22 February 2005

The Sun Sets on Intelligence

Jonathan Shwartz on 3GSM and why it's so much more important than Comdex proves that Intelligence is not in Sun's vocabulary. Proving that large companies insist on not only not learning from history but actually insist on repeating previous mistakes.

I am delighted that Solaris is doing well in telecom networks; here's hoping that telco hardened Linux doesn't commodotize a non-commodity product. Also really happy that lots of guys are writing stuff in a Java variant for cell phones. For which Sun of course earns.......ah yes nothing.

Sort of reminds one of J2EE. J2EE's network equivalent is JAIN, and there's a reasonable chance that I have mentioned that before. When the likes of Vodafone decide that JAIN is ready for the edge of network then its probably time to take notice. Except of course its not Sun who is paying attention.

It's all very well writing the spec, but why waste the time doing so if it only empowers your competitors to eat your lunch from your own lunch box.

19 February 2005

Fixing VC

Fred commenting on Fixing Venture Capital from Change This.

First congratulations to Fred on his constant ability to provide reasoned points-of-view to polemics. Which is what Fixing VC is.

In an attempt to follow Fred's example and provide reasoned answers, rather than my more natural; your wrong - idiot.

My greatest criticism is that the thesis is based on a false premise; namely that VC's are only interested in investing in the the 10% of the deals that make huge returns, whereas entrepreneurs have lower acceptance of risk and therefore would rather take more median returns. Just typing the explanation makes the whole premise seem unreasonable. Yes we would like each deal to be a Google, as would the entrepreneur and we all take outsized risks to achieve that goal. I think a statistical review of exits and returns would disprove the central thesis pretty quickly.

At the US-Russian Technology Symposium yesterday Pierre Lamond, Heidi Rozen, Robert Grady and Vladimir Bernstein discussed, inter alia, expected returns in the VC industry. Pierre in particular returned to a favorite theme; too much money in the venture industry. His premise being that companies are going to be sold at or around $50mn in sales. If the C Round was $30-$50mn not many people are going to be seeing great returns. So in answer to VC's are only interested in the top performers we have one of the the VC industries major voices saying the opposite. Specifically, he was saying expect mid-range M&A sales and when Google comes along be very happy.

From a Russian technology point of view I am happy to hear that exits are expected to be mid-range M&A. We will build our companies more cheaply and expect to sell in M&A deals from the outset. Our fund's economics will be built on achieving exactly that.

17 February 2005

The Development of Russia's (FSU) Technology Industry and Venture Capital

On my way to Stanford to take part in the annual US-Russian Technology Symposium. Quite why I have to fly 11 time zones around the world to meet a bunch of people I could have lunch with in Moscow defeats me. Well it doesn't actually, and that's really the point of this post.

At some point on Thursday or Friday, and quite possibly both, someone (at least) will bemoan the lack of venture capital available for start-up Russian technology companies. No one will actually have the balls to point out that the money will be available when the companies, not the technologies, are ready to be funded. And there is the crux of a great paper by Gil Avinmelech, Martin Kenney and Morris Teubal; A Life Cycle Model for the Creation of National Venture Capital Industries; Comparing the US and Israeli Experiences. No one will ever accuse academics of using marketing techniques to get us to read their papers.

They argue that many government attempts to sponsor a venture industry are failures (no news there) but that they are doomed to fail because they address just one aspect of the technology ecosystem - the venture industry. The assumption is that cash makes companies. Most VC's and all entrepreneurs will argue that there are a number of more important factors. They could equally argue that any attempt to address one area of the ecosystem (technology, entrepreneurs, customers, capital, banks, service providers, markets) will fail unless the other areas are equally addressed.

It would be fairer to say that expectations for early government intervention should be appropriate to the stage of the ecosystem. Somewhere in today's FT is a piece on the growth of Silicon Fen in Cambridge, UK. Echoing the sentiments of the three academics the writer notes that government funds aimed at Cambridge will probably be "pork-barreled" to other parts of the UK where their impact will be zero. In short, they prescribe a focused long-term i.e. beyond the end of the conference, strategy that helps with all elements of the spectrum. It will take a while - but that is what strategy is about. Tactics are for tomorrow.

