Viral Video Production Company: Connective Productions

Connective Productions is a company that I and a few of my friends started in business school. We connect advertisers with online filmmakers to create product integration online. Here is the first video that was created through our marketplace, Wrestler. Check it out and forward to your friends if you liked it!

Is Swoopo a scam?

Winner's curse? Try winner's and loser's curse. Swoopo is the self-proclaimed "home of exciting, fast-paced auctions on the internet." The prices on the site are significantly lower than on other auctions sites such as eBay, but there is a catch: bids are made in $0.15 increments and cost $1 each.

For example, as you can see in the picture below, an Apple iPod Touch just sold for $95.40, $133 below market price. The winner, Jannlotz, also bid 35 times, which cost him/her an additional $35. So the total savings was about $100. But what about all of the other bidders? According to Swoopo, the auction price for all items starts at $0.15. For a winning price of $95.40, that would mean 635 bids were made on this item (600 of which were NOT by the winner). In a 10 minute span, I saw at least 100 bids placed by bidders that eventually lost the auction. So even though Jannlotz was the auction winner, the real winner was Swoopo ($600 in bids - $100 loss on the item for a total of $500!!). And I'm sure there are situations where the auction winner ends up paying more than the value of the item (because of the sunk cost of bidding). For example, say that you have made 100 bids on an item worth $100. If the price is still below $100, it is worth the $1 marginal bid to buy the item for under market price.

In conclusion, Swoopo is not a scam but rather an auction site for those with very high risk tolerance. Bid wisely...

Trip to Amsterdam

Caitlin and I arrived in Caitlin late Monday night. We stayed at The Crooked House (above), a great little hostel in the southern canal area. Tuesday we wandered around the city and met up with my friend Laura from Stanford. On Wednesday we went to The Rijksmusem--the building itself is a piece of art. It was built by Pierre Cuypers, who also has exhibits in the museum. Most of the museum is actually under construction right now, but they moved the masterpieces to the section that is open. They have a great Rembrandt section--the most famous piece is below:


Wednesday evening we went to the Anne Frank museum, which was very sad and moving. I had been unable to see it my first time to Amsterdam and was glad to see it this trip.

On Thursday we went to the Van Gogh museum, which has over 200 paintings from the short-lived artist's life.

Next in our trip is a one day stop in London, before heading back to the States on Sunday.

Our trip to Prague

We arrived in Prague on Friday morning after a 4am flight from Athens, and were very happy to find out that our hotel room was ready when we arrived. After a morning nap, we went out to discover what Prague is all about--cheap beer and food :) We had a delicious roasted chicken leg and a 0.5 liter of Hoegaarden (yes, I realize its not Czech, but it is one of my favorite beers) for less than $10 each. We were then off to the castle (see picture above), walking across the famous Charles Bridge into the Little Quarter. The castle is one of the largest in all of Europe, and also the best preserved because it avoided Nazi bombs during WWII. While the views outside are spectacular, the tour probably isn't worth the price of admission--it was only a couple of rooms and nothing to special. After a delicious dinner and 2 liters of beer for less than $15, we wandered the streets of Prague and headed home for a good nights rest.

The next day we did some shopping and sight-seeing in the Old Town, starting at the Old Town Square and off to the Havelska Market before seeing the Museum of Communism. Old Town Square is the location of the Jan Hus Memorial, as well as Tyn Church and the Astronomical Clock (see the pictures below for more detail).

The communist museum was very interesting, as it outlined the 40 year history of Soviet rule over Czechoslovakia until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The Soviet propaganda posters were probably the most alarming artifacts in the museum, and the video at the end of the Communist Party riot police beating students (including women) that were non-violently protesting. As an aside, the museum is located above a McDonalds and next to a casino--talk about a change from 20 years ago.

On Sunday we spent the afternoon at the Jewish Museum. The museum is located in the Josefov (Jewish) quarter, and has many sites. The first we visited was the highly emotional Pinkas Synagogue, which contains the names of the approximately 80,000 Czech Jews who were sent from here to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. On the second floor the Terezin Children's Art Exhibit displays the drawings of the the almost 10,000 children imprisoned at the Terezin Concentration Camp. Only a few hundred of these children survived the holocaust.

