Category Archives: Management

Management, Trading

Bill Gross’s Farewell Letter to Pimco

Bill Gross, founder of Pimco, and its chief investment officer for the past 40 or so years, resigned last week. Rumor has it that he was but two steps ahead of a mutinous gang, swords out, planning to make him walk the plank. Gross was too quick and before the mutineers could force him, he jumped ship — and landed at Janus Capital. There, we surmise, he was given a slug of equity and a free hand to run a smaller, more nimble fund.

On his way out of Pimco, Gross penned a heartfelt farewell letter to his former colleagues. But so great was his haste that he never hit “send.”

Fortunately for you, dear reader, we managed to get our hands on a copy of that e-mail, which we reproduce below and without further comment:

I can add colours to the chameleon,

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,

And set the murderous Machiavel to school.

— Henry VI, Part III

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Co-workers,

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-03/bill-gross-s-investor-outlook-on-palace-coups

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  • The trading world's unpredictable nature requires ....
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Economy, Management

List of the thinkers, doers and dreamers who really matter in an age of gridlock and dysfunction

 

 

THE POLITICO 50

screenshot.97

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Management, Success

AMAZON: NOT AN E-COMMERCE COMPANY

Let’s start with the premise that Twitch, the video-game watching network, is the next ESPN – you know, the jewel in Disney’s crown that, by itself, is worth $50.8 billion. Like ESPN, Twitch is about live competition, and, like ESPN, Twitch does exceptionally well in the highly desirable young male demographic.1 Obviously this is the best possible outcome, far-fetched though it may sound. It is certainly an outcome that would make Amazon’s purchase of Twitch for $970 million an amazing deal. It would not, however, have anything to do with e-commerce.

http://stratechery.com/2014/amazon-e-commerce-company/

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Management

Stenbeck transforms Swedish family firm into major online investor

Swedish-American heiress Cristina Stenbeck’s bet on the red-hot e-commerce business has caught the eye of investors, although doubters question the future of her Kinnevik group in a sector where new players emerge almost every day.

Shares in Kinnevik, which Stenbeck inherited at 24 on the sudden death of her father Jan, have more than doubled in half a dozen years and outstripped some of Sweden’s other renowned family investment firms under her leadership.

Yet some critics regard Kinnevik’s investment shift into online retailing where entry barriers are low as foolhardy. They question the team Stenbeck has built, saying that while it is strong on banking and financial experience, it lacks the operational ability to build long-lasting web businesses.

In its nearly 80-year history, Kinnevik has made a habit of leaping from one growth sector to the next.

http://www.reuters.com/

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    44
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Management

7 reasons for Nadella’s appointment as Microsoft CEO

Five months ago, the student town of Manipal went abuzz when they realized that one of their own was the leading contender in the race for the top job at Microsoft Corp. For the next five months, it looked like their prayers would easily lead to fruition. But late last week, another Indian name came into the fray. While it was a win-win situation for Indians, Redmond had to face a tussle between the two tech-stalwarts who would be resurrecting its lost glory. But in the end Satya Nadella was the man who came out on top. … 

Read all 7 points here : http://yourstory.com/2014/02/satya-nadella-ceo/

 

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Management, Success

This Startup Launched in 30 Cities in 6 Months — Here’s How They Did It

When Aaron and Adora Cheung launched house cleaning service Homejoy two years ago, they took their research seriously — they worked as traditional house cleaners for a month, and they discovered two things right away: 1) Cleaning people’s homes is really really hard; and 2) the current system was so broken and inefficient that there was opportunity to change everything.

“We worked on a team of about a dozen cleaners,” says now CEO Adora Cheung. “We had plenty of clients, but for scheduling we literally worked off an Excel spreadsheet that couldn’t possibly factor in transportation time, breaks, or clients’ schedules. As an engineer, I just thought, ‘Wow, software could solve all of this in less than a second for thousands of cleaners.’”

Read more: http://firstround.com/article/This-Startup-Launched-in-30-Cities-in-6-Months-Heres-How-They-Did-It

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China, Management

Jack Ma is the founder, chairman and CEO of the Alibaba Group.

