Musings
Steele Point Estate
I was poking around online looking at private islands for sale (why not?) and found the above. I recognized it immediately. I distinctly remember sailing around Steele Point in the BVI with my family and being enchanted by this home. It reminded me of Swiss Family Robinson with all of the stairs and disjointed structures in the midst of lush greenery. We had a great southerly breeze that day and we ended up anchoring around the leeward side of the island that evening, snorkeling nearby the next morning. To download the electronic edition of the Private Island magazine, visit here.
Ben's Blog
"The campaign is global - the dollar ain't what it used to beSwitch a franc for a dollar, you get like 1.3"
—Ryan Leslie, Swiss Francs
As a blogger, I'm often asked what I read and how I find content for my daily posts. Often, it's merely just a glimpse of something tangible that inspires me, perhaps content that I am utterly fascinated by, or leaves a lasting impression I refuse to forget. With that being said, I do spend considerable time scouring the web for material I connect to. One of my favorite reads is Ben's Blog, written by Ben Horowitz. I've always found the role of a Venture Capitalist fascinating, and Ben is one of my favorite subjects. He's known of course for his post as cofounder and Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (leading notable investments in Twitter and Skype, making 4x its investment) and his active tweeting, spunky style of blogging and engagement in the technology world.
All of Ben's blog posts are accompanied by rap songs and witty lyrics like the above, taken from his January post 'Learning from my Mistakes' with usually a slice of news or insight into recent investments or experiences in the venture capital world. So, read up, get on board, and subscribe to his twitter feed, here.
Taking it to the Cloud: Amazon's AWS
We touched on this in class in b-school, but it will be interesting to see how Amazon fares with their cloud computing business, known as Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is certainly a strong growth opportunity for the electronic commerce company, a company that is now larger than IBM and Walt Disney in market cap, and on the brink of becoming one of the largest conglomerates. Amazon is now a mega-corp made up of an e-commerce company, a hardware and device maker, a government services provider, a cloud computing and marketing company, a transportation and logistics outfit, a lender, a payment processor, and a warehouse operator. WHEW.
Earnings were released last Thursday, with $1.56 billion in sales the first quarter, up 49% from the year earlier. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has called AWS a "$5 billion business." Industry experts are watching this roll-out like a hawk. Key success factors will be the adoption of the large enterprise business, which will come hand in hand with businesses trusting Amazon to control mass quantities of valuable corporate data, a cultural shift to boot.
Above: CEO Jeff Bezos.