After walking through the Old Jewish Cemetery (the only burial grounds allowed for Czech Jews from 1439 to 1787), we entered the Maisel Synagogue, which was contained many Jewish history exhibitions. This was actually the place where all Jewish artifacts were stored during WWII, as the captive leaders of the Terezin Ghetto convinced Hitler to create a "Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race." Quite an emotional afternoon.

Statue on the Charles Bridge

Memorial of Jan Hus, overlooking the Tyn Church in Old Town Square. Hus was burned for condemning the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church (100 years before Martin Luther)

The 15th century Astronomical Church strikes at the top of the hour

Four statues surround the clock. A figure staring into a mirror represents vanity, a Jewish moneylender is greed, a Turk playing the mandolin stands for hedonism. All are reminded by death that these are only worldly goals. When death tips his hourglass, the 12 apostles pass by the window above, the rooster crows and the hour is rung.

Beautiful Art Nouveau building in Old Town Square

And here are a few more fun pictures :)

An And1 slam dunk contest in Wencelas Square

The signs on the bathroom doors

Caitlin amazed at the size of her $3 beer at our first lunch

Wine tasting in Santorini

Today we went wine tasting in Santorini with our friends Rob and Hannah from DC. Our hotel manager recommended that we check out Santos winery and Antoniou. After a few wrong turns, we made it to the ridiculous views from Santo Wines (see below).

Rob, Hannah and Caitlin at Santo Wines

At Santos we tried 6 wines (starting from right)

1. Assyrtico—a very nice, dry white wine which wasn’t too bitter or too sweet. My personal favorite.
2. Nykteni—this wine was ok; Rob and Hannah liked it more than the first
3. Ageni rose—a semi-dry rose wine that was one of our favorites
4. Voudomato—we found that the red wines from Santorini were not very good—this was definitely the worst
5. Imiglinos—a very sweet white wine; Caitlin didn’t care much for it but I thought it was good
6. Vinsanto—Santorini is famous for its unfortified dessert wine. It tastes very similar to port, and is made by drying white grapes out in the sun for 2 week

After a 20 min tour of the winery facilities, we headed off to Antoniou, a cute little winery with three tastings (white, red, vinsanto) for 5 euro.

View from Antoniou patio

We finished the wine tour by driving to the Santorini Wine Museum. For 6 euro per person, we got a tape recorded tour of the museum as well as 3 tastings. The museum is extremely cheesy—it felt like a guided walk through a 1950s carnival ride (see video below). It was interesting to learn that the island used very old-fashioned wine making methods because there was no electricity until 1970.

For dinner that night we drove out to the last taverna before the lighthouse in Akrotiri—our hotel manager Kostas recommended it as a great place to get fresh, cheap fish. He was definitely right—we had two lobster and a cod-like fish for 28 euro. Our waitress took us to the back of the restaurant to choose our fish (see mine below). Her father catches the fish that day and prepares it himself. No question this was one of my favorite meals in Greece.

Nea Kameni – Santorini Volcano

For our first day in Santorini we took a day cruise out to Nea Kameni, the most active volcano on Santorini Island. It was created in the 18^th century, with its most recent explosion less than 100 years ago. The island itself has had a very active past—one of the largest volcanic explosions in the history of the planet created the beautiful cliffs (known as the caldera) around 1650 BC. Ash from the explosion was found in South America, and would have been heard on the Western coast of France. It is believed that this explosion is what wiped out the great Minoan culture on Crete. Since then, earthquakes and other volcanic explosions have created the beautiful views on the island.

We took a wooden sail boat which looked like a pirate ship out to the volcano, and then climbed up to the peak, which had ridiculous views of the island. Afterwards we took the boat out to Palia Kameni to swim in the hot springs that spew into the Aegean sea. Then we had lunch in Thirasia, which was separated from the main island in 236 BC. That evening we watched the sunset from Akrotiri, and then drove the rental car (a tiny red Peugot) to have dinner and drinks with our friends we met in Mykonos.