So what's in store for the FSU tech industry, and by extension its venture industry? A home grown Google is not on the cards for a while. But that does not mean that their will not be some great FSU-tech successes along the way. It is likely that the first successes will be Russian-inspired but managed by US-Russians or non-Russians and only in later iterations will they be Russian-inspired and led. Certainly that is the philosophy that we are taking with DFJ Nexus. As Russia's business environment improves and it sorts out its corporate law, and enforcement, more of these companies will be Russian as opposed to Cayman, Cypriot, US or anything else. In the meantime the rise of Russia's technology industry will be a global affair.

There are a huge number of areas that the Government can help with; broadband infrastructure, taxes, corruption, corruption, corruption, IP law, WTO, targeted funding of academia, changing the Prime Minister in favor of someone who knows what an economy is, removing the ex-KGB from positions of economic power....... Handing out cash to VC's will achieve little (see corruption/pork-barrels above.) Take all the cash that would otherwise go to people with no experience or understanding and give it to the academics. At least there should be something to fund.

As I have said ad nauseum the Israeli experience offers a better pointer to the future of Russia's technology industry than India. Albeit that they both invested heavily in their industries with a vision. Talking 11 time zones around the world is not going to improve the lot of Russian scientists, software engineers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists (don't feel sorry for the rest. They are gourging themselves on $40 oil.)

09 February 2005

Cisco, IBM and Middleware

Om Malik here comments on Light Reading's piece on Cisco and what happens next.

When we first invested in jNETx during the depth of the telecom fall out from the Internet bubble it was clear that IT and telecommunications were rapidly encroaching in to each others space. At the end user level Skype demonstrates that perfectly. The question we tried to understand in 2002 was what happened when IBM and Ericsson started competing directly in the same space. Whilst computing and telecoms remained in separate spheres co-operation was far more rampant than most of us understood. From different ends of the spectrum both Cisco and Sun were commonly selling hardware which reappeared with someone else's logo attached. How long can this go on for?

I am led to believe that IBM sees the telecom (sic) network as a huge value proposition. Not just for its blade servers but through leveraging IBMGS with their enterprise, always on understanding. There is a bit of a learning curve as SS7 bumps in to SIP but they should have the resources to see it through.

Our concern was what happens when the NEBS guys started to take on the TEM's. We just sort of assumed that Cisco would be OK and never really researched/thought that much about what happened when they went head-to-head. Our analysis was somewhat complicated by the fundamental changes that were being forced through the TEM industry at the time. Ericsson looked like a major competitor at the time. Indeed a consultant told one of our advisory board that Ericsson would kick sand in jNETx face. Ericsson subsequently sold the relevant R&D divisions and sharply moved in to network services. Which only goes to prove that consultants know only what there last job taught them and aren't worth the money they get paid. So what gives with Cisco.

As the Light Reading piece points out it is the convergence (collision) of telco networks and IT networks that is causing the shake up. There are big numbers involved but increasingly few very large companies that have the ability to understand it all. Cisco sits at one node of that understanding, the pure NEB guys at another and the pure TEM guys at another. Very few get to cover all the nodes.

I tried tapping the Russian diaspora in San Jose. Seems as if two opposing camps are fighting for supremacy; the for and against IBM camps. If there is closer integration then that will mitigate against Cisco moving in to middleware. If the go it alone crew wins out then expect another Cisco buying spree.

I'll throw it out because it should be said, albeit that I cannot see it happening. If IBM really wants to dominate NGNs why not just acquire Cisco? As I said it won't happen but it should not be dismissed.

04 February 2005

Bribery In Russia

Jeff via Winds of Change links to a piece from the newspaper we all love to hate on bribery.

