Musings of an Entrepreneur

                                                 

It’s rare for nonfiction books to read like thrillers, but Gregory Zuckerman manages the feat in The Greatest Trade Ever. The book tell the story of how John Paulson realized the real estate and subprime markets were grossly inflated and how he made $15 billion in 1 year betting on a blowup, a difficult feat given how many other celebrated investors had failed trying to short bubbles.

It reads partly like a thriller, a race against the clock and other potential investors, and partly as a detective story, as John Paulson and his team work to identify when the real estate and finance bubbles will burst and how best to trade them.

Once I started the book, I could not stop reading it and spent hours after I finished it thinking about its lessons. The story resonated all the more as I also believed that real estate was inflated, had moved to renting and encouraged all my friends to sell their houses and rent instead. However, I never thought of trading my beliefs – I don’t particularly care about investing and was not exposed to real estate. The idea to use Credit Default Swaps (CDS) to limit the downside and maximize the upside was brilliant, so was the idea of shorting the financial institutions that were on the other side of the trade!

This begs the question of whether I could use CDS as some form of hedge against the world economy falling apart given my extremely bearish outlook. Food for thought…

Regardless, read the book, it’s informative and tons of fun!

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Open is not only the best sports autobiography I ever read, it’s one of the best biographies I ever read and one of the best books I read in the past few years!

As I am in Buenos Aires for three weeks on business, I am on a book reading binge. Open was the third book I read in three days, but the moment I started, I knew this book was going to be different and I could not put it down.

Autobiographies of famous people, mostly written by ghost writers, are usually terrible. What first struck me about Open is how well written it is! In addition, it has a raw honesty that draws you in. You feel what Andre is feeling at various points in his life – the highs and the many lows.

I am a huge tennis fan and have always been an Agassi fan and clearly remembered many of the matches he recounts which made the story even more poignant. It’s shocking to learn what it was like for him – it’s so different from what I imagined it would be. I could not fathom someone hating tennis as much as he does succeeding at it as much as he did. It’s also interesting to see how little input he had in creating his public image. He did not participate in elaborating the “Image is everything” campaign. He just said the words for the ad, not imagining the campaign would come to define him. Likewise, none of the image changes perceived by the press were orchestrated; they were just what reporters thought they noticed from the outside.

I loved every part of his book: his childhood obeying his father while fighting the “dragon”, his matches, his courtship of Stefanie, his charter school, the humbling meeting with Mandela… You don’t need to be a tennis fan to enjoy the book as his struggles are all too human with a positive wrinkle as we know the story has a happy ending.

The story is inspiring and a tribute to perseverance. Read it, you won’t be disappointed.

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I have a confession to make: I love chick lit and chick flicks! I suppose that beneath the hardened exterior of the busy Internet entrepreneur, I am a big softy on the inside and easily fall for cheesy, unbelievable stories of romance.

In terms of movies LOVED Serendipity, As Good as it Gets, Something’s Gotta Give, How to lose a guy in 10 days, Wedding Crashers, An Ideal Husband, Definitely, Maybe, The Devil Wears Prada, Ghost, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry met Sally, Notting Hill, Love Actually, Shakespeare in Love, Jerry Maguire, You’ve Got Mail, The American President… I even liked more mediocre movies like The Holiday, A Knight’s Tale, It’s Complicated, Made of Honor, 27 Dresses, P.S. I Love You, Must Love Dogs, In Her Shoes, Under the Tuscan Sun…

In terms of books, I loved the original The Nanny Diaries (I did not see the movies, the reviews were just too awful), Bridget Jones Diary (including the sequel), Sex and the City (I love the TV show even more: saw every episode in order and went to the movie’s opening night!) and countless others.

As such, I was really looking forward to revisiting the The Nanny Diaries characters: Nan, the Harvard Hottie and the crazy dysfunctional Xs. The story had potential: it’s set 12 years after the original and I was looking forward to seeing how the characters have grown up and what new challenges they are facing. Unfortunately, Grayer, the little kid I adored in the original is distant and aloof, Nan has no backbone and is willing to stand and watch as bad things happen to good people and makes a dislikable heroine. Worse, the book is so poorly written that it gets in the way of enjoying the parts of the story that could resonate with me. It’s possible that the original was also poorly written (I don’t remember as it was a long time ago), but for some reason it did not bother me.