Justin at Nea Kameni Port with the Caldera in the background

View of Hotel Mathios from our balcony

The pirate ship we took to the volcano

Sunset from Akrotiri

Mykonos

Today is our last day in Mykonos before we head out to Santorini. Here's a quick recap:

We left for our ferry around 4pm, which got us into Mykonos around 9. If you are ever taking a trip to Mykonos, make sure you have arranged for a ride! It was a madhouse. Another ferry had arrived later than expected... imagine 1000 people + 50 cars leaving two boats onto a road 4m wide. To say the infrastructure here isn't that developed would be an understatement :)
Caitlin and I finally found a cab after about an hour, and we drove down into Mykonos town. Most of the streets are so small that you can't actually drive on them. The whole town is a maze, which is really cool. It was developed that way because this was an island hide away for Pirates!

Our hotel (Hotel Philipi) is awesome--its a little place right in the middle of Mykonos town, with a beautiful garden in the patio. Location couldn't be better for the price.

Friday night we met a nice couple from DC at dinner and grabbed drinks on the water in Little Venice. Cait and I then finished the night at club down in Taxi Square. Saturday was a day of drinking at Paradise Beach. Now we're off for lunch at a gyro stand before boarding our ferry to Santorini. I'm excited because I heard the views from the ferry are great.

Windmills in Mykonos

View from the bus

Paradise Beach


Caitlin and Justin at Paradise Beach

Ruins in Athens

Caitlin and I arrived in Athens yesterday after a long day of traveling. We are staying at the Pan Hotel, which is a nice, small boutique hotel in Syntagma Square. While the room is small, the location is amazing--we are literally 15 minutes from the major ruins in Athens.

We started our day at the Acropolis at 9am, which was good because we just beat the huge tour crowds. First we entered through the Temple of Athena Nike, which is currently under construction. Next we walked by the Erechtheion, which contains the famous six Caryatid scupltures. Then we were off to the Parthenon, the most impressive ruin in the Acropolis. Inside stood the greatest sculptural feat from the artchitect (Phidias): a 12 m gold and ivory statue of Athena. Unfortunately, the statue was destroyed many centuries ago.

The next ruins site we visited was the Agora, the marketplace of ancient Greece. Here stands the best preserved Greek temple, Hephaesteion.

We then trekked up Philopappos Hill, to get the best views of the Acropolis. On the way we passed by Socrate's prison.

We finished the day by visiting the temple of Zeus. Unfortunately, only 15 of the 100+ columns from Greece's largest temple remain. Now we are off for drinks and then dinner, before heading out to Mykonos on Friday.

Caitlin in front of the Parthenon


Ancient Theater of Dionysus

Facebook Social Advertising Part II

I asked Khalid today if he was aware of his name and picture being used to advertise for Veritas on Facebook. To my surprise, he said no. He became a "fan" of Veritas to get a 10% discount on their GMAT prep courses. My gut reaction is that people will not be too pleased to see that they are being used in advertising without being compensated (and I don't think he sees the 10% discount as comp). The better question is: how much would be ample compensation? Will we see "Facebook celebrities" in the future? This could get really interesting.

YouTube pays out $1 million to users

http://newteevee.com/2008/04/16/youtube-pays-users-1-million/

A couple VERY relevant quotes:

Break a Leg's Yuri Baranovsky said he’d collected $1,600 for more than 2 million views on YouTube.

YouTube partner videos are the only ones on the site for which YouTube shows overlay ads, which it says it tries to sell for a $20 CPM.

So, let me get this straight... YouTube receives $20 CPM for overlay ads, yet pays its partners $0.80 CPM. The scary thing is that this is probably a better deal than what the users are getting on Metacafe, which pays a $5 CPM but has 1/20 of the pageviews of YouTube (see below).

Facebook Social Advertising

I couldn't help but notice the following ad on Facebook today. My friend Khalid recently signed up to be a fan of Veritas GMAT Prep, and is now being featured in a Facebook ad.

Last Lecture Series: Joel Peterson

Today at Stanford we started the Last Lecture series, where the most popular professors give a one hour lecture to the departing second years. Joel Peterson, who taught my Managing Growing Enterprises class, gave an excellent presentation today (see here for a video of Joel presenting at the E-Conference this winter). Here are the notes I took from the lecture.

