I recommend this video I found in David Reche’s blog.

It’s interesting and fun: David Heinemeier (the Ruby on Rails creator) talking about the real world, ideas, execution and his tips in starting a business (not a startup!).

Some of my notes:

I feel Silicon Valley has its own particular way of doing business. Often, all of their conventions are taken for granted, but they were not always obvious for me when I came here. That’s why I’ve decided to start a new set of posts and share some of my leanings and experiences hoping they will sometime be useful for someone else.

I already tried once to summarize my learnings about networking… This is a list of the things I’m going to talk about and you can vote by which do you think I should start :D

I attach a letter shared by Xavier Sala-i-Martin in Facebook.

Para una tierra feliz y pobre

Recuerdo que mi primera gran impresión al llegar al Senegal (os hablo, como los abuelos, del año 68) la recibí al constatar que la gente reía con frecuencia. Creía hallar un pueblo agobiado, con las orejas gachas y el rabo entre piernas, ¡y los tíos reían cada dos por tres! Pues no veo yo en qué consiste la juerga, pensaba. Aquí hay hambre, enfermedades, mortalidad infantil, inmovilismo económico, cerrazón política, analfabetismo, sin hablar de todo lo demás (uno se sabía al dedillo los datos estadísticos que hacen al caso). ¿Dónde están, entonces, los lamentos y la tristeza congénita de los desamparados?
Lo bueno del caso es que, ni las estadísticas mentían, ni la alegría era falsa. Sencillamente, era una tierra pobre pero feliz; o feliz, aunque pobre.

Desde entonces, ni en mis quince años en Senegal ni en mis, aún más extensos, veinte años en Camerún, la cosa no ha dejado de asombrarme. Sigue pareciéndome algo así como un milagro. Como lo de Lourdes, a lo gigante. Resulta que no están contentos por lo que les da la vida, sino por la vida misma; no por lo que tienen, sino por lo que son.

Me diréis: ¡Pues vaya manera de pedir ayuda! Porque, me olvidaba, eso que estoy escribiendo debería servir para pedir ayuda. De acuerdo. Un enfermo que gime siempre da más lástima que otro que sonríe. Sin embargo, ayudar a un hombre acabado es menos tentador que tenderle una mano a alguien lleno de empuje. En el primer caso, tienes la sensación de estarle echando agua a un barreño sin culo: pura pérdida. En el segundo, en cambio, te dices que, a poco que colabores, la cosa tiene sentido.

Africa no está saliendo del túnel económico. Eso parece ser un hecho. Pero, os lo juro, esa tierra no tiene nada de barreño sin fondo (vamos a dejar lo de “culo”). Aquí la gente tiene madera, y de la buena, de esa que no se lleva el primer fuego de verano. Personalmente nunca he tenido la sensación de estar perdiendo el tiempo. Y es esa sensación la que precisamente quisiera evitaros. El nefasto: “¿Otra vez? Pues, para lo que sirve! …” Por si os sirve, a mí me está pareciendo cada vez más que sí sirve.

Afectuosamente,

Antoni Sala, noviembre 2008

If you want to know more about Umbele, here’s a piece of their description:

The second was the realization that there are a lot of people in rich countries that are horrified by the continuous deterioration of the situation in Africa and want to do something about it. The problem is that they either don’t know how to help or they don’t trust some of the NGOs that seem to have become multinational corporations, with huge organizational expenses, that take a large part of the resources donated. They also distrust the local lords, politicians and other corrupt leaders that steal the goods donated by the rich world and sell them in the black markets.

The third thing we noticed is that, in order to help in an efficient manner, one does not need to deploy a new network of volunteers (which is very expensive). Instead, one needs to use a network that is already in place, a network of people that we all admire for their sacrifice. This is the network of our missionaries. Whether we are religious or not, whether we like or dislike the religious authorities, we all feel a special sympathy for these men and women that are giving their lives to help the peoples who most need it.

Umbele, a foundation whose main objective is to channel money given by you to some of the poorest citizens in Africa through the network of missionaries with the most direct and efficient way possible, without losing resources along the way.

The idea is to use the missionaries in two ways. First, we want to use their experience and knowledge to identify problems and suggest solutions. Although the missionaries are free to suggest ways in which the money is to be spent, we want to keep in mind that the main goal is to help Africans help themselves, whether this is helping them set up their own business, inducing kids to go to school or encouraging them to go to the clinic or hospital to get tested or vaccinated. The second way is to channel money donated by the citizens of the rich world.

Silicon Valley and YouNoodle in the news:

Today I was asked what “the Spanish dream” was and I had to answer that I think that the Spanish dream is finding a job for life.

It was horrible to recognize that. Is it true? Or is it that I’m completely biased and since I came to the US and now consider that everything in Spain is slow, conservative and not-entrepreneurial?

I’m not sure. I hope I was wrong when I said that, but that’s what came to my mind when thinking about the ideals, and that’s what I’ve felt to be the dream wile growing up in Spain.

I admit that maybe “the dream” involves some more things such as having full weekends to party, long summer vacations to travel the world and enough money to be able to forget about it. In business, the dream can either be having a 9 to 5 job that pays enough, or being a director, manager or an important person in a multinational company. That’s at least the vision when you study at a business school: manage teams, make decisions, think strategically. Nothing wrong with it, except that it takes longer to realize that when you decided to study business you were not dreaming with managing some other people’s business, but with starting a business yourself. And somehow that dream was almost killed in the way.

Anyway, the reason I wrote this post is because I hope that someone will prove me wrong :D And if you don’t, at least I want to be sure of what’s the situation and find more people who will work to change that.

I discovered an interesting website today and I wanted to share some of the videos that I found there. The messages given are not new for me any more (after a year living close to American universities and Silicon Valley in general), but they might be useful for my family and friends to understand why I’m here.

• Passion for work (video)
• Persistence pays off (video)
• Experience is overrated (video)
• The strengths of Silicon Valley (video)
• Can entrepreneurship be taught? (video)
• Perseverance: sticking to your beliefs (video)
• A member of the CEO minority (video)
• Entrepreneurs: then and now (pre and post 2001) (video)

Anyone still doesn’t understand why I’m here? ;)

Update: Pepe was in fact the one who found this website and gave me the link and he is requesting a mention :)

Disruptive innovations are going to occur in the banking system. I’m not a guru in the sector (yet ;-)) but for many reasons it seams obvious to me. I feel there is a tremendous gap between the possibilities technology offers and what we end up using as clients.  There is also a huge gap between the European an American systems, and there will be endless opportunities in the developing world.

The current banking system is far from the real needs of real users. It’s not practical, functional, easy, transparent and flexible. Plus it’s expensive. It feels like we are treating with big guys with their established systems which are impossible to change.

But maybe not anymore. Maybe the banking crisis we’ve just lived, and the resulting lack of confidence in the existing banking system, will have a positive impact in the industry. Maybe it will be a booster for disruptive innovation and maybe people will be more open to try other possibilities once it’s been proved that the status quo is not infallible.

Someone has to fill these gaps. PayPal, Google and some more have good innovations, but I think they are still expensive and not good enough.

I’m starting to think about some of these disruptive changes, and to formulate how a practical, functional, easy, transparent, flexible and inexpensive bank should be.

What do you not like about your bank and how do you think it should work?