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Archives for September 2007

Google 2.0, $100 billion revenue and my prediction

admin · September 27, 2007 · 3 Comments

Larry Dignan of ZDNet has a post on how Google can get to $100 billion per some Wall St. analyst. And I want in on this scam. But before I pontificate, here is a quote from the blog post:

Google is projected by Wall Street to have annual revenue of $15.7 billion in 2008 and $19 billion in 2009. But the ambitions are higher–more like $100 billion in annual revenue. The big question: How will Google get there?

That question is being addressed in a report by Stephen Arnold, of ArnoldIT. Arnold made the rounds at Bear Stearns providing briefings about his report. In the report, Google 2.0: The Calculating Predator, Arnold analyzed Google’s patent pipeline and linked them to business strategies. Simply put, Arnold is trying to figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up.

Larry has some choice sub-headings like

  • Extrapolating Google’s potential business strategies takes guesswork.
  • Will math rule the world?

The discussion on how Google is building a hypercube and not a cube is just mind-blowing stuff. Why didn’t I think of this? BigTable is better than a Table. So HyperCube is better than Cube. I think I am going to build the following artifacts:

  1. Meta Search Engine > Search Engine
  2. AllofyouTube > YouTube (In stead of you, I take care of all of you.)
  3. HMail > GMail
  4. Temporal Time Shifting Super Ultra xPhone with built-in customizable, configurable meta browser and support for WiMax… mmm… 3.0

Okay. Now, I fully understand how Google will get to $100 billion in revenue. Its basically by doing it in $30 billion dollar chunks, thrice.

But more importantly, I get how Arnold will get to a $10 million bonus soon:

Step 1: Come up with an outrageous revenue number for Google.

Step 2: Become famous. Drive business for the company (I assume ArnoldIT is his gig). $640 a pop, all it costs is about the price of one Google share.

Step 3:
Well, there is 2 paths to $10 million.

Step 3a:
If Google gets to $100bn in revenue, this guy becomes the biggest genius ever (in retrospective analysis). And gets to make probably much much more than my conservative $10 million estimate.

Step 3b:
If Google fails to get to $100bn in revenue, he follows Henry Blodget and writes a book. And with or without the book, all he needs to sell is a few thousand copies of the $640 report – 15,625 copies to be precise.


So, here is what I am predicting:
Arnold makes $10 million in personal income before Google makes $100 billion in revenue.

Note: My report on Arnold making $10 million will be available for $64 (one-tenth the cost of Arnold’s report). I accept PayPal only. No Google Checkout payment facility available, yet.

Oracle Webcast: Web2.0 in the Enterprise

admin · September 27, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Oracle is hosting a chat with Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School and Thomas Kurian, Senior Vice-President, Oracle Fusion Middleware. I encourage you to register for the event. Oracle’s guest Andrew is a well-known Web2.0 advocate on how businesses can leverage Web2.0 for internal and external communications and automation of processes. This should be an exciting session.

Event Details:

Web 2.0 in the Enterprise—Separating Myths from the New Realities of Collaborative Business Processes
October 2, 2007, 9:30 a.m. PT

Join Oracle for a live, multi-channel online event featuring Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School, and Thomas Kurian, Senior Vice President, Fusion Middleware, Oracle, to hear about the Web 2.0 technologies that make sense for the modern enterprise, and how to create Web 2.0-enabled business processes that leverage your existing IT systems and create a richer user experience.

  • Register now

AnshuBlog.com valuation hits $5 Trillion after private placement round

admin · September 26, 2007 · 6 Comments

My blog is now worth $5 trillion dollars. My best friend (now, BFF) agreed to buy a 0.0000000010% stake in anshublog.com for $50.

I will hold an IPO in December and the shares will be priced at $85 (of course, there will 58,823,529,411 shares outstanding).

You can obtain a prospectus by sending me $25 by PayPal. 😉

Learning from Facebook

Om Malik and Kara write about the rumors that Microsoft is about to acquire a 5% stake in Facebook at a valuation of $10 billion.

Here are some practical ways of applying this method (there is a method to this madness) to great advantage in other spheres of life:

  • Propose with a 1% 10-Caret Diamond Ring: This would be 0.1 Caret ring but would make your fiance feel like a (1o-Caret) Princess (cut).
  • Tell your boss you have been offered a $300K job: You can ensure that you are not lying by asking your friend (who will then be your BFF) to pay you $10 for a 3-minute chore such as washing a dish. The trick is to annualize your salary.
  • Tell friends your blog gets 7.27 million-views-per-year: Note that you must not state that you get 7.27 million views in one year. In stead, state that you got hit at this rate – the trick is to measure over a 10 second period where you get 2 or more hits.