It, bribery, is a little overly pervasive and yet is going away, albeit slowly. After 4 years of visa free hassle I am suffering 4 years of visa hassle in 1 year. 2 years ago I could have bribed my way to satisfaction. I can't now. Whilst that is a good thing (at the end of the day, when it gets dark) the failure of the bureaucracy to even begin to think of reforming itself makes bribery a necessary condition to doing things - like driving a car.

As most of the developed world now seems to know we renovated our apartment in 2003. In communalkas the wet areas (bathroom, kitchen etc.,) have to be in a certain place in the apartment so that when the inevitable leak occurs only other 'wet areas' below get wet. We wanted to move our kitchen, and have. The permission cost Rbl50 and the facilitation fee marginally over $2,000. What got me most was that there was a price card. Moving of wet areas cost $2k, pretty much non-negotiable.

At the same time a fellow UK-based VC was himself seeking to undertake some renovation to his London house. Without the possibility of making the bureaucracy move faster and the scarcity of local builders, his work is just finished. We have been in our place for a year.

02 February 2005

China; A Centre of Innovation?

The China; A Centre of Innovation discussion is beginning to annoy me. This piece in Always On is no worse than others, it's just the piece that is at hand to be annoyed about.

I challenge the writers and commentators of these pieces to provide some hard evidence that Chinese science, R&D and business methods are going to produce disruptive technologies based on any form of past historical data. Lets start with Nobel Prize winners in any form of science - sorry could not hear you. OK; Chinese scientists who have made substantial breakthroughs in epitaxial growthing - not more silence. Show me one Chinese hi-tech company that is competing on the basis of its own disruptive technologies; Huawei? No those were Cisco inventions.

OK point over-labored. China and Taiwan has some fantastically bright researchers in US and European Universities. Their entrepreneurial spirit is not to be doubted but is has been factored on low cost high output industries. Competition is so fierce in China that most of these are operating at 2-3% gross margins. And that is not sustainable.

So lets not confuse fantastic market opportunity (as yet mostly unrealized) and cheap manufacturing with disruptive technology.

I was recently interviewed by a Japanese MIT MBA student who had spent a month working for one of the most professional money managers in Russia. He had come to Russia to see for himself where Russia fitted in to the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China - A Goldman Sachs Report) scheme of things. The essence of his conclusions was that China was a huge opportunity that was incredibly difficult to access and that more people would fail than succeed. His criticisms of China read like a litany of my criticisms of Russia. Except that his conclusion that working with the Government in China is more difficult than in Russia. On a scale of really annoying that would be off the top of the scale. He saw multiple opportunities in Russia because he felt that the economy was more open to foreign intervention (viz BP/TNK). We had to agree that this is a relative and not an absolute benefit.

Interestingly he saw great opportunities in India as (nearly all?) the economy is controlled by a few firms/families which are beginning their third Harvard-educated generations.

He was an Investment Banker, and thought like one, however he had been to all three countries. Had done business in all three and was talking about in an office in Moscow not a conference room in California.

In line with my desire for greater honesty in public life I would like to see more use of facts in discussion of trends. Repeating the same crap as everyone else does not make you an expert it makes you a voice for hire.

The First of the Year

It's taken a while to clear the decks and move on to the first blog of the year, which by the time I get to post it is no longer the first........

All in all this should be an interesting year:

On a personal front I expect to finally close our new fund for investing in Russian technologies along with our newly democratic Ukrainian colleagues. There are a couple of other things also going on but they aren't really for this blog.

Two of my personal investments face (another) company changing year. My all time favorite, jNETx, will either close the year with a route to IPO, or acquisition, and a ground breaking, money spinning product. Or it will do well and that will be it. Acol is at an earlier stage of breakthrough. As the CEO said last night at dinner; "We've laid the foundations, now we have to deliver.." Amen. The success of my companies has a direct, and measurable, impact on my mood. A review of 2005 will have to feature their successes (or failures) as a leading highlight.

Russia is at a crossroads and by the end of this year we should have a clearer view of which route Putin's Russia intends to take. Roland Nash, Renaissance Capital's super smart head of strategy tried in this piece on the Tass website to look for the positive. He is paid to do so. My glass is emptier than his. Where we differ ultimately is that I don't believe that Putin is in control of his own people.

