or even delete. Accounts are not actually deleted for 14 days, and deactivating an account is just temporary. Deactivated users still get emails about events and activity on facebook, and in my experience, more of it. It is nearly impossible to export your contacts (they claim there is a way to do it through Yahoo, but it did not work for me.) Backing up my pictures took an hour or 2, because I had to save each one individually because none of the applications actually worked. Deactivating my account also removed pictures I tagged of other people, leading to an angry phone call from my little brother who lost his profile picture of surfing a wave in the pacific.
I maintained contact with many friends during my time off, but I did notice several people missing from my life. I missed having people share silly youtube links, new music, pictures from a houseboating trip, or others things that I admit enjoying on the facebook. Although these things were trivial in nature, it was a gloomy stage that I will not forget from my mid twenties. Is society allowing facebook to have a monopoly over our friendships?
Here are experiences of others turning their backs on facebook….
Yesterday, I logged back in to my account, after realizing that my family was offended that I had done this. My grandmother’s brother had reached out to me through facebook from a remote village in the jungles of India the day I had deactivated, and I had snubbed him by not accepting. The moment I accepted his friendship, he posted a very kind message on my wall saying: “
“Hi Jason, I hope u r keeping, where r u ? and what are you doing ?, keep me in ur prayers as I often rememember u. God bless u always love Richie [ponkey]“
Suddenly I was bombarded with chats from people in Bombay, Hyderabad, Australia, Europe, California, New York, and even Canada. I got sucked back into the newsfeed, and realized that it was not the time for facebook and me to part. However, I have a new perspective on this thing, and suspect that someday I will have a better opportunity to move away from this culture without being alienated from the people I care about. When that day comes, I hope you will be with us.
Last month I bid farewell to the home I created in Los Angeles, packed up the Camaro, and drove cross country with my father and brother on an epic road trip. We left comfort out of the equation, yet had 4 solid days of bonding time while driving through deserts, mountains, and cornfields. I spent a weekend in Chicago and a week in Kalamazoo before arriving to Louisville, and had an opportunity to spend a weekend on a houseboat on Lake Cumberland Kentucky with my Kalamazoo buddies and watch Federer and Roddick play in Cincinnati before getting settled into my new home in the South.
Over the next four years I will be enrolled in a PhD program at U of L, specialized in Entrepreneurship. The program is designed to turn us into ‘social scientists’ that publish in top academic journals while teaching college level Entrepreneurship and Business Strategy classes. My initial research interests are in Social Entrepreneurship, however I am keeping an open mind, and will likely be influenced by mentors and the seminars throughout the program. The next time you see me, I will probably need to wear reading glasses, as my vision is fading with each empirical study I read.
Academic life has surrounded me since I was born. My father is a Professor of Finance and I developed close mentor/mentee relationships with professors at LMU. I have a new perspective on the profession, especially regarding research in Entrepreneurship. There are some interesting questions being asked by these folks. The scientific research applied to build economic theory is starting to fascinate me, which is a bit shocking if you knew me over the past 8 years. I have a long way to go out here, but I am confident that I am surrounded by the right people and resources to build this career… I just need to work hard at it.
I am still getting used to life in Louisville, but have found a strong community in Butchertown where I am considering moving to next year. Louisville is packed with interesting history, and I am just scratching the surface of it. There is an odd obsession with the movie THE BIG LEBOWSKI, which I noticed in recommendations on my Netflix account when I moved here (It was the most popular movie rented in the city) There is an annual festival to pay tribute to the movie in addition to numerous posters and books for sale throughout the town.
Also, I recently learned that the most popular song in the world GOOD MORNING TO ALL was written by Kindergarten teachers in Louisville. It later became known as the HAPPY BIRTHDAY song. So it’s not just fried chicken, baseball bats, horses…there is more…much more. The Kentucky Derby Museum is phenomenal, with a 360 degree movie theatre unlike anything I have ever seen before. IDEA FESTIVAL is coming up in a month, and will feature 5 days of talks given my global scholars and leaders to encourage innovation and creativity to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people.