One of Joel's lessons to live by is to always ask yourself: What is winning for you? For this lecture, he decided to ask himself: What is winning in life? The answer... happiness. But how do you define happiness? He says that happiness can be attained in 3 different ways: Pleasure, Joy and Peace. If you were to graph these, Pleasure would be on the farthest left and give you the least happiness. Pleasure is about meeting your needs now, but is not fulfilling. One of life's problems is that many people stay at this level. Next is Joy; all of us would agree that joy is something that has more meaning than pleasure alone. And finally, there is peace. Peace is something that is self-actualized, and is most difficult to achieve. Money and fame will not give you peace (and at best probably will only give you short-term pleasure). The key to peace and happiness? Strive for a person to be, a person to love, and a work to do.

A Person to Be
How do you discover who you are? Joel suggests:
1. Read; at least a book a week. Not TV, not movies, but reading. Read on planes, read if you can't sleep. Reading allows you to see the world through others eyes.
2. Memorize quotes, and notice which ones you actually remember. You'll learn a lot about yourself.
3. Write down your goals. Operationalize them, and let other people know. Make them memorable. For example, Joel will never forget one of his student's goals to "run a marathon at age 35 faster than at age 25." People will always be reminding you of these types of goals, which will help you accomplish them.
4. Write your own obituary. Or a six word story about yourself. Example: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" by Ernest Hemingway.

Finally, to learn what your core values are, look at where you spend your most valuable resources: time, money and mindshare. The difference between these and what you believe are your core values is in fact a lack of integrity.

A Person to Love

• Loving another is hard work. Marriage is about making a commitment
• We love what we sacrifice for.
• Learn to listen. Ask good questions, and follow up with more questions. Joel would ask his children "Tell me about you." Be willing to accept silence and eventually people will open up.
• To truly love someone is to be able to freely exchange feedback. Thank people who give you negative feedback; this is the hardest to give.
• Laugh--you are not the center of the universe

A Work to Do

Being in business is just as noble an endeavor as becoming a doctor or researcher, because running things is very hard to do well.

To be successful in business you need 6 qualities:
1. Hardworking
2. Smart
3. See beyond what is obvious
4. Build great teams--resist the temptation to be a pleaser, you will eventually be abandoned or betrayed
5. Communication
6. Be trustworthy--help others achieve their dreams

Not the most pleasant portrayal of my friend Ash

My friend Ash was just quoted in a Newsweek article on "How to Get Rich Being Green" (see article here). The article starts off as "Ash Upadhyaya is no tree hugger," and then goes on to protray him as a money grubbing MBA student who drives a gas guzzling Porsche. While I had to remind Ash that he does drive a Boxster, anyone who doesn't know him would think he was a complete ass hole from this article. In our Managing Growing Enterprises class we spent a day on how to talk to the media, and this serves as a real world example of how difficult it is to give an interview; the writers will get the angle that they want.

NY Times Article about Yahoo!'s Display Ad Exchange

Yahoo! has begun to publicly talk about the display ad exchange that I heard about while interning there this past summer. They are calling it AMP, though the article doesn't mention when it will be launched. I wrote in an earlier blog post that this advertising project will basically determine the future of Yahoo!, and it is probably a major reason why the board has been reluctant to accept Microsoft's offer.

Facebook Monetization Talk

Two GSB alums, Tim Kendall '06 and Megan Marks '07, met with us today to discuss monetization strategies at Facebook, as well as give general advice around joining startups. Tim has been with the company since it was an 80 person startup (now Facebook employees around 600 people).

First I would like to briefly discuss some advice he gave the group surrounding startups. The first is the importance of engineers; while it may not seem that important who the first engineer is that you work with to develop your site, if that person stays on then they (along with the founder) will drive the culture of the company. So don't make that decision to quickly.

Second, think about joining startups that are in the 50-100 employee stage with $50 MM in revenue. According to Andy Rachleff (who is a lecturer at the GSB), these companies have mitigated a significant amount of risk yet are still growing quickly enough that there is a lot of upside in joining them.