One month after the year starts I have started, with the thoughts for the year. Lets see where they take us.

Get To The Point

I am not one of the world's greatest builders of presentations but I have learnt from being on the other side of the table that a presentation that does not get to the point will lose my attention and have me looking out of the window thinking of something else. This post says it better than I do.

Iraqi Elections

Fred has some of the usual problems that those of us who oppose the aftermath to the war in Iraq face. His most recent post "Silence means.. is aptly titled. What he says implicitly is as important as the explicit. As always he is open to debate and willing to listen to other points of view. There is reference to an email discussion with "his friend Steve" who replied;
I said all of this to Steve, who replied that, "it was specious to speculate what one life, 100 lives, or 1400 lives was worth", and that "The attempt to create an alternative to radical Islam - even at the expense of significant blood and treasure - is not only worth it, but is necessary and unavoidable." He went on to say that "it's either thousands of lives now or hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of our kids lives later".
I lack some of Fred's willingness to listen to multiple points of view maybe because I expect an argument to be based on some form of agreed upon facts. His "friend Steve" implicitly states that Iraq is creating an alternative to radical Islam. This is a non-fact. Iraq was an alternative to radical Islam before the invasion, it was the only truly secular state in the Middle East (Persian Gulf). It had plenty of other failings, not least of which was a disregard for human rights that make Abu Graib and the Brits in Basra look like white collar crime. That it is now a breeding ground for radical Islam does not mean that stopping radical Islam can be used as a post-facto justification. Anymore than WMD or connections to Al Qaaeda were are or ever will be. You cannot have a discussion whose starting point has no basis in fact.

So the campaign for 2005 is honesty in all communication. Lets start with: We invaded Iraq because the regime was brutal, would go out of its way to piss the US off and the forecasts for oil over the next decade meant that we should ensure that it was on our side before Saudi Arabia ends up in revolution.

22 February 2005

The Sun Sets on Intelligence

Jonathan Shwartz on 3GSM and why it's so much more important than Comdex proves that Intelligence is not in Sun's vocabulary. Proving that large companies insist on not only not learning from history but actually insist on repeating previous mistakes.

I am delighted that Solaris is doing well in telecom networks; here's hoping that telco hardened Linux doesn't commodotize a non-commodity product. Also really happy that lots of guys are writing stuff in a Java variant for cell phones. For which Sun of course earns.......ah yes nothing.

Sort of reminds one of J2EE. J2EE's network equivalent is JAIN, and there's a reasonable chance that I have mentioned that before. When the likes of Vodafone decide that JAIN is ready for the edge of network then its probably time to take notice. Except of course its not Sun who is paying attention.

It's all very well writing the spec, but why waste the time doing so if it only empowers your competitors to eat your lunch from your own lunch box.

19 February 2005

Fixing VC

Fred commenting on Fixing Venture Capital from Change This.

First congratulations to Fred on his constant ability to provide reasoned points-of-view to polemics. Which is what Fixing VC is.

In an attempt to follow Fred's example and provide reasoned answers, rather than my more natural; your wrong - idiot.

My greatest criticism is that the thesis is based on a false premise; namely that VC's are only interested in investing in the the 10% of the deals that make huge returns, whereas entrepreneurs have lower acceptance of risk and therefore would rather take more median returns. Just typing the explanation makes the whole premise seem unreasonable. Yes we would like each deal to be a Google, as would the entrepreneur and we all take outsized risks to achieve that goal. I think a statistical review of exits and returns would disprove the central thesis pretty quickly.

At the US-Russian Technology Symposium yesterday Pierre Lamond, Heidi Rozen, Robert Grady and Vladimir Bernstein discussed, inter alia, expected returns in the VC industry. Pierre in particular returned to a favorite theme; too much money in the venture industry. His premise being that companies are going to be sold at or around $50mn in sales. If the C Round was $30-$50mn not many people are going to be seeing great returns. So in answer to VC's are only interested in the top performers we have one of the the VC industries major voices saying the opposite. Specifically, he was saying expect mid-range M&A sales and when Google comes along be very happy.