There is vibrant entrepreneurial community that is closely tied into the university, and just like California, people ride bikes everywhere and love their dogs. There is a style to the city that blends a small town charm with a progressive mindset of a big city. Yet, as a custom frame store owner from New York described to me, invisible boundaries still exist here, and there are clear differences between geographical regions of the city that can be startling on first impressions. Near my apartment, boarded up buildings resemble Detroit, and kids on campus have already reported being robbed at gunpoint 1 week into the semester. Still, the art culture and local music seems to be thriving, with an art gallery open 24 hours a day. There is so more for me to see, and it will be interesting finding a balance between work and play out here.
I have an idea for a new business venture that is inspired by recent research into the field of social entrepreneurship. I hope to launch the venture within 2 years after I raise enough capital and make the necessary strategic alliances – It is a fun idea incorporating my passion for the guitar, education, and building a community to help lower the enormous high school drop out rate in Kentucky.
I am the new guy in town though, so it will take time to create synergies, I am still trying to learn the local language and suspect that the difficulty of my coursework will be slightly more challenging than the MBA program I just finished. Our cohort is comprised of 5 other folks, all highly educated with global experience in venture capital, hedge fund management, and corporate marketing. I am likely the least serious out of the group, and need to be disciplined in time management to succeed out here, the program has failed 2 students in the past 4 years.
Recently I submitted an abstract for our research in Europe this summer to a conference hosted by NYU on Social Entrepreneurship. If it is accepted, I will have an opportunity to present our findings in New York to the academic community this November. I won’t start teaching classes until my third year in the program, but will be working as a research assistant to an active researcher in the business school that may give me an opportunity to get published before starting on a dissertation. Calculus and Statistics are vital to a few of the Seminars I have this semester, so I am switching gears from what I was used to before, which is taking a toll on my social life. However, I am very optimistic about what lies ahead, the people I am going to be working with, and becoming part of the Louisville community.
It’s not quite a concrete jungle, but dreams have been made here…. just look at Tom Cruise, Muhammad Ali, Colonel Sanders, Diane Sawyer, Papa John Schnatter, Hunter S. Thompson, Phil Simms and Thomas Edison – He left Louisville after getting fired from spilling sulfuric acid on the office floor, only to have his invention of the light bulb demonstrated in Louisville 16 years later.
In 1991, the US and our coalition were paid by $17 billion by Kuwait for war efforts that freed the country of from Iraqi occupation. The monarchy was reinstated, and after 2 years and $50 billion of infrastructure expenses, the country bounced back into prosperity leading the Arab nations in educational and economic statistics.
Today, while sipping on a Tecate in the Townhouse in Venice Beach, California, I told my good friend from Kuwait the story of Paul Revere. It’s a story most American’s studied in early childhood. I recently read about how the famous midnight ride was a prime example of the importance of “connectors” in our society. (The Tipping Point)
I grew up listening to punk rock and always wanted a cause to fight for, but never really found it. Today, instead of anti-establishment melodies and lyrics, I play flamenco renditions while rapping and parody singing R&B songs. I consider the defect of my musical activism embarrassing, yet honest. But on this 4th of July weekend, anticipating the arrival of my best friends visiting LA before I migrate inland to one of the former largest slave-trading city in US history, I have allowed myself to be impassioned with rebellious stories of other nations.
The Secretary-General of the National Democratic Alliance Khalid Al-Fadhala was sent to a 3 month jail sentence in a controversial court case after criticizing the prime minister HH of Kuwait. Recently a journalist was released on bail from prison for similar charges. There is a growing resistance in the country of people who want the prime minister to step down, after several accounts of corruption, including writing checks worth millions to MP’s. The specific offense that Khalid Al-Fadhala was convicted for was related to slandering the prime minister at speech themed “go, we deserve better.” He accused the prime minister of teaching people principles of money laundering.
It’s the 5th richest country in the world, with 10% of the world’s oil reserves. The country has a 94% literacy rate, and the median gross income per capita is almost $100k. 2/3 of the country is made up of foreigners, however, and 90,000 people have been banned from leaving the country because of debt issues outlined in the constitution. The recent budget passed by the government has a $14 billion deficit, with almost half of the $56 billion expenditures exhausted on government salaries. The country needs to sell over 1 million barrels of oil a day to pay these salaries. More than 1/4 of this budget is for subsidies, ‘which guarantee low prices for fuel to power plants, petrol and other essential commodities.’ 8.5% of the budget is for defense spending, while $3.8 billion was spent on a “one off payment for government pension.” Almost 90% of the country’s revenue comes from oil, and 10% of this revenue is allocated to the’country’s sovereign wealth fund, whose assets are estimated at around $277 billion.’ That is decent chunk of change.
