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Kaption it! Video

My Kaption.it video for erlibird.com

29 May 2012 ·

I like Facebook at about $15 per share..

First I should say that I think Facebook is an excellent company with a great team. They also pulled off a brilliant IPO, not even leaving anything on the table for the greedy Wall Street bankers. Something I particularly enjoyed.

Never-the-less at a $100 Billion, Facebook is working on a P/E ratio of around 100 with a sales multiple of 25! This makes it a buy for the very, very hopeful. There really isn’t any upside left to go. 

However, at some point, there will be a wobble in Europe or somewhere else in the world, the stock market will correct and fund managers will ask themselves why they are holding such an over-valued stock. It’ll tank and that’s the time to pounce and buy a bunch of shares to keep for the next decade. 

When the time comes I’ll put my money where my mouth is.. I like it at $15.

21 May 2012 ·

Eduardo Saverin, Please Don’t Come Back.

Although I’ve never met Eduardo Saverin, I really don’t like him. 

He comes to America, he benefits from a Harvard education, he meets Mark Zuckerburg, he gets a chunk of Facebook for being largely incompetent and makes a fortune.

That I can live with. He was lucky, he was in the right place at the right time. Good for him. America is the only place in the world that can happen.

But recently he gave up his US citizenship, obviously to avoid paying taxes on the $4 billion he is about to make in the Facebook IPO.

America educated him, introduced him to a genius, smiled on him with good fortune and he pulls a tax dodge. Not cool Eduardo, not cool.

12 May 2012 ·

Why We Quit The Language Learning Business

After 18 months of trying different products in the language learning industry we finally quit it and moved on. I’m tempted to say “pivot” because the seeds of our latest play, Snark.ly were sewn from the last version of LingoMatch but I think the word “restart” is more appropriate.

All entrepreneurs need to be resilient…but there comes a time when just gotta move on!

There are a few newly minted, newly funded startups in San Francisco taking on the industry with their own products, in their own way. We wish them success. Hopefully they can prove us wrong.

Here’s why the language learning market is a bitch to crack:

1. Market Noise. The industry is full of thousands of crappy products. Yes they are crappy and a good one should stand out, you’d think. But they all really get-in-the-way.

2. Foreign Markets. Not only are there a lot of crappy products targeting the US market, but each country in the world has its own local set of crappy products (yes I love that word!). Marketing into other peoples’ markets is hard. They weren’t waiting for us to solve their problems. Access to technology costs a lot more than it does in the US, they have better things to do.

3. No-One Wants to Pay. Users in markets outside the US, especially in those countries which have poor high school teaching programs (okay I’ll say it Developing Countries), don’t want to pay for stuff if they can help it. If that isn’t bad then note that even if you got them in their droves with “free” their eyeballs aren’t worth that much to advertisers.

4. There is Always Tomorrow. This one is the real killer. A language takes a really long time to learn. Its like dieting or giving up smoking. You never really get there you just improve - slowly..and then you probably relapse.

So action on products like ours, i.e. getting people to practice talking regularly (and risk feeling stupid) can always be put off until tomorrow with no real perceived short term opportunity cost.

3 April 2012 ·

San Francisco Needs a Proper Slum!

I have recently been staying in a lovely hotel slap in the middle of the Tenderloin, home to San Francisco’s crack heads, homeless and mentally ill. For those that don’t know, the Tenderloin is an area right in the middle of the city occupying what could be prime, high end real estate.

The City of San Francisco and a plethora of private charities are accelerating the problem by constantly provide the residents with free food, free rent, free medical and all sorts of other free stuff. They are living the dream as they zoom around on crack in their electric wheel chairs!

I’m a firm believer that part of the problem is that San Francisco doesn’t have a proper slum where these people could live in comfort with their satellite TV’s. For some reason all slum dwellers have satellite?

If I may, I strongly urge the City Administrators to take a leaf out of the South African and Brazilian slums which are typically located outside the city often near, or on the way to the airport.

This obviously is an ideal solution because the City can reclaim its prime real estate and the slum dwellers can often enjoy great views of the city and a very short commute to the airport should that need arise.

Food for thought!

3 March 2012 ·