From a Russian technology point of view I am happy to hear that exits are expected to be mid-range M&A. We will build our companies more cheaply and expect to sell in M&A deals from the outset. Our fund's economics will be built on achieving exactly that.

17 February 2005

The Development of Russia's (FSU) Technology Industry and Venture Capital

On my way to Stanford to take part in the annual US-Russian Technology Symposium. Quite why I have to fly 11 time zones around the world to meet a bunch of people I could have lunch with in Moscow defeats me. Well it doesn't actually, and that's really the point of this post.

At some point on Thursday or Friday, and quite possibly both, someone (at least) will bemoan the lack of venture capital available for start-up Russian technology companies. No one will actually have the balls to point out that the money will be available when the companies, not the technologies, are ready to be funded. And there is the crux of a great paper by Gil Avinmelech, Martin Kenney and Morris Teubal; A Life Cycle Model for the Creation of National Venture Capital Industries; Comparing the US and Israeli Experiences. No one will ever accuse academics of using marketing techniques to get us to read their papers.

They argue that many government attempts to sponsor a venture industry are failures (no news there) but that they are doomed to fail because they address just one aspect of the technology ecosystem - the venture industry. The assumption is that cash makes companies. Most VC's and all entrepreneurs will argue that there are a number of more important factors. They could equally argue that any attempt to address one area of the ecosystem (technology, entrepreneurs, customers, capital, banks, service providers, markets) will fail unless the other areas are equally addressed.

It would be fairer to say that expectations for early government intervention should be appropriate to the stage of the ecosystem. Somewhere in today's FT is a piece on the growth of Silicon Fen in Cambridge, UK. Echoing the sentiments of the three academics the writer notes that government funds aimed at Cambridge will probably be "pork-barreled" to other parts of the UK where their impact will be zero. In short, they prescribe a focused long-term i.e. beyond the end of the conference, strategy that helps with all elements of the spectrum. It will take a while - but that is what strategy is about. Tactics are for tomorrow.

So what's in store for the FSU tech industry, and by extension its venture industry? A home grown Google is not on the cards for a while. But that does not mean that their will not be some great FSU-tech successes along the way. It is likely that the first successes will be Russian-inspired but managed by US-Russians or non-Russians and only in later iterations will they be Russian-inspired and led. Certainly that is the philosophy that we are taking with DFJ Nexus. As Russia's business environment improves and it sorts out its corporate law, and enforcement, more of these companies will be Russian as opposed to Cayman, Cypriot, US or anything else. In the meantime the rise of Russia's technology industry will be a global affair.

There are a huge number of areas that the Government can help with; broadband infrastructure, taxes, corruption, corruption, corruption, IP law, WTO, targeted funding of academia, changing the Prime Minister in favor of someone who knows what an economy is, removing the ex-KGB from positions of economic power....... Handing out cash to VC's will achieve little (see corruption/pork-barrels above.) Take all the cash that would otherwise go to people with no experience or understanding and give it to the academics. At least there should be something to fund.

As I have said ad nauseum the Israeli experience offers a better pointer to the future of Russia's technology industry than India. Albeit that they both invested heavily in their industries with a vision. Talking 11 time zones around the world is not going to improve the lot of Russian scientists, software engineers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists (don't feel sorry for the rest. They are gourging themselves on $40 oil.)

09 February 2005

Cisco, IBM and Middleware

Om Malik here comments on Light Reading's piece on Cisco and what happens next.

When we first invested in jNETx during the depth of the telecom fall out from the Internet bubble it was clear that IT and telecommunications were rapidly encroaching in to each others space. At the end user level Skype demonstrates that perfectly. The question we tried to understand in 2002 was what happened when IBM and Ericsson started competing directly in the same space. Whilst computing and telecoms remained in separate spheres co-operation was far more rampant than most of us understood. From different ends of the spectrum both Cisco and Sun were commonly selling hardware which reappeared with someone else's logo attached. How long can this go on for?

