Next June 22nd the fifth Menorca TechTalk starts. An event that my wife Nina and I organize every year in which we invite friends and entrepreneurs from around the world to our farm in Menorca. In previous editions we had founders of companies from Silicon Valley, New York, Spain, Germany, etc.
This year we will also have the privilege to listen to some of the most renowned tech entrepreneurs. As in previous editions, we invite anyone willing to join us to the TechTalk itself. A series of short improvised debates on technology and innovation that will take place on Sunday 24th from 4pm to 8pm. There is a 80 seat limit, so if you want to join us email us at menorcatechtalk@gmail.com
This post could be a book and it is about a subject that I still need to address in Spanish. The substance of this post is easier to explain in English because the English/American culture is a culture in which the role of business in society is much better understood than in Spain. Indeed, the biggest obstacle I see with the Spanish crisis is that most Spaniards, voters and government included, don’t really understand how wealth is created. They don’t understand how capitalism works and, therefore, how it sometimes does not work. They don’t understand the concept that a rising tide lifts all boats (economic expansion) and a falling tide…lowers all boats (recession). So as Spain goes into record high unemployment of 25% and youth unemployment of 50% the emphasis is not in improving the workings of the Spanish economy but in blaming each other.
In Spain it is more common to complain about what others are doing poorly than focusing on the “what can I do to help” that is needed for all Spaniards to collaborate to restart the economy. Many Spaniards unfortunately suffer from a serious case of “blinding envy” of others and thus have a false understanding of the economy. Envy makes them see the economy as a pie of have and have nots. Instead of realizing that a shrinking GDP makes everyone worse off, they think that if they are doing worse is because somebody else “stole” what they used to have, that if they are doing worse then somebody else is doing better. They don’t get the concept that everyone is worse off! As a result, Spaniards are constantly looking for the few people who are doing better and crucifying them. But these are the entrepreneurs who could save Spain. Instead they are convinced that either foreigners or rich Spaniards ended up with what they used to have. Spaniards in general, have a lack understanding of entrepreneurship, of innovation, of job creation, of wealth creation of how hard it is nowadays to compete in a globalized economy. Interestingly they get it in football and Spain has some of the best football teams in the world, but they don’t in normal life. Their best entrepreneurs, people like the founders of Zara or Mango, some of Spain’s most successful multinationals, live in hiding for fear of what the average Spaniard may think of them. Amancio Ortega (Inditex) one of the wealthiest men in the world and his famous picture in which he looks as a convict, is an “only in Spain” story. Entrepreneurs are seen as people who get what is not due to them, not as wealth creators, but as thieves. For me as the founder of Viatel (partly in Spain), Jazztel, Ya.com and now Fon all in Spain, it is painful to read my own Twitter line and see how confused the average Spaniard is about the subject of entrepreneurship and job creation. I am tired of getting called “rico de mierda” people focus on what I have and not on what I do for the economy. Nor what all other entrepreneurs do. Having a daily twitter conversation with around 30K Spaniards has given me a great insight as to what people think on subjects such as compensation, social charges, labor flexibility and other crucial aspects of wealth creation.
And in this mix, the government does not help: the Socialists want to spend their way out of the crisis, the Conservatives want to cut their way out of the crisis. Nobody seems to understand that it is the type of spending that has to change, not the level. That less spending and more investment is needed. That Spain needs to invest on what works in Spain and less in what is dying in Spain. But the new economic plan seems tailored to old industry. The conservatives made it much easier to fire, but equally hard to hire.
As things stand Spain is in a much deeper crisis than any of the larger economies of Europe and as much as it is an economic crisis, it is a crisis of understanding. Without agreeing on the root of the problem: a lack of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, business imagination combined with a labor force that is to a great extent trained for an obsolete industry, construction, Spain will not turn around. But I don’t see anyone marching on the streets promoting new business creation. What I see is a lot of people trying to cling to a past in which Spain borrowed and build white elephants. A past that is gone forever.
I end my post with a link to the plan that I presented to Cristobal Montoro. I still consider it a great plan for 2013 but it was not taken seriously by the conservative government.
And here is another article in which I explain in more detail what is wrong with Spain that is different than what is wrong with the rest of Europe.
10 years ago all of us on the Internet were licking our wounds. We had been taken for a crazy ride in which we went from a point in whatever we touch was champagne to whatever we did was shit.
As an entrepreneur that lived through 1998 to 2002 I emerged reasonably well, I sold my shares in Viatel when it was worth $1.2bn, I sold Ya.com for $700 million but did not sell Jazztel when it was worth $5bn because I was its CEO and saw it go down to $700M (now it`s worth $1.4bn). Then I lost $50M in Einsteinet one of the best cloud computing start ups in Europe that was killed by the post bubble era in which financing completely dried out. So as you read this post you will see no bitterness.
But looking back at 2001/2002 I see this time, not as a period in which Internet companies destroyed the financial markets, but as a time in which the financial markets almost destroyed the Internet. It was financiers/analysts who drove those insane valuations up and then down. What should have been a smooth ride on the internet, an era of taking more and more global citizens in its midst, became a crazy ride in which the internet itself gained enormous prestige and was later, for a while, seen as a useless gimmick. Only around 2007 people again realized that the Internet was simply transforming the world economy and was here to stay.