Despite the reserves, The liberal movement seems to be fighting for a future. With a finite supply of oil, it makes sense to The Hyderabadass for this country to diversify. They are effectively paying their government salaries with oil money that will eventually run out. Then what? How many pearls need to be dived for to pay the $25 billion salaries? Where is the incentive for people to work in private industries if government salaries are so inflated. $300 billion will run out very fast in a country that spends $56 billion a year, and any cuts made will certainly effect the lives of the majority of people depending on it.
All people, like the colonists that Paul Revere rounded up for the American Revolution, respond to incentives. Even the most complacent person may resist control from authorities when certain liberties are taken away. In general, I believe that people tend to have a strong interest for the freedom and rights of their children, regardless of their interests into their own individual futures. In Kuwait, government salaries have tripled in recent years, yet today 50,000 people protested this violation of a person’s freedom of speech. There are less than 1 million actual citizens in Kuwait, with less than 40% eligible to vote. It seems like the injustice of a particular individual being imprisoned for a speech is providing incentives to a nation for a much needed reform. Today there are 1.6 billion people in the world living without electricity. Perhaps its time for this oil rich nation to see a light at the end of their tunnel and build a sustainable society that continue to prosper in an everchanging global economy. Just this week, Tesla, an electic car company went public with a very successful IPO exceeding a $2 billion stock market value.
In conclusion, I am very interested in seeing what happens from here. Will the prime minister continue his stance at punishing his critics? Will the courts support it? Will the people unify and form an opposition? What’s the prince up to during all this? How long will Khalid Al-Fadhala stay in jail? Will social media be ammunition for an opposition? How will the western world react? I have heard 30 times today about the Nigerian soccer team being banned for 2 years by their president, but have yet to hear this story broadcast, even on the BBC. At one time, there was a global concern for democracy in this country, a concern that profited the coalition handsomely. Will this concern continue even in the absence of Sadam? According to Kuwaiti law, it is forbidden to speak out against the monarchy, but is it wrong for the people to protest corruption of their democratic leader? Finally….Who’s taking the camel out for a midnight ride?
I’m watching 2 year old kids in Indonesia blowing circle shaped smoke from cigarettes on Italian television while airing out my clothes in the window to get rid of the tobacco smells from the nightclub last night. For the first time in Milano, I am not regretting not using the 7 series “How to speak Italian” that was uploaded to my iTunes folder. I’m certainly not homesick, but I do miss the no smoking indoors policies of Los Angeles.
It’s frustrating to watch video clips of babies smoking 40 cigarettes. I don’t understand the whole story because of language barriers. Initially I thought babies smoking cigarettes was just a YouTube phenomenon, but now realize it’s a global crisis, with kids starting to smoke at the age of 5. How does this happen in the modern world? The reporter shows maps and stats from around the countries, including India, and I am a little relieved that I can’t understand exactly what is being said.
In my study of social entrepreneurship here in Europe, I have met people who have dedicated their lives to solving problems in their communities. How can the world allow this problem to keep growing? I thought we started addressing tobacco issues a few decades ago, but I am starting to think we just exported the social problems elsewhere. Has there really been progress? I once heard from a distinguished CEO that it is actually better to have your employees smoke, because you end up paying less in healthcare in the long run because they don’t live as long as non smokers.
It seems like companies are exploiting the third world on new levels now, but I am clueless how this began. In this situation, I think that they are being somewhat counterproductive, because creating acceptable environments for toddlers to start chain smoking removes them from future labor markets, which is like short selling their future assets.
Let’s give the tobacco companies the benefit of the doubt… I think that the local cultures and families ultimately carry the responsibility and accountability for their children to not smoke. This is a critical time for social entrepreneurs to design programs that can educate and inform these families to change. The families in the video clips I watched seem to think it is cute that their babies can blow smoke into shapes. Lets figure out a way to get these kids building blocks and toy bubbles instead of cancer sticks, yeah? This is a prime example of a global issue in need of a social entrepreneur to step in.
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