Finance Geek

A lot has been made this week about Andrew Ross Sorkin’s NYT’s article highlighting the hefty price tag for attending the World Economic Forum in Davos. Prices start at $71,000 for attendees. (Fortunately for us, press does not have to pay a fee. …

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Much of the focus at Davos revolves around who has showed up and who is making their presence felt. The conference is an opportunity for everyone from companies to countries to make a statement. Google has put its stamp on the event by hosting a big party

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In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, billions of dollars poured from equity and mutual funds into so-called “safer” municipal and Treasury bond funds. But, as the economy improves, these bond funds aren’t looking like such hot inve

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Asian stocks were higher in overnight trading, with the Shanghai Composite up 1.47%. Major European indices are slightly higher, and U.S. futures indicate a mixed open.

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The Fed left its key lending rate at zero Wednesday, maintaining the ultra-easy posture that’s been in place since December 2008. The Fed also reiterated its plan to buy up to $600 billion of Treasuries via a controversial program known as QE2.The stock m

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Jessica Livingston, one of the founders of Y Combinator wrote an article yesterday titled What stops female founders? which was partly about the under-representation of women in tech (4% of Y-C entrepreneurs are women) but also has a good slew of general advice for all entrepreneurs.

I particularly liked the section headed ‘Thick Skin’ which started with the oft repeated but worthwhile reminder that for most entrepreneurs the ability to continue on in the face of widespread criticism and lack of understanding is a pre-requisite for success.

Founders face all sorts of rejection in the early days. You are suddenly in a world where you get slapped around a lot, so if you take slaps personally it is going to be distracting. People will dismiss your idea, complain about the functionality of what you’ve built, or publicly criticize you.

What is also worth remembering is that there comes a point when the business has reached a certain scale (say 20-50 people, low seven digit revenues) when listening and taking on feedback become more important and carrying on doggedly can be a limitation.

Then Jessica turned to fundraising:

Lots of founders find the fundraising process totally demoralizing, too. When you have a hard time raising money it’s hard not to start believing yourself that your company is lame. But even successful founders often have to meet with lots of investors before finding the one that agrees to invest.

This is spot on, I have seen founders get demoralised by a difficult fundraising process, and once that happens it gets even more difficult.  VCs like enthusiastic entrepreneurs much more than ones that are tired and dispirited, even when the reasons are understandable.  That said, for most businesses it is equally important to remain alive to the possibility that there might not be an attractive funding option open at any given point in time, and to be prepared to call time when a process gets too difficult/distracting. The trick is to keep alternative options open (and there are nearly always alternative options) and then set a date for making an objective call on whether the fundraising process is likely to succeed.  Keeping the call ‘objective’ is often tough as the non-funding route is likely to be much harder work.

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It was a teachable moment - and Barack Obama didn’t teach. Unless public opinion changes, we won’t end our budget deadlock. As is well-known, Americans want budget deficits curbed. In a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 54 percent urge Congress and the president to “act quickly” and 57 percent prefer spending cuts to tax increases. But there’s little support for cuts in Social Security (64 percent opposed), Medicare (56 percent) and Medicaid (47 percent), which together approach half of federal spending. The State of the Union gave Obama the opportunity to confront…

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WASHINGTON-President Obama’s State of the Union address demonstrated anew that although he pays lip service to smaller government, less regulation, and deficit reduction, his heart is elsewhere. After two years in office, and despite having taken a “shellacking” in the November election, the president continues to believe in larger government, government as a provider of services, government as an employer not of last resort but of first resort.
The president’s address to the Congress and to the national viewing audience demonstrated that despite the bipartisan seating in…

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The newspapers in recent months have been full of bombshell stories about insider trading on Wall Street. According to an account in the Wall Street Journal, “the investigations, if they bear fruit, have the potential to expose a culture of pervasive insider trading in US financial markets, including new ways nonpublic information is passed to traders through experts tied to specific industries or companies.”
The basic argument made against what its detractors call “insider trading” is that the ability to act on nonpublic information creates an unlevel playing…

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In an attempt to describe the new age of journalism, New York Times reporter David Carr coined an acronym: AKTOCA. That’s “All Known Thought, One Click Away.” And he tweeted it. Carr is the star of Andrew Rossi’s new documentary Page One, which probes the internet’s effect on the news business.

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Updated from 1:40 p.m. ESTUpdate: “Although commodity prices have risen, longer-term inflation expectations
have remained stable, and measures of underlying inflation have been
trending downward,” the FO

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Inflation will be top of mind when economists and investors review the Federal Reserve’s FOMC statement today. Interest rates are likely to remain unmoved, but the Fed’s inflation reading will signal whether or not they are finally moving toward a rate hi

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Former Newsweek president Mark Edmiston launches a new digital suite of publications for iPads and other mobile devices called Nomad Editions. The veteran magazine exec wants a subscription system that equitably compensates reporters and editors.

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President Barack Obama makes technology innovation a centerpiece of his economic agenda during an address to Congress that’s heavy on lofty goals but short on specifics. In a speech comparing Google and Facebook to Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers, Obama says that “the first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation.”

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Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States last week yielded more of the same tired promises on trade, currency and human rights that the world has all heard before. However, the visit did end with China agreeing to invest a whopping

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