I am led to believe that IBM sees the telecom (sic) network as a huge value proposition. Not just for its blade servers but through leveraging IBMGS with their enterprise, always on understanding. There is a bit of a learning curve as SS7 bumps in to SIP but they should have the resources to see it through.

Our concern was what happens when the NEBS guys started to take on the TEM's. We just sort of assumed that Cisco would be OK and never really researched/thought that much about what happened when they went head-to-head. Our analysis was somewhat complicated by the fundamental changes that were being forced through the TEM industry at the time. Ericsson looked like a major competitor at the time. Indeed a consultant told one of our advisory board that Ericsson would kick sand in jNETx face. Ericsson subsequently sold the relevant R&D divisions and sharply moved in to network services. Which only goes to prove that consultants know only what there last job taught them and aren't worth the money they get paid. So what gives with Cisco.

As the Light Reading piece points out it is the convergence (collision) of telco networks and IT networks that is causing the shake up. There are big numbers involved but increasingly few very large companies that have the ability to understand it all. Cisco sits at one node of that understanding, the pure NEB guys at another and the pure TEM guys at another. Very few get to cover all the nodes.

I tried tapping the Russian diaspora in San Jose. Seems as if two opposing camps are fighting for supremacy; the for and against IBM camps. If there is closer integration then that will mitigate against Cisco moving in to middleware. If the go it alone crew wins out then expect another Cisco buying spree.

I'll throw it out because it should be said, albeit that I cannot see it happening. If IBM really wants to dominate NGNs why not just acquire Cisco? As I said it won't happen but it should not be dismissed.

04 February 2005

Bribery In Russia

Jeff via Winds of Change links to a piece from the newspaper we all love to hate on bribery.

It, bribery, is a little overly pervasive and yet is going away, albeit slowly. After 4 years of visa free hassle I am suffering 4 years of visa hassle in 1 year. 2 years ago I could have bribed my way to satisfaction. I can't now. Whilst that is a good thing (at the end of the day, when it gets dark) the failure of the bureaucracy to even begin to think of reforming itself makes bribery a necessary condition to doing things - like driving a car.

As most of the developed world now seems to know we renovated our apartment in 2003. In communalkas the wet areas (bathroom, kitchen etc.,) have to be in a certain place in the apartment so that when the inevitable leak occurs only other 'wet areas' below get wet. We wanted to move our kitchen, and have. The permission cost Rbl50 and the facilitation fee marginally over $2,000. What got me most was that there was a price card. Moving of wet areas cost $2k, pretty much non-negotiable.

At the same time a fellow UK-based VC was himself seeking to undertake some renovation to his London house. Without the possibility of making the bureaucracy move faster and the scarcity of local builders, his work is just finished. We have been in our place for a year.

02 February 2005

China; A Centre of Innovation?

The China; A Centre of Innovation discussion is beginning to annoy me. This piece in Always On is no worse than others, it's just the piece that is at hand to be annoyed about.

I challenge the writers and commentators of these pieces to provide some hard evidence that Chinese science, R&D and business methods are going to produce disruptive technologies based on any form of past historical data. Lets start with Nobel Prize winners in any form of science - sorry could not hear you. OK; Chinese scientists who have made substantial breakthroughs in epitaxial growthing - not more silence. Show me one Chinese hi-tech company that is competing on the basis of its own disruptive technologies; Huawei? No those were Cisco inventions.

OK point over-labored. China and Taiwan has some fantastically bright researchers in US and European Universities. Their entrepreneurial spirit is not to be doubted but is has been factored on low cost high output industries. Competition is so fierce in China that most of these are operating at 2-3% gross margins. And that is not sustainable.

So lets not confuse fantastic market opportunity (as yet mostly unrealized) and cheap manufacturing with disruptive technology.