And then came 2008, when the financial industry practically destroyed the world economy. That was when the same financial firms did to the world what they had done to the Internet, inflate it and let it fall like dead weight.
Having been a happy customer of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others I don’t want people to read this post as a rant against financial firms. We need financial firms. But what we don’t need is financial firms to do what they did first to the Internet and then to the overall economy, namely to hype them out of value and sink them hard for no reason. In simple terms what I am advocating has been done before and that is to separate trading from advising. The Chinese Walls in these firms never worked and never will.
Do read this post that I have in Google+. It’s about humanity and how peaceful it is now compared to other times in our history. Concretely it’s about the declining rate of casualties of war and armed conflict over time since WWII. The rate of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants has been falling drastically. Then rejoice. Then read the comments and see the widespread skepticism about this good news. People just can’t believe that we are now living in remarkably peaceful times compared to what we have gone through. That the probability of a random human being of dying in war is lower than ever.
Still I believe in this news. I am happy that my children do not go through what my grandparents went through living in the time of WWII. I guess that one of the characteristics that distinguishes entrepreneurs who do well, myself included, and the general population is that we are more prone to believe in good news. We love good news. We celebrate good news. Most people seem programmed to like and believe in bad news. I guess a headline that read “Most of humanity woke up today, had a normal day and went to sleep” would not get a lot of attention. But it makes me happy.
The two biggest challenges that Google is facing are that ads are tough to show on smartphones (because they are narrow) and more and more searches come from smartphones, and that Facebook is competing harder and harder in an ad based world that Google cannot enter.
The biggest opportunity I see for Google is to turn Motorola around and have an integrated/open ecosystem that catches up with the closed Apple ecosystem. I am not argue that Google makes Android a closed system like iOS and only sells its smartphones through what is now Motorola. What I am saying instead is that Google could be in the position that HTC or Samsung are today. It could make the best Androids and use a hardware OS combination to make money a la Apple.
Android is bigger than iOS and yet Apple is worth over twice as much as Google in market cap. iOS is 90% of the value of Apple. Android is considered to be less than 10% of the value of Google. This is where Google’s biggest upside resides in my view. In an successful implementation of the Motorola acquisition.
In any case I think that there are 3 companies that are a must have in anyone’s portfolio now and they are Google, Apple and Amazon, in proportions to their market caps. Facebook would also be a must have but not at 100 times earnings. I should also clarify that I have Google, Amazon and Apple in my portfolio and have for a while.
On Monday we celebrated Nina’s birthday in the desert of Arizona. I love deserts, I proposed to Nina in another desert, the desert of Southern Morocco. I have been trying to understand the appeal of deserts to me and I think I have come up with something meaningful.
As opposed to a jungle, in the desert, you get the feeling that each plant, each cactus was a huge accomplishment. Each plant in the desert is…a start up!
Growing up without water, that’s what building a company feels like to me. Especially my start ups, in Spain, a desert in entrepreneurship. And that’s why I appreciate the gigantic cacti in the pictures. They grew up against all odds. Like Jazztel, Ya.com and now Fon.
I have 5 children. They go from 21 to a 6 month baby. My 21 year old daughter, has come up with an idea for a start up. She is implementing it. This was a surprise for me because until recently she had not shown interest in the start up world. She studies history at Columbia College in NYC.
I will not go into detail on what her Internet start up as that is for her to share and she will at the right moment. What I can say is that I heard what the plan is and it looks very feasible to me. And this is only partly because I think all my children are stars. It is actually a great, original idea and she could execute it very well. But while not sharing with you what her business is I will share with you what I said to her.
My daughter, I said, what you have is the “start up bug”. It is a bug so powerful that once infected with it you carry it for life. The dream of turning an idea into a company that millions use and enjoy never goes away. I don’t know if this start up will be successful but what I do know is that sooner or later you will be. Go for it!
Fon is off to a good start in 2012. Just after announcing 5 million hotspots, I am now happy to share that we have announced our first partnership this year. It is with Netia, one of Poland’s largest telcos. Together, we will create Poland’s largest WiFi community. Netia is Poland’s most innovative telco, and we couldn’t have chosen a better partner to help us spread the Fon vision in the country.
The goal is to have over 100,000 hotspots all around Poland available by spring. As always, the new hotspots together with all of Fon’s 5 million hotspots will be open to the Fon network and of course to Netia customers. It’s always good to see the Fon network open up to so many people at the same time. Poland is a big country, with almost 25 million internet users, and there is lots of potential there.
More and more, 2012 is looking like a great year for Fon. For sure, this is the first of many more partnerships to come this year.
This is a post that started in Google+ and now moves to my blog on how I use Social Media, I hope you find it useful
Facebook
Facebook is only about friends for me, I used to have 4000 “friends” now I have around 600. Sorry if I erased you. But now I know almost all of them, if not in person at least virtually pretty well. Facebook is about more private things and I use “friends only” a lot. I know Facebook is dying to make money out of me showing whatever I post to anyone to get more activity and impressions. And the same is true for a lot of Facebook users. So I battle Facebook on that and many times I lose and I am annoyed when a friend of a friend who I don’t know appears, even though they are mostly nice I should say. In terms of politeness Facebook wins the prize. The only non private part of Facebook that I use is groups, and those work well to liaise along themes or narrow lines. Like the group I made of parents of Montessori school children.