Now on to the Facebook specific conversation. Tim identified three areas that need to go right for Facebook to be "the franchise company of this decade." They are:

1. increase user base (currently around 70 m)
2. develop a better product
3. figure out how to make money

Not a ton of insight at the macro level here, but he did dig deeper into all of these areas. For the first, he discussed how growing internationally has been a huge focus, and that the app platform has actually made it very easy for the company to internationalize because the apps are being created by the local developers. Additionally, Megan mentioned that it has been easier to acquire older demographics outside the US because the Facebook brand is not associated with being a college website.

As for the second point, clearly the app platform was developed in part to address this issue as well, though some people argued that it might hinder the product given the clutter and confusion surrounding the multitude of applications out there. Additionally, Tim talked about how reducing latency is a major goal for Facebook, and that they have observed a huge increase in engagement for only very small (millisecond) improvements in latency. Finally, one area where there has been a lot of innovation that I was unaware about is the algorithm behind the News feed. It actually looks at your social map and interactions between your friends to predict what info you are most interested in receiving. Therefore, even as you add more friends, your news feed shouldn't change significantly over time. I am wondering how long it takes for the algorithm to learn, however, given that I am still receiving a lot of info about friends of mine that are only acquaintances at best outside of Facebook.

For the third point we talked about the growth of advertising revenue over the past 3 years; $10 MM in 2005, $50 MM in 2006, and $150 MM in 2007. This growth hasn't even come close to user growth, however, so there is still a lot of room for improvement (which goes without saying if they truly are valued at $15 billion!). So what are some of the creative ways that Facebook is starting to grow revenues? The most obvious is taking advantage of the social graph--a great predictor of the products and services you are interested in is your friends. A couple examples that Tim mentioned (one actual and one hypothetical) is from the Wall Street Journal and Amazon. Supposedly, you can actually go to the Wall Street journal and click on a link that says Most Read Articles and see what articles have been ready the most by your friends (in aggregate). A similar example could be a Barack Obama page on Amazon, where you are able to read only the reviews that your friends or network have written. Clearly there are a lot of privacy issues surrounding these ideas, but the monetization potential really can't be argued with.

Another monetization problem Facebook currently is suffering from is the revenue share with third party applications. Currently, third party apps drive a very large proportion of total pageviews throughout of the site. Yet, Facebook can only show ads on a very small portion of the app's page (the canvas area is reserved solely for the use of the app). Tim mentioned a very large BMW campaign that was launched last week by Federated Media (a third party app advertising agency), Microsoft (who has an agreement with Facebook to provide ads on the site), and Graffiti (popular third party app). The problem: Facebook saw exactly $0 in revenue from the campaign. What does Facebook do about this? Clearly it is a conflict of interest given that third party apps allow Facebook to accomplish 2 of the 3 goals mentioned above, yet hinder goal number 3. While we came up with some minor suggestions (sell more targeted ads for BMW, for example), we couldn't come up with a great answer in the short time we had today.

Leaving Stockholm

We're a few hours from leaving Stockholm... sad. But I'm definitely looking forward to not living out of a suitcase and being back in PA. Our last day in Sweden was fun, we visited Ericsson, Koenigsegg (see picture above of me and the fastest car in the world... yours for only $2.2 million!!), EQT and the confederation of Swedish Industries.

I'll be sure to post more pics and notes when I get back to the States.

Weekend in Sweden

Just finished up a great weekend in Stockholm with a dinner at the Opera House--finally got some authentic Swedish meatballs. Also finally tried some herring; they love this stuff out here, but its a little to much for me. Today we recovered from a night out at The Village, the "hippest" club in Stockholm according to my Swedish friend. Surprisingly, drinks were not that much more expensive than at every other bar we've gone to (but still in the $15 range). I was also one of the youngest people there (and recognizably so given that everyone I talked to asked me what my age was). I think we showed the Swedish 30 year olds how we like to party though!

So after a couple hours of sleep we left for a river cruise of Stockholm and then went to an awesome museum that holds an authentic 17th century battle ship. It is impressive how large the ship was... I had never really thought about that until seeing one up close. The ship has a great story behind it as well--it sank 20 minutes into its maiden voyage! The king of Sweden ordered that the ship have 2 levels of cannons, which placed too much weight on the top half of the ship and basically it just fell over into the Baltic Sea. We were told that Sweden spent 2% of its GNP to build it too. Talk about an embarrassing moment for Sweden!

