The China Adventures...Finally!

I know, I know, I promised to post these 2 months ago but I've got a good excuse.

TickerHound's been going surprisingly well this summer and it's been monopolizing the vast majority of my time. So now my blog AND my girlfriend hate me and my entrepreneurial spirit :(

j/k

In any case, here are my pics from June's trip to China...we had an AMAZING time!

Beijing is much cleaner than it was 3 years ago, but it also lost some of its "edge". There were no more gypsy cab drivers at the airport trying to drag me into their overpriced cabs, no more fake DVD's being sold on the streets of Beijing and my white T-shirts didn't turn brown from the rain anymore.

I guess some would call this progress, but for me, I missed my Beijing funk.

Don't get me wrong, there were still some funky sights to be seen, but China definitely got its act together for the Olympics.

Shanghai was great too, but then again, it always has been. I think on my next trip to China I'm staying out of the cities and heading into the countryside. It's high time I see what the vast majority of the country lives like, not just the wealthier (comparatively speaking) city folk.

So without further ado, heeeeeeere's China!

This was my friend Winston's wedding. His wife's mother was one of the higher ups at China's CCTV. Therefore, there were more people manning cranes, cameras and fog machines than there were guests!

Great wedding though! Congrats again Winston!

Who's ready to drink??


My boy Mao lives here.


I don't know why but I thought these outdoor, branded food/drink kiosks were so cool.

A spot of tea?

And now for the food!


I'll post more pics soon enough...this just made me reeeeeally hungry!

Hagel's So Far Ahead of the Curve...

"Stories offer potential to communicate some elements of tacit knowledge. They help to provide enough of a sense of context to reconstruct and extend parts of the tacit. Stories, properly told to communicate the richness of context, do not reduce to snippets."

From a recent John Hagel article that talks about where the internet might be headed.

For a long time I've been thinking about the concept of narratives and how they can be somehow structured and distributed to not only provide a new means of self expression but also to transfer knowledge. It's clear that it's on the mind's of other folks in this space and I can't wait to see some of the start-ups that begin to explore it.

We have a ton of narrative out here in the blogosphere -- who will dig through it to extract and present it all in a meaningful way?

A Quote I'm Pondering...

From Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures:

All of this means that you will see subtle changes in the way we invest our new fund. We will be even more selective about the early stage Web services we back, looking for compelling differentiation, a discrete market focus, and clear evidence of sustainable user growth. You will also see us invest selectively in later stage opportunities that we believe are poised to grow as more users become more dependent on the Web to manage their daily lives.

I concur...

It's About Education, NOT Information

For investors, a proper education and investing framework should always trump access to "immediate information".

I know that automated information aggregation, synthesis and analysis is all the rage on Wall Street these days. Banks, traders and hedge funds are all jockeying to get the news first, fastest and interpreted in the most efficient manner.

But with the announcement that financial "intelligence" firm, Monitor110 will be shut down, it gives me reassurance that TickerHound's on education as opposed to information was the right path.

Case in Point:

This is currently the top headline on Yahoo! Finance (the largest financial portal on the web in terms of traffic):

Stocks trade higher on upbeat earnings results - Stocks are opening higher after stronger-than-expected quarterly results from names like Coca-Cola Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and United Technologies Corp. gave investors some reassurance about the health of the economy.

Ok, now if I were a regular Joe, I'd look at that headline and think, "Oh wow, looks like JP Morgan is pulling through and doing well despite all the turmoil in the financial markets."

But that wasn't the case at all.

In fact, the company's year-over-year profits were off by 53%!

And the comments from the company's CEO, Jamie Dimon, weren't particularly optimistic either:

"the economic environment to continue to be weak -- and to likely get weaker -- and for the capital markets to remain under stress." He added that "since substantial risks still remain on our balance sheet, these factors will likely affect our business for the remainder of the year or longer."

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound very encouraging to me.

But the stock still rallied - all because analysts expected JP to do even worse than they did!

Trying to trade stocks based on the assumption that "maybe this company won't do as bad as everyone thinks", is a sucker's game. The media creates headlines like this to get people to read their articles and watch their TV shows...fuck that!

Investors need to tune out and rely on their own experience and their own education to make money in this market.

Mr. Dimon pretty much said, "things aint gonna get better for a while now, so don't expect much from us." The CEO of a company says that and what I really hear is, "Hey, don't buy our stock right now, you can buy it later this year for much cheaper."

Education, not information my friend...play this bear market, don't let it play you!

And I'm Back!

For those who don't know, I haven't been "State side" for the last few weeks.

I've been in China hanging out with Yao Ming and his crew preparing for the Olympics.

Ok, maybe it wasn't Yao Ming, but I was definitely hanging out hard in the Middle Kingdom with some old friends. I have plenty of pictures on the way, so sit tight.

