Moving to Tumblr

After almost seven years on Blogger, I am moving to Tumblr. My new Tumblr URL is http://processanditeration.tumblr.com/ Please plan to read me there from now on! Will

Reinventing the Banner Ad: Sweepstakes

Flite video of the week. How do easily add sweepstakes to display advertising using FliteHub.

Nominate Flite!

Managing Expectations

How happy are you at work?  On a scale of 1-100, how would you rate your marriage, your friendships, your relationship with your children, your career satisfaction?

Imagine for a minute that you are happy in your marriage 90% of the time. Is that good? 90% sounds pretty good to me. How about at work, happy 80% of the time? Is that good?

Another way to think through the scores is to translate the numbers into days. For example, if you have a great marriage and are happy 90% of the time, mathematically there are 36.5 days a year that you are not happy.  36.5 days, or more than entire month.

Similarly, if at work you are fulfilled 80% of the time, there are 74 days a year where you are not fulfilled.

What's the point?  The key idea, hat tip to Marv Wenger for sharing this perspective, is that a happy and fulfilled life is full of days that simply aren't that good.

Furthermore, rather than being surprised by a tough day, it is important to be sufficiently self-aware to not only expect tough days, but to recognize that having a tough day does not fundamentally challenge the quality of your relationships or work.

As an entrepreneur, there are plenty of challenging days. It pays to realize that is both normal and that a bad day, or 36.5 tough days, still means that 90% of the time things are really good.

Agile Marketing

I write to share an article we published today on iMedia, Why You Need to Consider Daily Marketing Messages.

The article introduces best practices, including a look at Gatorade's command center, for agile brand marketing. 

Agile marketing allows brands to become more iterative, relevant, and responsive to the lives, interests, and trends impacting the customer.

Turning 40

Today, I am 40. I write this from a small village in Baja, where I am celebrating the milestone with my wife and best friends.

40 is an iconic birthday and an occasion for reflection.

40 years ago, I was born to a US Air Force Captain and his wife, Kent and Marian, in Wiesbaden, West Germany. From birth, my life has been peripatetic. Six days after my birth, we moved to a small village on the Czech border. By the time I was twelve, we'd lived in Germany, Ireland (sister, Elizabeth, born), Northern Ireland, Nigeria (brother, Richard, born), the Ivory Coast, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom. My father's job with the military and then with Citibank required frequent moves. True to form, at 14, I left London for boarding school in Connecticut. The moves averaged one every eighteen months and left an indelible mark on me.

First, I became very good at being the new kid. Adapting, making new friends, and dealing with the trauma of change.  Second, my body adapted to the rhythm of major change every eighteen months and I suffer from wanderlust.

The "risks" associated with change were blind to me, as evidenced by my equally peripatetic educational and professional experiences. High school in London and CT, college in LA, China, and Cambridge, banker in NYC, HK, and Singapore, teacher in Indiana, business school student in Chicago, and the last twelve years in venture capital and start-ups.  My childhood blessed me with the ability to adapt, while leaving me with a true sense of restlessness.

Fortunately, my wife, Caroline, helped me understand what I'd missed growing up - the power of community and consistency. While my email address continues to change, I've lived in the Bay Area for twelve years and my children have attended the same public school for seven years. My oldest son, Jack, is 11. By his age, I'd moved eight times to seven countries. I now see through him the importance of reinforced, persistent human relations and my wanderlust has dimmed as I enjoy long-term friendships and a feeling of connection.

In fact, over 40 years, I've come to believe strongly in the following:

• the value of investing in community
• I love being part of the Bay Area start-up community, mentoring, coaching youth sports in the Los Altos-Mountain View, playing my Sunday morning soccer game, running into friends at local restaurants, and building rich relationships born of years of common experiences and context.
• being present for my wife and children
• While I struggle with presence and mindfulness, I work hard to be fully home and to really listen, hear, and understand the lives of my sons and wife.
• Nothing gives me greater pleasure than time with my family.
• Thich Nhat Hanh's book, the Art of Power, is a great book to read and reread to help reinforce the value of mindfulness.
• pets
• I've come to love the presence of animals...a hike in the hills with my lab, Sierra, or hanging at home with our bird, Storm. Caring for animals grounds you and children simply love them.
• routine exercise
• I work out every morning from 6-7am and then have coffee with four guys. Its a ritual and commitment that makes the start of every day magical.  Every Sunday at 7am, I play soccer with the same eighteen guys, hit Peet's after the game, and head home tired and happy.
• never acting in fear
• Being new every 1.5 years at school is a lesson in overcoming fear and insecurity. As I studied mindfulness, I came to realize that I let fear limit my joy of live, which led to poor decisions. Being afraid to fail, to try new things, fear of looking foolish, ignorant, silly....these fears are self-defeating and something I've worked really hard to overcome.
• nature
• Simply put, I love being outdoors in the wilderness and work hard to find time every year to spend time with my family off-the-grid.  In my secular life, the church of nature fills a spiritual void and provides solace, energy, and peace. 
• redefining risk
• In my early 30s, I was diagnosed with a kidney disorder. At the time, I was told that my kidney would fail by the age of 40 and I would need a transplant. Thankfully, I am in remission and have been for six years. Nevertheless, for a few years, I lived with a heightened sense of mortality and a revitalized commitment to make every day really count.
• The modern economy is volatile and life-time employment a quaint memory. As I've worked on start-ups, my friends at McKinsey, Merrill, HP and other pillars of stability often remarked that they found my career path too risky. Many of them were later laid off as the economy soured.
• I've come to believe that greater risks lie in not finding out what you are truly capable of, in  seeking safety at the cost of possibility, and in thinking that there will one day be a "good time" to take a chance.

Here's to the next forty years and to my parents, wife, family, friends, teachers, and colleagues for making my first forty simply wonderful. I love you and thank you.

How to Fix The Economy

The Way Forward  
Moving From the Post-Bubble, Post-Bust Economy to Renewed 
Growth and Competitiveness 

by

Daniel Alpert, Managing Partner, Westwood Capital
Robert Hockett, Professor of Law, Cornell University
Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics, New York University



Good read.

Abstract of how to fix the problem. Read the paper to better understand their diagnosis for how we got in this mess.

5-7 year plan - a Marshall Plan, if you will, is required

1. We face an oversupply of capacity and a "demand hole as as the private sector de-levers
2. Requires sustained and strategically concentrated public investment in infrastructure, domestic energy, and technology.  Need to provide businesses confidence that demand will return.
3. Need to restructure private sector debt - reduce relative debt burdens. Major program of debt restructuring, refinancing, and relief. Will require recapitalizing banks but will avoid Japanse problem of "zombie banks" with billions in loans where LTV is upside down
4. Rebalance global trade and address structural deficiencies (best reflected in the US current account deficit), whereby China and growth economies begin to consume. Requires currency appreciation of the Renminbi.
5. Specifics
1. US Public Infra Spending
1. $1.2 trillion/5 year public investment program targeting high return investments in energy, transportation, education, R&D, and water-treatment infra
2. Debt Relief
1. Debt restructuring and regulatory capital loss absorption. Drive resolution of trillions in impaired debt where the nominal value of the debt is > asset value. ex. mortgages that are underwater
3. Increasing domestic demand in current- account surplus nations
1. Global Rebalancing - currency realignment, domestic demand growth, reduction of current account surpluses. China, Germany, Japan, and petro-dollar economies need to spur domestic demand, allowing local currencies to appreciate against the USD, letting wages rise, etc.  Requires China to develop social safety net, reduce export subsidies, pay out dividends and incomes, and increase wages, and most importantly, allow for currency appreciation