Tomorrow is the last day of the study trip, and then i fly back to the U.S. on Tuesday. Then off to class on Wednesday to begin my last quarter at the GSB--I cannot believe how quickly it has gone by!

Denmark Business Trips Day 1

The first day of business trips started for us on Tuesday morning. We visited four companies today: Vestas, Carlsberg, Maersk and Saxo Bank. We also spoke with the US Ambassador. Here are the notes I took on the meetings.

Vestas
Peter Brun, SVP of Government Relations

Vestas is the world's largest supplier of wind turbines (23% of market).

They believe that the effective price of wind energy (taking into account the environmental costs of CO2) is actually on par with coal. However, I don't think they they have taken into account the costs of variability for wind; he mentioned that on days when there is no wind, plants can run gas generators, but the cost of these generators is significantly higher than coal and oil power plants, and should be included in the total costs of operating a wind turbine.

Carlsberg
Alex Myers, SVP of Western Europe Operations

Founding of the company
-JC Jacobsen discovered stable yeast, a process that is still used today by every brewer
-Did not patent the technique but instead freely gave out the IP

Why Not US?
-Chose to focus resources on Russia (BBD)

Culture
-focus on being the best, not the biggest (currently the 5^th largest brewery in the world)
-okay to make mistakes, as long as the same mistake is not made twice
-lots of internal debate, but once a decision is made it is supported country wide (this is a characteristic we have seen in many Danish companies)
-KISS: try to keep things as simple as possible

Organizational Chart
-the company is broken into four functional areas (Group Sales & Marketing, Communications, HR, Supply Chain) and four regions (Nordic, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia)

Private, Public Company
-the company is 49% public and 51% owned by a private foundation, another characteristic common among Danish companies

Product Mix
-80% of the beer sold at Carlsberg is not under the flagship brand name
-The #1 sold beer at Carlsberg is actually a Russian brew

Strategic Mission
-Identified 4 key value drivers for future growth:

1. Improve earnings in Western Europe
2. Grow sales in BBH and Eastern Europe
3. Build a platform for long term growth in Asia
4. Develop valuable real estate (move production to less expensive real estate and create offices, restaurants, etc)

-Decided to not push one big global brand, but instead have multiple brands (some specific to certain regions)

-Local
-Power
-Premium
-Super Premium

-Have consolidated acquired local brands and built national brands out of a select few
-Belief that 70-80% of beer consumption is local consumption.

Specific challenges within Western Europe
-Powerbrands are being attacked from above and below
-Need to innovate and Premiumize due to no market growth (-1% growth of beer overall in Western Europe in 2007)
-Margins are being squeezed due to increased competition
-Material prices have increased dramatically

Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) Merger
-Currently have a 50/50 Joint Venture with S&N
-The acquisition will be a major consolidation in the BBH region

Maersk
Knud Pontoppidan, EVP Group External Relations

Company Overview
-100,000 employees in over 130 countries
-Moller family foundation has voting control
-By far the market leader (2x market share as closest competitor)

International Labor Force
-Maersk negotiates with unions from each individual country
-For example, Danes are paid more than Filipinos for same job

US Recession
-Had to lay off 3,000 employees in LA port
-However, shipping doesn’t necessarily decrease with a recession because people substitute purchases for cheaper goods (but the overall number of goods that needs to be shipped doesn’t change dramatically)
-Additionally, China has been doing well (and 1/3 of all containers touch China)

James Cain
US Ambassador to Denmark

One of 30 non-professional ambassadors appointed by the President. Eisenhower initiated this method after WWII, believing that he needed to have people he had worked with previously and could trust in key strategic areas of the world.

Three differences that he has witnessed between Denmark and U.S.

