Musings of an Entrepreneur

                                                 

Long known by scuba divers the world over for its coral reef, the second largest in the world, and for the blue hole, Belize is coming onto its own.

Five hours from New York, with English as the primary language and the dollar essentially the local currency (the country has a fixed exchange rate – $1 USD = $2 Belize Dollars), it’s extremely convenient for American travelers from the East Coast or the South. When the airport runway gets extended in the coming years it will become even more accessible.

When visiting Belize, be sure to split the trip in two parts. Spend a few days in San Pedro, also called La Isla Bonita made famous by the Madonna song, the island off the coast of the mainland. Enjoy the richness of the marine life – swim with sharks and rays, sail, kite surf and jet ski. I will be the first admit that San Pedro is not extremely pretty – it’s barely one foot above water with small constructions everywhere – but it has its charm and the quality of the water is second to none! I recommend you stay at the Belize Yacht Club (http://www.belizeyachtclub.com/).

Then spend a few days in the Cayo district either at the Francis Ford Coppola estate or at Chaa Creek an eco-tourist lodge. From there you can explore Mayan ruins, kayak, hike, bike, canopee, explore caves and much much more! Be sure to stop at the Belize zoo on the way there or back.

In many ways Belize reminds me of Costa Rica 15 years ago when it was only known by adventure travelers. Since then Costa Rica has been fully developed – you can’t find a tract of land greater than 1,000 acres. That said Costa Rica has retained most of its charm and still ranks as one of my favorite destinations in the world.

In my last two trip to Belize, I became so enamored with the country that I considered buying a 100,000 acre tract of land there – a 15 mile by 13 mile property including 15 miles of beach front. I eventually decided to pass on the opportunity because it’s far from my core expertise and I am too busy with OLX to oversee the preservation and development of a property that size (managing park rangers, negotiating a tax deal with the government, etc.).

From the pictures of the first trip you can clearly see the sharks and a lot of the wildlife. Most impressive of all, after a 2 hour expedition inside a cave we saw Mayan vases and remains from human sacrifices in 900 AD! We were the 25th people in the cave and came just after a National Geographic Explorer team. From the pictures of the second trip you can see the amazing ruins of Caracol and the waterfalls of the Five Sisters lodge near the Francis Ford Coppola estate.

When all is said and done, if you decide to buy a condo in San Pedro, visit Century 21 Isla Bonita (www.century21islabonita.com) and buy the Sands Villas (http://www.century21islabonita.com/list.html)!

For full disclosure, I am an investor in Belize Yacht Club, Century 21 La Isla Bonita and in the Sands Villas :)

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I have been waiting for a long time for such a politically incorrect movie. I laughed out loud the entire movie! Great dialogues and tons of fun – go see it!

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The premise did not seem that appealing and the previews were not very good, but it’s actually a great movie. It’s well written, fast paced, well acted and tons of fun. Clive Owens is awesome in this movie. I guessed what was being stolen in the bank in the first few minutes of the movie, but it did not matter, I enjoyed the ride all the way! Highly recommended.

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Kara Nortman is a great VC at Battery Ventures in New York City. VentureInside (www.ventureinside.com), her recent foray to the blogosphere covers cool companies, new media and new mediums. One of her recent posts on “How Far Will a VC Go?” briefly mentions our meeting in Central Park last week :)

Welcome to BlogLand Kara! :)

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You must absolutely check out this “preview” for Titanic Two: The Surface”: (http://www.devilducky.com/media/44438/).

It’s hilarious!

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Watch it fully! (Don’t get thrown off by the few seconds of George Bush at the beginning).

Ben taught me macro-economics at Princeton :)

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In my previous post on the topic, I decided I was going to speak more openly about what I am actively doing. Recently, I found myself venturing off the topic of entrepreneurship as I talked about labor reform in France and immigration in the U.S.

Upon reflection, this blog is musings of an entrepreneur and not specifically musings on entrepreneurship. For the coming weeks I will blog more frequently on a large variety of topics, mixing shorter postings with the longer analytical pieces that I have historically written.

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The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
Peter F. Drucker

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.
Richard Branson

When I finished school, I took my entire life savings – $5,000 – and invested it in a business. I was young. I was inexperienced. But I was an entrepreneur, and I was proud. And in six weeks, I was broke.
Mark Warner

My success was due to good luck, hard work, and support and advice from friends and mentors. But most importantly, it depended on me to keep trying after I had failed.
Mark Warner

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I have been appalled recently by the low quality of the debate on immigration from politicians throughout the political spectrum. Immigration defenders have claimed that immigrants do jobs Americans don’t – as if cities with few immigrants did not have garbage men. Immigration critics have said that immigrants steal American jobs. They seem to believe that the number of jobs in the economy is fixed and that one person must be getting the job at the expense of the other.

This is the lump of labor fallacy – the number of jobs in the economy is not fixed! By coming to a country immigrants increase the supply of labor and hence reduce wages. In turn, cheaper labor increases the potential return to employers to build new factories or expand their operations. In so doing, they create extra demand for workers.

The Mariel boatlift where 125,000 Cubans ended up in Miami between April 15 and October 31, 1980 provides an interesting opportunity to study the impact of a large number of immigrants on a city. A study by David Card of Berkeley showed no increase in the unemployment rate in Miami over the time period of the assimilation of the immigrants in the labor force. The Miami economy responded to influx of new labor by creating jobs to take advantage of that labor.

Inversely, when French politicians mandated a 35 hour work-week believing it would mean that companies would need more people to keep the total hours worked constant thus reducing unemployment – companies decreased the overall number of hours worked. Unemployment did not decrease.

That is not to say that immigration does not potentially have potential negative impact on certain segments of the population. Over the past 25 years wage equality has decreased in the U.S. and immigration could be partly to blame. Immigrants to the U.S. are mostly low-skilled and thus potentially pushing down the relative wages of low-skilled Americans.

David Card compared wage trends in cities with lots of immigrants such as Los Angeles, with those in places with only a few, such as Indianapolis. If immigration had a big effect on relative pay, you would expect this to be reflected in differences between wage trends. Mr. Card’s research suggests that immigrants had no significant effect on low-skilled workers’ pay. Mr. Card also tested the idea that perhaps low-skilled natives leave cities with lots of immigrants rather than compete with them for jobs, so that immigration indirectly pushes up the supply of low-skilled workers elsewhere and pushes down their wages but found no evidence that it does. For the detailed results, you can download Mr. Card’s full article here.

Given my personal value judgment in favor of equality of opportunity and my admiration for those willing to bear the huge fixed costs of immigration – leaving their family behind, coming to a new culture in an uncertain environment – to pursue the American dream in the land of opportunity, I am happy that empirical evidence disproves the claims that immigration is negative for this country.

For full disclosure, I am an immigrant on an H1B visa and David Card was my thesis advisor at Princeton :)

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Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.
Niccolo Machiavelli

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