It’s been a while since I posted, and I just wanted to act as a bit of a counterbalance versus the prevalent opinion. While we’re undergoing a crisis of great magnitude, starting with the housing industry, spreading to the financial industry, and creeping into the overall economy, it’s important to note that there needs to be a fine balance struck between government and the market economy.

For better or worse, it is the market economy that has driven the rapid rise in living standards inside the the United States over the last 150 years. The government’s role has been the right one, where it has acted as the gatekeeper, keeping monopolistic markets in check, as well as making sure we stay away from the reverse, more “socially” oriented trends where governments are big owners in broad swaths of industry.

While we go through what is widely considered to be one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression, it is integral that the government makes sure NOT to burden society by creating too many social programs that are paid through deficit spending and not through actual dollars received from taxation. A good hint of things to come is the trillion dollar deficit spending that is clearly going to be enacted under President-elect Obama. While many of the programs that he is calling for are important, they should be weighed against the fact that flooding society with money, means two things down the road: hyper-inflation & the devaluation of the dollar. Neither one of these are pleasant. The stimulus has to be enacted in a way that builds for the long term (with a focus on improving long-term productivity) so that when the economy snaps back, the stimulus will have set a course for the future that will enable us to continue to function as one of the greatest societies in the world, with all the freedoms that we expect.

Until next time…

It isn’t often that one can find a great list of problems and try to attack them head on. Paul Graham over at the famous Y Combinator has created just such a list. While not comprehensive, it certainly is an extensive one.

Which ones do I love…?

Auctions - There’s no question that Ebay holds a stiff monopoly on the category. However, new sites have been popping up all over the place and there’s definitely room for someone to come in and offer a free or meaningfully cheaper solution. Craigslist anyone?

Startups for Startups - Of course! As startups continue to multiply because of decreasing initial cost structures, infrastructure around these businesses will continue to develop.

Which ones do I hate…?

Search - Let’s face it. Google is the king of search because it has monopolized search’s cool factor. While search is Google’s core driver of revenues through its Adsense product, it has diversified its business into multiple other sites (e.g. Orkut, YouTube) to maintain its users attention span. There will be a great search business that will come along and steal Google’s thunder, but I don’t know that it will be because of Paul Graham’s theory of poor Google design. There will be a dramatic shift because the new company will be THE place to do search. (Powerset anyone?)

The WebOS - Hasn’t this already happened?

If the dollar’s worldwide slide in value hasn’t set off any alarms yet, you should take note of the latest news out of India. The dollar is no longer accepted at the Taj Mahal and other tourist sites throughout India. Granted, this isn’t exactly the arbiter of the dollar’s value, rather it’s an exemplification of the worldwide perception about the United States.

Yet, this has ramifications for every business out there. In an increasingly global and volatile world, there’s no question that it’s becoming exceedingly difficult for US based businesses to expand overseas. While exports have benefited, establishing operations in local foreign currency is becoming dicey.

And it will only become more so throughout this election year.

Everyone is always interested in how one can succeed at business. It seems to me that a top 100 list of ways to fail at business may actually be helpful. Here it goes…

1. Don’t create any goals and just wing it. This is sure to mean that you will consistently push off achieving even the slightest of victories and will, ultimately, fail.

2. Put your head in the stars. For all but a few of us, create something realistic and go build it. You want to save the world? Leave that to Mike Huckabee.

3. Pessimism. Be pessimistic about your business, clients, relationships, and achievements, and you’ll be sure to chalk up one failure after another.

4. Play it tight. Don’t think about loosening up to the world around you. Be conservative, pensive, and uptight about what you want to do.

5. Take a vacation. Some of you will say that this is an absolutely necessary ingredient to succeed in business. Wrong! Generally, when you found a business and you take vacation, NOTHING HAPPENS.

6. Don’t keep track of your finances. This is a surefire way to put yourself in a cash crunch, a place you don’t want to be.

7. Don’t speak to your customer! This is egregrious, but people that fail at business love to follow that advice.

8. Spend lots of money on expensive advertising. In today’s world, you may to have spend some money initially, but you need to make your customer your evenagelist. Word of mouth rules.

