A little bit of fighting

Yesterday was a good day.

•  The Indian cricket team lost to Australia, barely. But still it was a good day for they fought hard. And eventually they will learn to win.
• At badminton, S and I lost close games as well, but we too fought hard. And we too will find a way to win next time.

So I slept well, really well in-fact. And am pretty sure S did too and the Indian cricket team as well. There is something about giving it your all that helps you sleep good at night.

Entertainment like never before

As the legend says, “There for the grace of GOD, goes Rajnikanth”. So without further ado, and with great pleasure, I direct you to my good friend S’s blog. Do watch the video.

http://speculator2investor.blogspot.com

Do not be fooled by the blog URL, the only thing you will be speculating about after watching the video is the laws of physics.

A little bit of mergers and little bit of acquisitions

Considering my business card says “Technical Yahoo!” my blog has been very technology free. Today I am going to break that trend post my views about mergers and acquisitions.

Important notice: This post is not specific to Yahoo! which I personally think is one of the better run corporations in the US. Please do not lay me off

I am not a fan of Corporate America, and that is a huge understatement. I could write a whole book on why I am such a rabid opponent. But since I might actually end up writing such a book, I am saving that material for later. Today I am only going to talk about mergers and acquisitions which is my 2nd pet hate in Corporate America, the 1st being inept CEO s who make millions for under-performance.

A merger or an acquisition is when a company buys out or merges with another independent company or a business to create single entity. This happens very often in the technology arena. Here are the top reasons why I am so against mergers and acquisitions.

1. Statistically, M&A’s almost always fail which should be a good enough reason enough to avoid them all-together. For every successful M&A (which is very rare), I can give 100 examples of the ones that failed.

2. M&A’s indicate laziness and lack of effort on the part of the management of the company that buys another company. It is like they say, “Fuck, why did we not think of that before? It is so great for our business. Well, since we didn’t think of this and these guys have built a decent business let us just buy them for a gazillion dollars. Who gives a shit if we overpay and cost our shareholders millions of dollars.”

3. The 3rd and the biggest reason why technology M&A’s fail is that it is very very hard to estimate the net worth of a technology company. And it is impossible to predict what the value of a business will be after 3 years. Things change way too fast. Deciding the value of a technology company for an acquisition is a crap shoot. Companies *routinely* overpay for acquisitions to the tune of 100s of millions of dollars.

4. Once a small company is bought out for a ridiculous price, there is very little incentive for the management and top talent of that company to stick around since they make tons of money on stock options. This means that in the best case they will quit right away and in the worst case they will stick around scratching their ass and working on their pet projects until they are laid off with a nice severance package. In either case, the buyer is screwed.

5. When companies with different cultures merge, achieving synergy becomes a HELL of a job. A lot of time that can be spent innovating is spent integrating. And even then, it is never perfect.

So here is my advice for the corporate management of any technology firm:

1. Get rid of your M&A division. Spend that budget on spying, literally spying for new idea. In a technology world, ideas are hard, implementations are usually easy.

2. Focus on innovation first, business later. Learn from Google.

3. The only time you should even consider an acquisition is when a company is in really early stages and can be bought cheaply (1-50 million range)

4. Focus on your core business. For everything else, partner and move on. For God’s sake, don’t fuckin’ buy stuff. Do not venture into areas that are not your expertise. Partner and move on. Write this down a a 100 times.

Life lessons from Hollywood

I personally, have found inspiration and wisdom in the most unlikeliest of places, Hollywood. A place famous for it’s lack of touch with reality.

1. X-Men United.

A Hollywood action movie based on comic book about mutants is the last place you would expect to learn something useful from. But there is a dialogue in XMen-United that goes as follows:

Night-crawler: Someone so beautiful should not be so angry.
Storm: Sometimes anger can help you survive.
Night-crawler: So can faith.

The fact that a blue mutant in a fancy dress says it, does not take anything away from the powerful message. It is the basic philosophy behind most religions.

2. Las Vegas (TV show):

In a quite ludicrous scene based in a Las Vegas casino, a Tibetian monk who is gambling in the casino tells the casino host,
“True luxury is freedom from want”.
This is the sort of an one-liner that goes un-noticed. But in reality, it is really deep and represents the core of Gautam Buddha’s teachings.

3. Spiderman

Yes, I am talking about the famous dialogue. “With great power, comes great responsibility”.
This is similar to the message Mahatma Gandhi gave the Indian leaders when India attained independence. He warned them that power corrupts and that they had a responsibility to the Indian people to not let that happen.

There are many, many more examples where a lot of useful and good thoughts are crystallized in very apt words by the movie folks. My good friend S has an interesting theory behind why this is so. Essentially every person has a life philosophy, a sort of a guide by which they live their lives. Hollywood writers are people too. And they are well-read, well-educated and very talented people. They also have a knack of finding the right words to get the message across.

