The future of education
Let us see if this works!
You click on the link and watch the video. Must be able to embed the video!
A very clever young lad has just managed to update Wordpess after five years so this is the first new post thanks to someone who is not just top of the class but top of the school!
Plans for the trip down under are going well with departure on 6 January and arrival on the Wednesday. Incubators in Perth and Sydney are keen for a talk on Equity Fingerprint – using equity to build technology companies – and awaiting a decision from Auckland. Still waiting for an introduction to an incubator in Adelaide.
Meeting entrepreneurs is going to make for a great holiday!
How does he do it? I know that I have been away for 30 days as Fred Wilson of www.avc.com has written a post, and they are all great posts, every day I have been sheltering from the rain in The Lakes, Scotland and Cornwall. So this a quick visit to the 1% club who create all the content on the blogs and much more. (1% create, 9% curate and 90% consume – the latter is so easy on the iPad).
The car is showing it’s age and so off we went to Steward and Wisbey , used Mercedes experts North of Ely. First thing on Monday mornings is not a good time to visit a small business as they gear up for the busy week. Organised by Maxine, Melvin with Arron and Ian, man the tools and keep our metal on the road. It is how most people work but such a difference from those businesses which set up a little bit of software in the Cloud and “work” 7/24 with the lucky ones collecting cash every second and more. It is a great contrast but is is the many, many hard working small companies who keep us all going and to whom we should always treat with the greatest of respect. It was my fault to saunter in at 10:00am on a Monday morning forgetting that not all are as lucky as me – in some ways!!
Lucky Mercedes is much happier and is very grateful for their kind attention!
Mike Lynch and his top team seem to have already left HP and are starting their own tech fund.
Sadly it is based in London and is looking at global opportunities.
Hope it has some fire power for Cambridge, UK.
The title comes from an article in the DT on 20 July 2012.
It breaks down the reward of which only $1million is salary.
Mayer is estimated as having made $300m in her career in Google. The great benefit of being the 21st employee of a firm with a generous option scheme which hit the big time. Generous options help build great companies?
Great comment and discussion in this interview by Robert Scoble of two people, the founder and CEO of Nicera.
Nicera was funded by $50milllon of VC capital and has just been sold for over $1bn.
“Transformation does not come from industry, but universities (in this case Stanford)”; starting at time 16:45 but watch the whole interview to see it in context.
Another great Robert Scoble interview – youtu.be/v6CyHhJKSTQ
Marissa Mayer spoke at CUTEC a few years ago when working for Google. Now she is the new CEO of Yahoo; and pregnant! CUTEC attracts great speakers each year. Mayer was #21 employee of Google so guess she vested lots of options. She certainly will not be working to pay the bills. Hope she saves Yahoo. She is a great role model for women programmers as well.
Great news that the head of Sequoia is donating £70million to a £300million fund for Oxford University. From the BBC website:
Mr Moritz, chairman of the US-based venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital, spoke of his own family’s debt to benefactors, when they had been refugees from Nazi Germany.
“I would not be here today were it not for the generosity of strangers,” said Mr Moritz.
From his business experience in the US, he said many of the great innovators were from “the most unlikely and impossible circumstances”.
But their progress had been made possible by university scholarships – and he wanted to support such opportunities.
Another example that it is entrepreneurs who make the big donations to Oxbridge and the contribution of Isis Innovation and Cambridge Enterprise is miniscule. Surely the time is for both organisations to place half their resources in assisting and encouraging entrepreneurs instead of playing at being public sector entrepreneurs – something which has never succeeded in the world. If you know otherwise then do leave a comment.
Entrepreneurs remember those who helped them in the early days. In the technical sector, most are given a start at a great university and want to help others to have the same start. It is amazing to think that Trinity College, Oxford, has no Professor of Computer Science – or at least not two years ago.
Someone from the Judge Business School, Cambridge, has written a book called There is an I in Team claiming that running a team is difficult.
We all know that which is why good managers are scarce and well rewarded.
Fred Wilson has yet another great post on using your investors to build a great team. Perhaps the I in the title of the book should stand for Investors and then it would make sense. Building and running teams – managing – is easy for those few who are good at it and a struggle for the rest of us. I was never a manager so it is strange to have a son who is a natural manager – so much easier than working!
Perhaps academics should study successful managers who build great teams and great companies……..
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/parkinsons-voice-screening/
Take part in the trial by phoning (in the UK) 01865 521168.
I took part and the phone call takes three minutes.
Just one of many new medical tests which will be developed using algorithms for a first screening of diseases.
Guess that the voice changes with many other diseases such a Alzheimer’s.