Such a disappointment. Pass!

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The December issue had an interesting section on falling in love. My favorite article was actually “The Happy Couple” which explains how to stay in love.

In short focus on the positive. There is no worse destroyer of love than saying “That’s nice honey” to your partner’s excitement over something positive that happened to him or her.

The article is not available for free, but you can get a preview at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-happy-couple

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My inner econ geek loves this video!

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For the French speakers among you.

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This article tells a fascinating story of a journey of survival through entrepreneurship. The persistence and trial and error approach will ring true to all entrepreneurs. His conclusion does not apply to all, I know plenty of people who loved college and love the job they do since college, but he does have a point.

Read the article at:
http://www.violentacres.com/archives/235/college-will-kill-your-entrepreneurial-spirit-while-simultaneously-turning-you-into-a-worker-bee/

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The movie is great. It’s a movie about a fictional character in a fictional job, and yet it’s probably the most realistic movie I have ever seen. The movie is completely predictable, dark, gloomy and bleak, yet I loved it. It’s incredibly well acted and the characters’ soul searching felt tangible and real.

I loved the movie’s treatment of the “runner syndrome” where someone single mindedly chases a goal for years without thinking why. In the real world, individuals often chase down the societal expectations of the rat race. In this case, George Clooney seems to be running away from life. It’s not clear even to him why he chose the goals he chose, but the words he uses could apply to many as he’s chasing “the number he has in his mind”.

Up in the Air is probably the first post modern chick flick. Many of my female friends argued it’s not a chick flick at all because it’s not romantic and it does not have a happy ending, but I beg to differ. Being married and having a family sucks. Even when you are married you end up dying alone (if only because your significant other dies at a different point). However, it’s better than the alternative! The movie’s conclusion is clearly an adaptation of Churchill’s quote on democracy adapted to having a significant other: it’s the worst of all forms of living except for all others!

Girls: take your boyfriends because the conclusion is ineluctable: he better marry you because the alternative is much worse! No one wants to end up like the Clooney character!

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by Stacie Rabinowitz

Last Monday night Fabrice and I had the pleasure of going to see the longest-running play in New York, “A Perfect Crime.” Although neither of us had heard much about it, as theater and mystery buffs we decided we should form our own opinions. Luckily, we were not disappointed! The plot is a murder mystery that keeps you on your toes till the very end. Although normally I hate excessive plot twists, and usually find them either predictable or gratuitous (sorry David Mamet), in this case each surprise was unique in its execution and built upon clues earlier in the play that were subtle enough to keep us in suspense while still integrated enough that each new development made sense and followed from the data we had been given. In fact, the various twists and turns were so devious that Fabrice and I came up with completely different theories as to what was happening, only to both be proven right at the end!

In addition to an intriguing storyline, the play was just plain fun. The dialogue was witty and well-delivered by an enthusiastic cast. The actors’ timing was superb, and I appreciated their ability to work well with difficult theatrical techniques such as phone conversations, tape and video recordings, and speaking to characters offstage. Clearly the long run of the play allowed these elements to develop into the cohesive piece that we saw before us, and all of the set pieces, lighting, and sound cues flowed into a well-rounded piece of theater. The play is not amazingly intellectual and has no important political statement, nor does it feature famous movie stars to draw a crowd. Sadly, Fabrice counted the people in the theater and hypothesized that it had to be losing money that night. But it is entertaining and amusing, which I’m sure is what has sustained its 23-year run. Go see it soon!

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Ah, the tyranny of high expectations! I had heard such fantastic things about Avatar that I was really looking forward to seeing it. To maximize my potential viewing pleasure, I waited until I could watch it in IMAX 3D and finally had the opportunity to do so on Friday night.

The movie is extremely well made. The scenery is beautiful, the world is internally consistent, and the 3D which often felt gimmicky in other movies was an integral part of the movie watching experience. It looked fantastic – after a while I forgot I was wearing those silly glasses.

Unfortunately, the story itself does not hold up. The character development is minimal, the dialogue is simplistic and the plot is utterly predictable. It’s a beautifully shot movie well worth watching if only as a precursor of movies to come from a film making experience perspective, but don’t expect it to be the best movie you ever watched.

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