Send me your ideas. I am sure there are millions of good ideas I can come up with (since I came up with 3 in last 13 minutes – I just need to extrapolate.)

What do you think?

Marc-to-Market in Plain English: Is public company accounting really broken?

admin · September 23, 2007 · 4 Comments

In this post, I explain the mark-to-market scheme (or accounting mechanism) in plain English.

Marc Andreessen says – That’s it, public company accounting is broken – on how public companies including big banks and brokerage houses are claiming profits on their books by marking down their own debt obligations. Here is what he has to say:

One of the dirty little secrets — or rather, dirty huge non-secrets — of Wall Street is that public company accounting has been diverging further and further from cash accounting — which is to say, reality — over time.

Over the last several years, a whole series of new laws and rules have larded up income statements and balance sheets with all kinds of fictional, non-cash components to the point that you basically can’t conclude much about any public company financial statement you see, except that you really better read all the fine print.

Marc then cites a WSJ article but it was rather complicated so I thought I would illustrate it by using a simpler example. (Let me know if you think I got it wrong or complicated it further!)

3 Players: Anshu, Marc and Bank of England

The game begins: Anshu borrows $1 billion from Marc

  • Anshu borrows $1 billion from Marc. (I am sure he made as much or near about. 😉 )
  • On my books – I have a debt obligation of $1 billion – and that is the market value of this debt (since I am totally credit worthy).
  • On Marc’s books – he can show assets of $1 billion in IOU’s from me.
  • Marc can sell this credit note (from me) to Bank of England for $1 billion, so the market value of the debt is $1 billion. So far, we are all good.

On close of loan:
Anshu: $1 billion (debt owed)
Marc: $1 billion (assets- my IOU)

Didn’t Stay in Vegas!

I now go gambling to Vegas with Larry & Bill (you know which ones) and start gambling. I end up loosing lots of money (no one knows how much – kind of, like mortgage companies). So my creditworthiness goes down. (Of course, Moody’s will wait for few more quarters before realizing this! 😉 )

Marc can no longer sell my IOU to Bank of England for $1 billion, they are not stupid (assumption!). So the value of my debt goes down to say $600 million i.e., the market pegs the value of this IOU at $600 million – in other words, someone like Bank of England would be willing to buy the IOU owned by Marc for $600 million.

In short,

  • Anshu’s creditworthiness falls.
  • The IOU’s are worth only $600 million in the market.

Reality:
Anshu: $1 billion (debt owed)
Marc: $600 million (assets – my IOU)

Now, the new accounting rules suggest that I can mark my debt to market i.e., I can claim I only owe $600 million now since that is the value of my debt on the market.

New Rules:
Anshu: $600 million (the value of my IOU, not the debt owed)
Marc: $600 million (assets- my IOU)

Since I have $400 million less debt by new rules, I just made $400 million profit!

The problem is this: I still owe Marc (or the owner of the IOU) $1 billion. A lot of ordinary Americans who have credit card problems are familiar with this- you miss 5 payments on your Citi Card, and the bank sells you to a collection agency for pennies on the dollars. But, you still owe the full amount. Now, in some cases, you can negotiate down the debt but till that happens you still owe the full amount.

SaaS Event: Software Business Online Conference (Discount Code Included)

admin · September 20, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I will be giving a keynote the Software Business Online Conference in Santa Clara on Oct 2nd on the SaaS Ecosystem. In my role of working with Oracle SaaS Program partners, I have learned some lessons on where the SaaS ecosystem is headed, what mistakes to avoid, how to pick the right partners and ecosystems – and I will share this insight.

Some of the other speakers include:

Keynote and General Session speakers for the event include:

  • Theodore Forbath, Chief Strategist Software Development, Wipro Technologies
  • Thomas Lindeman, Group Product Manager Software Licensing & Protection Services, Microsoft
  • Grant Bodley, VP, High Tech Sector, SAP
  • Reza Sadeghian, VP, Strategic Operations, SAP
  • Ross Mayfield, CEO & Founder, Socialtext
  • Colleen Smith, VP of Software as a Service Programs, Progress Software
  • Anshu Sharma, Senior Manager, Oracle SaaS Program Office
  • Vladimir L Pavlov, Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer of the International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute
  • Chris Schin, Director of Product Management, Symantec
  • John Ciacchella, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP

You can register and receive a $400 speaker referral discount at http://www.infowebcom.com/speaker_reg.php

If you want to learn about Oracle’s SaaS Program for ISVs and hosters, do visit http://www.oracle.com/technologies/saas/index.html.

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