I was recently interviewed by a Japanese MIT MBA student who had spent a month working for one of the most professional money managers in Russia. He had come to Russia to see for himself where Russia fitted in to the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China - A Goldman Sachs Report) scheme of things. The essence of his conclusions was that China was a huge opportunity that was incredibly difficult to access and that more people would fail than succeed. His criticisms of China read like a litany of my criticisms of Russia. Except that his conclusion that working with the Government in China is more difficult than in Russia. On a scale of really annoying that would be off the top of the scale. He saw multiple opportunities in Russia because he felt that the economy was more open to foreign intervention (viz BP/TNK). We had to agree that this is a relative and not an absolute benefit.

Interestingly he saw great opportunities in India as (nearly all?) the economy is controlled by a few firms/families which are beginning their third Harvard-educated generations.

He was an Investment Banker, and thought like one, however he had been to all three countries. Had done business in all three and was talking about in an office in Moscow not a conference room in California.

In line with my desire for greater honesty in public life I would like to see more use of facts in discussion of trends. Repeating the same crap as everyone else does not make you an expert it makes you a voice for hire.

The First of the Year

It's taken a while to clear the decks and move on to the first blog of the year, which by the time I get to post it is no longer the first........

All in all this should be an interesting year:

On a personal front I expect to finally close our new fund for investing in Russian technologies along with our newly democratic Ukrainian colleagues. There are a couple of other things also going on but they aren't really for this blog.

Two of my personal investments face (another) company changing year. My all time favorite, jNETx, will either close the year with a route to IPO, or acquisition, and a ground breaking, money spinning product. Or it will do well and that will be it. Acol is at an earlier stage of breakthrough. As the CEO said last night at dinner; "We've laid the foundations, now we have to deliver.." Amen. The success of my companies has a direct, and measurable, impact on my mood. A review of 2005 will have to feature their successes (or failures) as a leading highlight.

Russia is at a crossroads and by the end of this year we should have a clearer view of which route Putin's Russia intends to take. Roland Nash, Renaissance Capital's super smart head of strategy tried in this piece on the Tass website to look for the positive. He is paid to do so. My glass is emptier than his. Where we differ ultimately is that I don't believe that Putin is in control of his own people.

One month after the year starts I have started, with the thoughts for the year. Lets see where they take us.

Get To The Point

I am not one of the world's greatest builders of presentations but I have learnt from being on the other side of the table that a presentation that does not get to the point will lose my attention and have me looking out of the window thinking of something else. This post says it better than I do.

Iraqi Elections

Fred has some of the usual problems that those of us who oppose the aftermath to the war in Iraq face. His most recent post "Silence means.. is aptly titled. What he says implicitly is as important as the explicit. As always he is open to debate and willing to listen to other points of view. There is reference to an email discussion with "his friend Steve" who replied;

I said all of this to Steve, who replied that, "it was specious to speculate what one life, 100 lives, or 1400 lives was worth", and that "The attempt to create an alternative to radical Islam - even at the expense of significant blood and treasure - is not only worth it, but is necessary and unavoidable." He went on to say that "it's either thousands of lives now or hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of our kids lives later".
I lack some of Fred's willingness to listen to multiple points of view maybe because I expect an argument to be based on some form of agreed upon facts. His "friend Steve" implicitly states that Iraq is creating an alternative to radical Islam. This is a non-fact. Iraq was an alternative to radical Islam before the invasion, it was the only truly secular state in the Middle East (Persian Gulf). It had plenty of other failings, not least of which was a disregard for human rights that make Abu Graib and the Brits in Basra look like white collar crime. That it is now a breeding ground for radical Islam does not mean that stopping radical Islam can be used as a post-facto justification. Anymore than WMD or connections to Al Qaaeda were are or ever will be. You cannot have a discussion whose starting point has no basis in fact.

So the campaign for 2005 is honesty in all communication. Lets start with: We invaded Iraq because the regime was brutal, would go out of its way to piss the US off and the forecasts for oil over the next decade meant that we should ensure that it was on our side before Saudi Arabia ends up in revolution.