An Update
An Update – I have been remiss to post more, and the not-so-subtle comments from many of my friends in conjunction with my own guilty conscience have finally forced me to change. While I don’t promise to blog on a regular basis, I intend to write very short pieces on selective areas, more frequently. Below are a few thoughts that I have been having lately, but first let me tell you what I have been up to in the past year and my whereabouts in the next month or so:
What I Have Done Since June 2007. A lot more than I was planning and yet accomplished a lot less than I had hoped. Six areas have taken up the majority of my time:
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Investing in startups – I have been looking at many business plans and selected three of them for investments: one in U.S., one in India, and one in China, two of which are about to close in the next month or so, and I’ll disclose them soon. These are seed level investments in the consumer Internet space.
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Industry contacts and Advisory – A good part of my time is spent in meeting with entrepreneurs and investors, and in many cases, I have been unofficially (that is without pay!) advising some startups. I have also occasionally participated in conferences and have had some speaking engagements, both of which have helped keep me in the flow.
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Board of Directors – Wings Learning Center, a school for children within Autism Spectrum Disorder . As the board president, my responsibilities have been a lot more than I expected, especially as our school is in need of much help and resources. (www.wingslearnigncenter.org). I am also on the advisory board of SEMPO and will join the boards of the two companies I’ll invest in, but so far I have not yet committed to any other board memberships. I may choose one or two beyond my core investments, but I don’t intend to add many more.
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Travel – This is the best part of course (and the costliest one too) – Trips to Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Yosemite, and other places, with my fifteen year old son have been extremely satisfying. You see some of the photos on this site – more are at my public albums in Picasa.
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Investing in public equities, with a focus on TMT space in the U.S. and China. So far, I have been lucky enough to stay above the trends and show some small profit for the year.
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Flying and Spanish lessons – Both have been humbling as they have taken much longer than I thought – hoping to get my private pilot license soon, but I am far from being muy buen in speaking Spanish.