1. Life-work balance (Danes work on average 350 less hours per year)
2. Healthy, outdoor loving
3. Less sensitive to race and religion (Mohammed cartoon for example)

Typical day:
8:30 AM Starts with Security Briefing (only 4 major Danish threats since 2005)
9:00 AM Meetings with Ambassador Heads
1:00 PM Bilateral and Multilateral meetings with businesses and other orgs
7:00 PM Various dinners

He has initiated a bike ride throughout Denmark to meet “the normal people”
When a Dane rides with him, James always asks this person three questions:

1. What are the first words that you associate with the U.S.?
2. What would you show a U.S. visitor?
3. Rate from 1-10: How close is Denmark to the U.S.? Does it matter?

James has discovered that the answers to questions 1 and 3 vary from adults to youth. Danes older than 35 tend to associate patriotic words with the U.S. and believe that Denmark is close to the U.S. and that it matters. Those younger than 35, however, associate cultural images with the U.S., and do not believe that Denmark is close to the U.S., nor that it matters.

James has identified two negative attitudes that many youth feel about the U.S.:

1. Political issues that are tied to President Bush
1. Iraq
2. War on Terror
3. Global Warming
2. Cultural Images
1. Movies, TV, Food, Fashion
2. Images of America as a violent and materialistic country
3. Religion

How to change this opinion?

He believes that the first attitude will eventually fade away, but the second issue is critical to address. Various methods he has tried include visiting schools within Denmark, bringing guest lecturers from the U.S., and increasing the college exchange program.

Role of Ambassador

His role is to be a by-partisan representative of the U.S., and definitely not defend President Bush. However, sometimes he does need to clarify U.S. actions, such as America’s recent reductions of CO2 emmissions.

He also does not impart his personal opinions on domestic policy in Denmark, though he does have strong opinions about health care. His belief is that universal health care has reduced terminal and end of life care in Denmark, because the government does not want to pay for expensive medical procedures. For this reason, Denmark has the lowest life expectancy of all European countries.

Saxo Bank

Saxo Bank produces a foreign exchange (FX) trading platform, that is provided both as a commercial product and as a white label alternative for large commercial banks such as Citibank.

We met with the COO and the Head Trader. The Head Trader was an interesting guy—he showed us Saxo Bank’s predictions, but couldn’t really explain their reasoning. One poignant example is when he predicted that the growth over the next 10 years will be flat at best because the economy has been operating in 17 year cycles since 1953. However, he number 17 is easily influenced by when you begin the index, and clearly there are multiple crests and troughs within these cycles. Additionally, when we pushed back by asking how technology and a global economy has affected these cycles, he really had no response.

They believe in the values of Ayn Rand and Jack Welch, and actually gave us Atlas Shrugged as a gift. They are a truly meritocratic company, as they fired 15% of their work force last year (150 people), and yet are hiring over 50 people per month.

Here we also discovered that certain ex pats can receive a significant tax reduction (from 65% to 30%) for a three year period in Denmark.

Expensive City!

Just got back from dinner and drinks in Copenhagen. We went to the Madklubben, which means Food Club in Danish. We had spectacular food--salmon with watercress salad for appetizer, steak and beets for the main course, 4 different types of cheeses (including danish brie) and a pudding topped with pear sauce for dessert. Luckily the dinner was included in the trip price, so we didn't have to pay for that (well, better put we already paid for that...). However, I definitely know that drinks are expensive. Two bottles of the cheaper wine for the table... $90. One beer... $10. And for the cab ride home, the meter starts at $12 (you can imagine how quickly that bill grows). Definitely feeling the weak American dollar :(

Denmark Day 1

Today was our first official day of the Scandinavian study trip, in Copenhagen. Because it is Easter Monday, we had no meetings and instead spent the day sight seeing. First on our tour was the Kronborg Castle, one of the most famous castle's in Europe.



The castle is also known as Elsinore, the setting for William Shakespeare's Hamlet. In the picture below is a portrait of Amleth, whose story was told by Saxo Grammaticus in the 13th century and later retold by Shakespeare.



The castle also has a statue of Olgier the Dane, the great Danish King that sleeps here until needed for protection of the country's people. However, we have discovered that the Danish are quite fatalistic given their history of losing many wars to the Swedish (there appears to be a fun rivalry between them, as has been demonstrated from our Danish and Swedish classmates).