Google+
I use Google+ for drafts, I have an idea and I put a first draft on Google +, I then get criticisms, comments, and I improve or modify my original idea into something deeper, I do more research on my own and then I go to my blog, generally my English blog. This commentary that I am writing now is a good example. This will grow I am sure, and improve. By the way I don’t mind improving or changing my articles based on criticism, and I am not religious about giving credit to others for improving my texts, or for destroying them. I take what I like when it’s criticism. I do draw the line though at the point of original ideas. There I am respectful and don’t take them as my own. But I do feel that criticism to my ideas is also mine. And I don’t believe that every time you change a post you have to let people know exactly what comma you took out. I warn people that my texts are constantly being improved.
Twitter
Twitter I use a lot more, but for reading as much as producing content. I use Google + for reading but less so. Twitter is like the newswire for me, like those news summaries that appear down below on CNN (or used to because I haven’t watch TV in so long). Tumblr is more like a magazine. And so is Google+. Tumblr is more visual, Google + is more text. Twitter is great for breaking news. Also for short interactions and some fun moments. Twitter is trying to kill DM and that is bad, they should take out the 140 character limitation in DM so you can have deeper one to one discussions. But like Facebook Twitter has an issue with private conversations and privacy and that is that it limits their growth. Twitter should also not count the characters of links to give you a few more characters for the occasional moments you need them. Or raise the count a little, just a little so it can be used for such things as customer care, as we do at Fon.
Tumblr
Tumblr I also use in a way similar to Google + but for shorter articles, I am also aware that what comes out in my Tumblr goes on Twitter as I have them linked. Tumblr is great to discover longer form and visual content. Their discovery platform is still very poor (I am an investor) but I know it will get better. Tumblr also lacks comments but that can be both a good and a bad thing. In the one hand you stay away from trolls and keep it friendly. On the other hand, the debate always ends up in Twitter and you can miss some interesting comments. And Tumblr gets some original content creators who are mostly there or just there. In Tumblr I follow photography, science, medicine. I used to use Tumblr as a form of self expression, I still do but now I love to discover what others have to say. There is a certain level of aesthetics and professionalism in Tumblr that is missing elsewhere.
Pinterest
Pinterest I don’t get. I see it as closer to Tumblr but kind of messy. I don’t see a lot of original content producers there. It is more kind of “look at what I found Dad”. I am a father of 5 btw and I am used to this show and tell moments. What I don’t like about Pinterest is that it is not about creating your own content. I think it might have an utility as an archive for your personal findings on the Internet, which can be kept private. The Android apps for Pinterest don’t let you post, just look.
Path
Path I just started using it. It is very, very visual and I use it taking advantage of the camera programs in my iPhone and my Samsung Galaxy. I use it for great shots taken with phones. Shots that are the essence of the moment I am in, like a great tweet, but visual. I know you can do much more at Path, but I don’t. The people who answer me in Path I tend to know. They are friends. Path is actually very, very well designed.
Flickr and Picasa
Flickr I love but I have the feeling that it’s dying. Pity because there is tons of quality photography there and I am an amateur photographer. I use Flickr for the photography I do with the Leica M9 or theCanon 5D Mark II. Lately, I’ve been trying 500px and I think it’s the modern version of what Flickr should be. Their iPad app is great.Google+ photos formerly known as Picasa I use. I like the fact that many pictures go there from my Android. They also go to iPhoto from my iPhone the same way. Both systems are good for not losing pictures even though you have to erase many. I wish they would ask you if you want to update them.
Photo Apps
I love Snapseed on the iPhone and iPad. It is simple, very well designed and you can take great pictures to post in social networks. Instagram I use but sometimes with pictures I took with Snapseed cause otherwise all Instagrams look alike. They do have a great community at Instagram also made of mostly nice people.
Social Video
YouTube is another beast. In the video world I prefer Vimeo. But Youtube has huge audiences that have given millions of views to my videos so I go on placing them there in spite of the horrendous, idiotic level of commentary. I have rarely seen a smart person commenting on a video on Youtube. Dante’s inferno said “lasciate ogni speranza voi che entrate” and that is today very applicable to the level of Youtube commentary. I many times just don’t let people comment on my videos in order to avoid racism and plain idiocy. Now Vimeo is another world. Vimeo is like Tumblr in video. There is amazing quality beautiful videos there.
Foursquare and Google Maps
Foursquare is so focused on the stupid game of being a mayor of your bathroom that you sometimes forget that it’s also like a Spotify for geographical locations. It is interesting to find good curated lists of say restaurants in South Beach Miami. The lists have been enhanced in their latest updates. I use Google Maps a lot. In any case since I invested in Dopplr and Plazes I have always believed in the social value of city exploration and I know we will accomplish more in this area. Google and Foursquare are half way there with different solutions for similar needs.