Jack Ma is the main founder of Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce business whose IPO may be one of the world’s largest this year if it finally happens. After failing to win Hong Kong regulatory support for a listing under its current shareholder structure last year, the company held off on an expected IPO that could value it at as much as $150 billion. Besides Ma and vice chairman Joseph Tsai both members of this year’s Forbes Billionaires list–key investors include Yahoo and Japan’s Softbank. Elfish Ma, an Internet icon for years, is a former English teacher and active philanthropist.[*]

In May 2009, Ma was honored by Time magazine with inclusion into the Time 100 list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In reporting Mr. Ma’s accomplishments, Adi Ignatius, former Time senior editor and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, said, “Meeting Jack Ma, you might be forgiven for thinking he’s still an English teacher. The Chinese Internet entrepreneur is soft-spoken and elflike — and he speaks really good English. But as founder and CEO of Alibaba.com, Ma, 44, runs one of the world’s biggest B2B online marketplaces, an eBay for companies doing international trade.  Alibaba and Ma’s consumer-auction website, Taobao.com, did so well that in 2006, eBay shut down its own site in China.” He was also chosen as one of “China’s Most Powerful People” by BusinessWeek, and one of the “Top 10 Most Respected Entrepreneurs in China” by Forbes China in 2009. Ma received the “2009 CCTV Economic Person of the Year: Business Leaders of the Decade Award”.

In 2010, Ma was selected by Forbes Asia as one of “Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy” for his contribution to disaster relief and poverty.

It is clear that Jack has clearly found an algorithm of success that works. In addition he appears to seriously consider making it possible for his whole team to win as well.

Jack Ma isn’t a self obsessed silicon valley kid that is all about the money and personal fame. He seems to be looking beyond the cash and prizes and establishing real sustaining practices to build businesses, creating opportunities for employees to be happy at their jobs and developing products that are useful. [*]

Here are several quotes and ideas of Jack Ma:

v  Customers should be number 1, Employees number 2, and then only your Shareholders come at number 3.

v  Your attitude determines your altitude.

v  Don’t make complaining and whining a habit

v  A real businessman or entrepreneur has no enemies. Once he understands this, the sky’s the limit.

v  Always let your employees come to work with a smile.

v  Rather than having small smart tricks to get by, focus on holding on and persevering.

v  You should find someone who has complementary skills to start a company with. You shouldn’t necessarily look for someone successful. Find the right people, not the best people

v  A leader should have higher endurance and ability to accept and embrace failure

v  Only fools use their mouth to speak. A smart man uses his brain, and a wise man uses his heart.[*]

 

Jack Ma’s advice to entrepreneurs

  1. The opportunities that everyone cannot see are the real opportunities.
  2. Always let your employees come to work with a smile.
  3. Customers should be number 1, Employees number 2, and then only your Shareholders come at number 3.
  4. Adopt and change before any major trends or changes.
  5. Forget the money; Forget about earning money.
  6. Rather than having small smart tricks to get by, focus on holding on and persevering.
  7. Your attitude determines your altitude. )[*]

Jack Ma on entrepreneurship

  1. A great opportunity is often hard to be explained clearly; things that can be explained clearly are often not the best opportunities.
  2. You should find someone who has complementary skills to start a company with. You shouldn’t necessarily look for someone successful. Find the right people, not the best people.
  3. The most unreliable thing in this world is human relationships.
  4. “Free” is the most expensive word.
  5. Today is cruel, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be beautiful.[*]

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Management, NoTrading

Big companies now have a hand in the collaborative economy

Mobile, social, and geolocation technologies have propelled collaborative commerce well beyond the realm of bartering and tag sales to impact almost every consumer sector of the economy. Big brands are now starting to invest and partner to establish a foothold in the collaborative economy.

The term “collaborative economy” refers to the growing practice of consumers serving each other directly rather than being served by companies, and paying for the use of goods rather than owning them. Mobile, social, and geolocation technologies have propelled collaborative commerce well beyond the realm of bartering and tag sales to impact almost every consumer sector of the economy, from transportation to lodging to finance. Big brands are now starting to invest and partner to establish a foothold in the collaborative economy.

http://dupress.com/

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Management

Successful Startups Lessons From The Programming World

Entrepreneurs will know that most startups are not successful most of the time. Our hiring isn’t quite right, our funds are often running out, we don’t know if we have achieved a good product-market fit, or if the pricing we decided is optimal! On an average day, an entrepreneur has his/her hands full with more than one such challenge. In a sense a startup’s job is to deal with failure… and systematically eliminate it so we can scale up a roughly error-free business model.

http://www.nextbigwhat.com/

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longread, Management

The Untold Story Of Larry Page

One day in July 2001, Larry Page decided to fire Google’s project managers. All of them.

It was just five years since Page, then a 22-year-old graduate student at Stanford, was struck in the middle of the night with a vision. In it, he somehow managed to download the entire Web and by examining the links between the pages he saw the world’s information in an entirely new way.

What Page wrote down that night became the basis for an algorithm. He called it PageRank and used it to power a new Web search engine called BackRub. The name didn’t stick.

By July 2001, BackRub had been renamed Google and was doing really well. It had millions of users, an impressive list of investors, and 400 employees, including about a half-dozen project managers.

 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/

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