Telling stories?

Todays FT carries a piece about Google going public, splashed all across the back page. Its remarkably similar to a piece I read a few weeks ago on the same topic. The basic gist being that Silicon Valley is looking to a Google IPO to restart the money machine. This is wierd becase to my knowledge Google has made no plans to go public and certainly hasn't put out any press to that effect. So what's going on?

Well possibly Google is building support for an IPO by stealth, or more likely perhaps an investment bank is trying to talk Google into letting them handle the IPO.

According to the FT they've got revenue of $500m and a 30% margin. If we assume constant margins and a growth of 25% p/a for five years and then steady performance into the distance (and this is a very conservative estimate) Google is worth $3.8bn, (discounting at an arbitary 10%). That is one enormous pile of money, especially for a firm with only 600 employees.

But Google could have cashed in a while back, any time in the last five years in fact. And if they can hang around long enough to ride the next tech boom instead of trying to start it they'd be worth a lot more. Going public would also expose Google to the rigours of a stock market that simply wouldn't understand them. There would be takeover risks, and a pressure to do something with all that money. I'm not sure Google could spend all that money, I'm not sure its founders would care about it that much. Seqouia Capital would probably love the money, and could probably do great things with it, but they probably appreciate that right now holding makes far more sense than selling.

So, am I wrong and where are all these stories about a flotation coming from? Someone knows, but its not me.

A world of ends

The latest contribution from the cluetrain authors - well two of them - is world of ends, an interpretation of what the internet means, what makes it good and perhaps more importantly what you should do to exploit this. The assortment of recommended reading here is impressive as well.

About time too

Tom Watson is the MP for West Bromich East and he's about to be much better known than he is now. Why? because he's the first MP to run his own blog. Its got to be worth a mention in the Guardian at least.

Just read it, the guys real, he's human. He writes about stuff. Christ, he even posts to newsgroups. Its probably Alistair Campbells worst nightmare, imagine if they all did it. This ladies and gentlemen is good for democracy.

I'm doomed

I've barely got the last one out of my system when they go and bring out not one, but two new versions. I swear if I hadn't spent so much of my youth playing wargames and reading history this might be an easier habit to kick, but its not. In some ways this is the game I've wanted to play ever since I was old enough to run around on Hadrians wall and imagine I was defending it...

Oh well, at least the marketing plan I'm writing for Heritage Theatre is now coming together. They're not DVD's, they're books. Trust me on this, I know they're round, flat and the pictures move but they're books. Once you think of it like that you're onto a winner.

Do blogs have celebrities

Well how you define celebrity is interesting. Yesterday I read Doc Searls on the Raging Cow story. Then I read Tim at Bloggerheads on the same thing, so I speculatively mailed Doc and pointed him to Tim's website. Doc blogged Tim and me, this is Tim's rather restrained response

"Cannot. Cope. Level.. of... coolness.. (*choke*) Rising!"

Odd thing is how approachable bloggers are. Don't think I've ever written to one and not got a reply. I put this down to what I'm going to vaingloriously call Lloyd's first law of networking, which is "If you say something interesting you will get peoples attention". Its recently been suggested that whenever we have a networking event I'm the one who ends up talking to X, Y or Z. This is not entirely luck, the trick is to think of something person X is interested in, tell them what you think of it and invite a response. Compared to the people saying 'I really like your book', 'I'm a huge fan of yours' or 'what did you have for breakfast' this is going to get results.

But getting assigned the seat next to Hermann Hauser last night was just a fluke. One I was subsequently asked to trade to someone who had a real reason to talk to him, so I made do with chatting over drinks and just enjoyed the food instead.

More schmoozing

Dinner with Hermann Hauser last night. Hermann is one of the figures behind the silicon fen phenomenon in Cambridge. In particular he's involved with ARM and most of Cambridges other billion dollar companies. Back in the day he was cofounder of Acorn computer which unleashed the BBC Micro on a generation of school kids.

His goal is to turn Cambridge into a 'first division' hi tech cluster and he seems to be making progress. The business school has much the same idea here, and both sides are making progress. Both have 1500 - 2000 local hi-tech firms, world class research universities and so on. What's missing is the entrepreneurial culture and the money - both of which are slowly starting to appear. Certainly SBS and Judge should go a long way to addressing the entrepreneurial thing.

At the other end of the education spectrum

There's often a tendency to think that people are harking back to some ill remembered good old days when this kind of stuff comes out, but I don't think they are. This is really depressing stuff, in twenty years time will our economy be stuffed not because we messed up some part of basic competitiveness, but because we forgot to teach our children to speak?

Imagine a future nation of bloated illiterates, the fast food uneducated nation, a land blissfully unaware of the contempt in which the rest of the world holds it, and indeed the pace at which the rest of the world is catching it up. If I was Prime Minister I'd worry about this kind of thing far more than pretty much anything else. Will the west lose its dominance through apathy? In fifty years time I reckon that may be exactly what happens.

Bush Administration orders spying on UN delegates

Last one today folks. Honestly, if this had happened in a hotel it would have been a scandal, might have even rated one of those 'gate' extensions, UNGate or diplomatgate or something. Instead it seems noone really cares that UN delegates in New York are subject to aggressive surveillance by the NSA.

I mean, I know its hardly shocking, but now we've caught them shouldn't they at least apologise?

Yet more on Google / Blogger

Shamelessly cadging this link from Tim at Bloggerheads here is the FAQ on the Google / Blogger merger. Now, normally when two companies merge you get a bog standard press release, some waffle about synergies and some statements to the effect that 'our future plans will make us the rulers of the world' or at least 'the darlings of the stock market'. This doesn't read like that, is is also ten times more believable.

One day all companies will be honest, speak like real people and enjoy the trust of their customers. For now though Google and Blogger can make hay while the sun shines.

Letter from my MP

I have to say, this fax your MP service works wonders. Type a quick message and get a reply from your MP within days. This time I've got a standard looking letter about the war with Iraq in return (signed with his own rubber stamp) - which is fair enough as I imagine he's had hundreds of the things to write. On the other hand when I wrote about the extension of the RIP act I got what seemed to be a fairly well researched response which at least suggested I made my point to his researchers.

So, what does the Right Honourable Andrew Smith have to say about the war? Well his letter makes persistent references to both government policy and acting through the UN which may or may not be the same thing. Reading between the lines (he's a diplomatic chap this Andrew) I reckon he's one of those who will be ok with things as long as there's a second resolution, but probably at least considered joining the rebels last week. He's also attatched an FAQ from the Foreign Secretary, which contains this rather interesting entry.

Q. Is not this issue really about control of one of the world's largest oil reserves?
A. In the event of military action, Iraq's oil fields would be protected from environmental terrorism, and the revenue generated would be used to benefit the iraqi people. If oil were the issue, it would be infinitely simpler to cut a deal with Saddam.

Now leaving aside the difficulties of stopping Saddam blowing the oil fields up - how are we going to stop him? Airstrikes? This looks like a pretty sound argument. On the other hand pre Gulf War I Saddam was a signed up member of OPEC, which he got himself chucked out of by invading Kuwait. Since then he's been something of a pariah and even our noble leaders couldn't really have done a deal. Perhaps the real issue is that ever since he fell out with the west its not been possible to do a deal with Saddam, and before that he'd realised that Iraq would make a lot more money from its oil by staying in OPEC. Of course this wasn't necessarily money the Iraqi oil moguls were going to share with their people but still...

Anyway, thats my latest update for the increasingly political MBA Experience website. If you want to know how the course is going well its been work, work, more work and now, revision!