So next time you are watching a crazy horror movie or a cheesy romantic comedy, just keep your eyes and ears open. What you see and hear just might change your life forever

A little bit of a lesson.

A little while ago, I had mentioned that it is important to be in a resonably happy and good position in life before you can start taking health & excercise seriously. When one is stressed, worried or depressed it is hard to do anything active and fun.

Case in point, my mood has been fairly low last few days because of the layoffs at Yahoo! I think I was affected a little more than others. It is in small part due to the fact that I would qualify under the “slightly more sensitive than average” category. It is in a large part due to the fact that I understand corporate America better than most people. To put it simply, it is a fuckin mess (Important to stress that it is nothing specific to Yahoo! or any other company). And it hurts to see that.

Long story short, I have not been my usual happy self. And I have not worked out since I got back from India. Time to get cracking again. Life does not wait for you to get out of a bad mood.

Layoffs at Yahoo!

Yahoo! let go quite a few people yesterday (Tuesday, 12th Feb 2007). Rumor has the number around 1000. A couple of people I really like were also “impacted” (I love how they use these euphimisms). And although I am sure they are going to be just fine in the long run, it fucking sucks. Life sucks sometimes. More for some than others but it definitely sucks sometimes.

Just a post or two ago I had mentioned how one should not take one’s job too seriously. Now I know how wrong I was, and also how right I was. Essentially, your job can go anytime and it most likely won’t be your fault. Which means you have every reason to be concerned about layoffs and feel like shit if and when that happens. But you shouldn’t sweat it every day either. It is not in your hands.

 Do your best (not easy, I know) and hope for the best (this is a little easier).

Farewell Gilly

Adam Gilchrist, one of my favorite cricketers ever, is retiring at the end of the current CB series in Australia. I have never ever seen a more gentleman cricketer. Not just in Australian cricket but in world cricket. PERIOD. There is an innate likability about the guy. Maybe it is his smiling demeanor or his natural niceness or maybe it is his dashing cricketing skills. What I think it is, is the amazing dichotomy between his cricketing persona and his off-field persona.

On the cricket field, he is a gladiator. When on song, he is a joy to watch. He is an explosive batsman, always looking to pulverize the opposition. He is also an excellent wicketkeeper, agile and with good reflexes. This combination has made him the greatest all-rounder to have ever graced a cricket field. Off the field, he is a true gentleman, simple and low-key. A great role-model and a devoted family man, he has been a great ambassador for the sport. Gilly is one of the good guys, universally loved and respected.

There are so many great sportsmen who are defined by the sport they play. You get them feeling that had they not found that calling they would not amount to much. But Gilly is different. Am sure he will live a rich, wonderful life thanks to his cricketing skills. But he would have done just great no matter what he chose to do in life. Cricket is just as lucky to have found him as he has been to find cricket. And that is the best tribute I can pay him.

Thanks for the entertainment, thanks for the sixes and thanks for the grace with which you played the game. You will be missed!

A little bit of advice

I forgot to add one thing to my last post. Unless you are a soldier or a doctor or a nuclear physicist, you do not really need to stress about your job. It is not always easy to enjoy your work (especially us desk job folks) but it is not that hard to not take it seriously

You can get another job if you lose the one you have. No one is going to give you a similar shot with life.

A little bit of caution

I read a disturbing statistic a few days ago. Asian Indians are at the HIGHEST risk for diabetes and heart disease among any ethnic group in the world. Which means given my family history, I am going to pop off about 10 years before others, if I am lucky

I believe the reasons are as follows:

1. Life in the sub-continent is quite stressful. Most people have to work very hard and deal with a lot of stress just to put food on the table. This can easily lead to frustration and anger. These things cause physical harm, real harm. The importance of Yoga, meditation and relaxation cannot be “stressed” enough.

2. Say what you say about India “shining”, it is still a third world country. People are still poor, most cannot get adequate health care. Problems that can and should be caught early are not. Cities are extremely polluted. This is not healthy.

3. Most Indians are quite ignorant about health although things getting better. We eat reasonably healthy (at least the Marathi diet) but pay no attention to cardio-vascular health. We keep our weight under control but never do “hardcore” aerobic activity. So while that keeps us “thin”, it does not keep us fit. To top it off, we seem to be eating more unhealthy food and getting fat these days.

3. Indians do not drink (typically). Yes, you heard me right. We DO NOT drink alcohol which is a bad thing. Alcohol is a natural anti-oxidant and any alcohol consumed in moderation is good for your heart. Red wine is obviously the best choice. Not to mention the fact that it is a very good stress buster.

If you do not believe me, read the following article in time by Dr. Sanjay Gupta http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1703763_1703764_1710554,00.html

 So lighten up and have a glass of wine (or two). Fuck it, you only live once. But do not forget to bust a few miles on a treadmill every now and then. And run or climb, do not walk.