For the afternoon we took a canal tour of downtown Copenhagen, where we saw the house of Hans Christian Anderson (who wrote The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid), the new opera house (which was donated by Maersk), and a battle ship that was recently retired because it accidently shot a missle at a summer house--luckily no one was home at the time!

Now we are off to dinner to meet a Danish Sloan alum, and then a little relaxation before our first business meetings tomorrow morning.

Iceland

Finally made it into Iceland after a one day delay. Spent the afternoon at the Blue Lagoon, one of the famous geothermal spas just outside of Reykjavik. The water is a really cool blue, and about 104 degrees F (see picture below).

Afterwards we grabbed some dinner by our hotel and started planning our evening festivities. We discovered that Icelanders don't actually start partying until after midnight, so we did some pre-partying at our hotel and went to a bar called the Apothecary around 1am. Icelanders definitely like to party late, as we didn't get home until around 6am! Overall it was a fun night of drinking and dancing with the locals. Now we're off to Copenhagen tomorrow morning for the start of our study trip.

Beginning to Iceland trip...

Not so good. Flight to JFK was delayed, so I missed my flight to Reykjavik. Had to buy a new ticket for tomorrow... not cheap. Here's hoping tomorrow works out!

For more info on my trip, check out this blog frequently--I'll try to keep everyone updated as much as possible.

Carlsberg

I gave a presentation on Carlsberg today in preparation for the Scandinavia study trip. They are quite an innovative brewery and I am very excited to meet with one of their Senior VPs, Alex Meyers. See below a quick overview of the presentation.

Carlsberg History

• Founded in 1847 by J.C. Jacobsen (after the name of his son Carl)
• Public company with over 30,000 employees and $10 billion (US$) market cap
  
• Merged with Orkla ASA in 2001, becoming the 5th largest brewery in the world

Carlsberg Brands

• Carlsberg Pilsner (4.6% ABV)
• Carlsberg Light (2.7% ABV)
• Carls Porter (7.8% ABV)
• Carls Hvede (5.8% ABV; interesting because until recently wheat beer was illegal in Denmark!)
• Tuborg (4.6% ABV)
• Tuborg Easter Brew (5.7% ABV; seasonal beer that will be released while we are in Scandinavia)

Financial Outlook

• Steady growth in volume over last 5 years
• Strong growth in EBIT (30%) because of "innovation and strong presence of international brands Carlsberg and Tuborg" -- CEO Jorgen Rasmussen

EBIT and Stock Price Growth over last 5 years

International Growth

• Clear market leader in Russia (38% market share)
• 25% increase in volume in Asia

Merger with Scottish & Newcastle

• Carlsberg and Heineken launched a joint bid to break up UK's Scottish & Newcastle in 2007
• $15.3 billion US (50% premium over share price)
• Carlsberg would gain sole possession of Baltic Beverages and S&N's French, Greek and Chinese Operations
• However, the European Commission announced this Monday (3/1/08) that it is postponing its review of the merger until April of this year

World's Most Expensive Beer

• Introduced Jacobsen Vintage #1 on Jan 25, 2008
  
• Costs 2,008 DKK (~$400 US)
• 600 bottles of the 10.5% ABV beer will be released in 2008
• Plans to release 2,009 and 2,010 version as well
  

"Probably the best beer in the world"

• Carlsberg Advertising slogan
• See the embedded online video about Carlsberg below:

Ignoring my blog

So I have been seriously ignoring my blog for the past few months, so I figure I better start with a recap of my life today :)

1. I have a job after b-school (always a good thing) at McKinsey in LA. I am also not starting till late October, so if you have any great ideas for what I should do over the summer let me know!
2. Just finished a very successful Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford, including the E-Conference which i helped out with as the Student Program Director. I met some great people there and hope to keep in touch as I consider pursuing a startup in the future.
3. I am going to Scandinavia for a study trip in 2 weeks. I am sure I will be doing a lot more posting while I am out there to keep everyone updated.
4. My pro bono consulting project with the San Francisco Playhouse is almost complete--we have our final presentation with the Board of Directors a week from Monday

Those are the big things so far... I also had a great time today at the Special Olympics basketball clinic here at Stanford. Everyone had a great time and I hope to see them again this spring in other Special Olympics events.

Till next time...

Cool Huip