All in all it was a great trip. I managed to eat food from over 10 different provinces, drink alcohol from over 15 countries and gain 10 lbs. in the process!

I even managed to get some work done. You can now see TickerHound prominently featured on OptionsZone.com's Question of the Day.

This is our 2nd widget partnership with many more on the way throughout the summer.

I hope everyone's having a great 4th of July weekend and I'll be back Monday with my first set of pics!

Paul Graham Missed the Mark on This One

Let me start by saying that Paul Graham is the man...the guy is doing a lot for the start-up community in this country and I truly enjoy reading his essays.

Furthermore, I give all the respect in the world to anyone willing to candidly discuss their thoughts, ideas, etc. in public view. They open themselves up for criticism, ridicule, etc. - so I don't want this blog post to be taken in the wrong way...

I'm NOT "Graham bashing" here, but something has to be said about his most recent post on "Cities".

In his latest essay Graham essentially talks about the "messaging of cities" -- in his opinion, the same way a brand or company projects a message to the public, so do cities. It's his contention that these cities project the following messages:

• Silicon Valley: Power is important
• Boston/Cambridge: Knowledge/ideas are important
• New York: Money is important

This is probably one of the first times I've ever read anything from Graham and thought to myself, "Holy fuck, how did this guy reach such generalized conclusions that show such a clear lack of depth in thought!?"

I mean, seriously...money does NOT matter in Silicon Valley!? Are you freaking kidding me? I guess Sand Hill Road is known for its charities and its many not-for-profit initiatives. And entrepreneurs only go there to take in the scenery.

And I love this one:

This suggests an answer to a question people in New York have wondered about since the Bubble: whether New York could grow into a startup hub to rival Silicon Valley. One reason that's unlikely is that someone starting a startup in New York would feel like a second class citizen. [3] There's already something else people in New York admire more.

The "something else" Graham refers to here is, of course, money. Hmm...I wonder why New York has been a hot bed for artists, musicians, actors, actresses, writers and various other occupations that are done more out of passion than for compensation for decades now?

While I do agree that it's probably easier to find more people who are interested in participating in (financing, partnering, working for) start-ups on the West Coast, I certainly don't think the "New York only cares about money" message is valid and it's borderline ignorant. Tech start-ups are far from the only industries out there that require boot strapping, ingenuity and creativity.

Arguably, one of the most influential (on ANY level) movements over the last 20 years was born and bred in the streets of New York: Hip-Hop music!

In fact, another guy I really admire, Gary Vaynerchuk, has even compared the web industry to Hip-Hop, circa 1985. And to tell you the truth, I couldn't agree more!

Granted, certain cities maintain a certain culture, but trying to pick a specific message for a city as large, deep and diverse as New York is like trying to say Moby Dick was just about a guy who went fishing.

Paul, not sure where or for how long you lived in New York but next time you come through, we need to hang out so I can show you around a bit. Might teach you a thing or two about a thing or two ;)

Offline - Where the Real Cheesecake Is

So we have FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Google and all sorts of other cool, fun and sometimes useful tools.

FriendFeed lets me know whenever one of my friends uploaded a new Flickr photo, Twitter keeps me up to date on whenever a handful of people I know are taking a dump, Facebook makes me a better friend (haven't forgotten to e-mail someone for their birthday in 2 years) and the list goes on. These tools are pretty damn amazing - I love them all. But while they've made a meaningful impact on my online life -- which is taking up the vast majority of my day lately, but that's another sad story -- they haven't done nearly as much for my off-line life.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while these applications have changed the way I use the web, they have NOT changed the way I live my life. Facebook was coming close, in fact, while I was in College and the network was still closed, it was an integral part of my life...invaluable even.

And THAT is what I'm really looking for. I'm looking for a service that becomes indispensable to my REAL social life. Something that changes the way I live my off-line life!

Because that's what this is really all about - search engines, social networks, social news, etc....these aren't tools that are supposed to keep us locked into our chairs all day and our eyes fixed on a monitor. They're supposed to help us derive meaningful value for the other parts of our life: work, school, social, etc.

At the moment the only site that's truly integrating with my real life in a meaningful way is Meetup.com - mad props to Scott - I've met more people, learned more things and have gotten more value out of signing up for that site, than ALL of the other sites combined. And the kicker is, I don't even go on the site that often!

I see a link for a Meetup somewhere else, usually in a tweet or an email, and then I hit up Meetup for 2 seconds to RSVP for the event, and that's it! Brilliant!

So that's what I'm looking for - more "Meetup-like" sites. That's what I'm challenging the start-up community to put together.

Sites that change REAL LIVES and in doing so, will change the world.