9. Stop Learning. Make sure that you live you live your life by the osmosis philosophy and don’t ever try to learn anything new. This is a surefire way to mistime and lag the constant market innovation that is needed today.

10. Forget about insurance and backups. Who needs it?

Did I say 100? I think I added an erroneous Zero. Ok, I’ll add one more to the list.

11. Be accurate!

OK, for a real list of 100 Ways to Be a Better Entrepreneur, feel free to click here…

In today’s world, it would seem like multitasking is integral to success. In reality though, success is based on the ability to prioritize multiple tasks and perform them in single order. It seems that Basex has dubbed 2008 “the year of information overload” (though I don’t know why 2006 or 2007 wouldn’t take the crown as well). Now, I think it’s great to slander the amount of information we deal with today, and I’m the first one to say the blackberry is annoying as hell. Yet, it’s also as important as hell, since I have access to real time business information at a moment’s notice.

If there’s anything to glean from this type of report, it’s that research firms love to throw out labels so that they can be branded, picked up in the press, and make some money! Hey, did I fall into a trap over here?

In any case, there is another lesson. It’s important to control information overload and it’s important to prioritize which tasks and projects get worked on, and in what order. Do it right, and you’ll be a successful entrepreneur. Do it wrong, and you can be a successful entrepreneur. In your own mind.

Matthew Lynn over at Bloomberg has come up with one of the most ridiculous suggestions that I’ve ever seen pondered in a major publication! He opines that we should make the bankers give back their bonuses from prior years due to losses that these guys incurred over 2007. Now, on the face of it, one can make an argument that sounds plausible, and he’s done somewhat of a good job of it.

However, I still think he’s out of his mind. Let’s see…

What makes the investment bank so different than any other business? If the CEO of any small company that was funded with VC money loses a couple of books, he/she should give it back! What happens if they didn’t make money in prior years? Then it’s ok?

Let’s face it, employee compensation is a tough nut to crack and granted, there are certain businesses such as hedge funds, that do have high water marks. However, those are situations where they are pure traders (unlike the typical investment bank) and they are not required to give back profit. They must hit the high water mark, to receive additional compensation.

When it comes to the investment bank, the majority of these guys are tied to restricted stock units and/or options based on their performance. I guess you can always create a negative incentive structure to push them out the door, but where exactly will that get you…?

A. To the headhunter where you will find someone looking for the positive incentive structure that actually works.

MSNBC had a great article, sharing some of the newly minted words in the current business year. I particularly like the Meatball Sundae, as that hits close to home with some of the business ideas that I need to deal with on a daily basis. You can use it whenever your boss tells you to mash up two business ideas that are so incongruous, you feel like you’re eating meatballs with ice cream (though i’ve never actually digested such a combination).

I’d like to propose one new word. While the already coined Shanghai Sneeze has a pretty obvious connotation and we’ll most probably see more of that after the 2008 Olympics, let’s consider the Shanghai Snort? That would be the current sucking sound of China inhaling. The exhale is going to be a lot more than a sneeze. More like a tsunami!

I hope it comes as no surprise that I’m an avid watcher of “technology” (whatever that means) and the trends that I see in the marketplace. Sometimes those trends means technological advancement and sometimes it just means the ability to take technological advancement and find the right niche.

Yid is the Jewish word for Jew and Yideoz is an obvious phonetic take on Videos. In any case, it’s pretty obvious that the killer format in video has been short form content. Specifically, humorous clips continually win the hearts and souls of the viral audience. Springwise is always kind enough to point out new businesses and it has a short writeup of Yideoz.

Yideoz is surfing the right trend by providing a niche venue for Jewish video content. It’ll be interesting to see if the video sites that have been popping up (e.g. funnyordie) will see success. I expect to see many more niche category video content sites appear all over the place. While most of them will die, the best strategy for these players is a combination of local and national promotion. Create the local venue, but seed some content in the likes of YouTube and the other video sharing giants. Oh, and don’t forget to do it on Zedge. If you want your video content to go mobile, that is…

Here are some videos from yideoz. I couldn’t help myself

Painful…

…and some good Jewish music!

Enjoy!