Oh No! The Dollar is Falling Off a Cliff

Today the dollar closed at 3.3 shekels to the dollar. That is a big hit for Israeli companies who raised dollars or sell in dollars but pay salaries in Shekels. I have written about this before here and here. The graphic below sums it up in my mind (Thanks to Bunny for the tip)

Live Blogging The Internet Panel At Shimon Peres's Tomorrow Conference in Jerusalem

Panel of Sergey Brin, Sue Decker, Rupert Murdoch, Maurice Levy, terry Semel.
Moderated by Yossi Vardi

First to speak was Sergey. Second time in Israel recently. Last time was Shimon Peres 80th Birthday.

Sergey Brin

• before we look forward, lets look back
• remembered early days of mosaic
• small list of websites
• liked CMU coke machine online
• We are in early days of internet
• Users are building internet
• We are in the early phases of internet
• remember, you can turn in off so you are not overwhelmed

Sue Decker

• Internet changes the way we communicate, interact and love
• internet changes the nature of broders and boundries.
• Tech is defining human behavior and industry and vice versa
• Work leisure and love are changing rapidly
• 12% of US newlyweds met online last year
• 9 trillion emails per year across the world
• Use internet to resurface old relationships, shopping and find things we are passionate about (including heli-skiing partners and mentos and coke)
• many people wake up next to their cellphone that they do not share with their partner
• More personalozation "my media" moving to "We media", instantly publish to social graph of all connections relevant to you.
• This weeks earthquake in china hit twitter streams while earthquake was still happening!
• web is highest % of all political news for elections
• Yahoo opening all properties to third party developers (in Yahoo commercials now)
• Yahoo is largest social network but is fundamentally the least useful social network. That is now Yahoo's biggest focus.
• One example if successful is to take email box and use email social graph to prioritize my mail
• 3 main themes for future. reating personal social experience, filters, and stronger connections between online and offline worlds. no difference in how they improve your lives. The more things change the more the stay the same.
• Saw Israel for first time yesterday. when i turned 40 she amde a list of big things she wanted to do in next ten years and one of them was to visit israel and now she accomplished that. Yahoo has 6.5 people in Israel and in the same building as Google Haifa research in Israel. saw both signs on same building from helicopter yesterday. A lot more google employees to recruit from than Yahoo employees. :)

Maurice Levy of Publicis

• Media image of Israel is part of painful reality but there is a different israel that he wants to see on his TV. The israel of research, education, progress and taming the desert.
• have been big investors in tech since early days
• most of our clients are lost, discovering world of contradiction and changes. what is true today is true only today. borders are all blurred. They were used to something simple. they came to us and did a 30 second commercial and then they watched it on TV. these days are past. They know nothing about the internet. The most talked about commercial is not in the country club. it is called the buzz and they do not understand it but at least their kids do and explain part of it.
• People love giving opinion and when it is negative it is bad and you give it in few strong words, you are commenting on everything but who are you?your mood drives you and you want to show how the power has shifted and if we want to connect we can't just address at you. we need to do it in your language which is personal to you.
• TV commercial had clear rules. Internet ahs no rules. It is about connection and buzz, it is about content
• the fact that people are interested in personal videos almost more than earthquake in China tells us a lot about people and how lonely people are and how fiercely they want to say that they exist. as an ad agency this tell us more than any research can.
• Chris anderson and Freenomics, forcing change of business model. Free press should be free to read! A child not paying for music today will not pay for music or other things in the future. this world will be funded by advertising.
• Chides Rupert Murdoch (who is on the panel) and says people wont pay for his news.
• Online wil continue to grow at the expense of analog media.
• the only thing we can be sure about digital is its change. to survive in this world you must keep at least one eye open and your brain toatly open to crativity and to change.

Yossi Vardi who is moderating the panel calls up a woman named sophie spontaneously. she is now GM of P&GG in Israel. She says that that P&G is 3X as old as the state of Israel (Israel is 60 last week). Moved to Israel 4 years ago. came from France. P&G is an innovator and so is Israel and that is why P&G needs to be here. P&G Set up innovation desk in Israel. P&G couldnt believe that a small country like Israel could innnovate at this level for P&G.

Rupert Murdoch

• Honored to be here with President Peres
• Israel the free-est society in the Middle East
• Landed 2.5 days ago. Walked streets of tel Aviv and Jerusalem, had helicopter tour. Moved by the passion of the whole country
• Tech destroying obsolete business models of one size fits all models. innovation from bottom up. our challenege is to personalize the media experience for everybody
• on cusp of new golden age of information
• Tech challenging accepted way of doing things. Histroy shows that tech forces creativity, expands market and makes information available to more people and lower cost or free
• Need people to take advantage of tech. need smart people more than ever. today's econonmy gives great reward to people and countries with good human capital. Israelis know this from own histroy. Carved modern society out of desert. human capital makes up for lack naural resources (ME: Heck, i wish we had more water here anyway - humans have not brough rain yet)
• News Data Systems (news corp sub) started in 1988 in jerusalem apartment. Now employs 3500 people worldwide. 1000 people in Jerusalem. Spent yesterday at NDS looking at what they are doing in encryption. NDS is vital to Newscorp. NDS has made satellite dependent companies psosible. NDS is in 82 million devices in 35 countries.
• need to look for ways to expand human capital across Middle East to give more to the people so Israel will have better neighbors. Need to expand knowledge to get to peace. tens of millions of people live in countries rich with oil but do not have the knowledge to compete in this economy. we can change that. Internet gives us this power to disseminate this knowledge cheaply so people can improve their condition. Need to improve education.
• Announces task force of Israel and American business leaders to cultivate a new education and a new private high school to cultivate future Israel leaders. first report of task force expected in 3 months.
• education systems across middle east need to be advanced so that they are not susceptible to those preaching violence. Focus on skills and education helped Israel prosper. Need to help others in region achieve the same result to build more helpful future. need to refashion foriegn aid programs around that. Security comes from having neighbors who are free and prosperoud and educated.

Yossi spontaneously calls up Gary Sheinberg, head of innovation at BT for some "zionist propaganda". BT hosting an Israeli innovaion day in London on June 11th. Promote to all british companies.

Terry Semel

• Was at Davos and was summoned to President Peres' room. Loved peres and enjoyed conversation. Asked Semel if he would come for 60tha anniversary and now happy to be here.
• "When i was listening to Sergey say you can do all sorts of things online such as booking travel online. I did not realize you could book reservations on private planes online."
• Praises Sue Decker for succeeding in what he did not: opening a presence for Yahoo in Israel.
• When he joined Yahoo, he told Jerry Yang he did not wnat to be treated differently than other Yahoos. No private parking like at Warner Bros, Lunch with everybody means grab a tray and wait online and wait with everyone. Loved that there was no class systems. Different than WB where he had his own dining room and chef. Only had a cubicle at Yahoo. Loved every moment at yahoo.
• pace of change extraordinary. emails are answered in seconds in the middle of the nite. people sleeping with their Blackberrys. Totaly loved this whol new world.
  
• Music industry - unfortunately filed lawsuits to stop change. sued everyone. end result of that was very negative. you can't hold back time and change. if you try to protect your business and if you do not go with the flow in new ways, they will likely disappear. musci is a wonderful product but it is difficult for many music companies to survive.
• where is content going? very few people owned those networks and distribution outlets for media in each country. that is not the case online. future of content is greater than any before. business models will emerge to monetize. it always take a bit of time on that.
  

Olmert and Lebanon

Now that the gag order is off of the alleged bribery case against Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, I wanted to weigh in on the topic. I have no idea whether Olmert is guilty or innocent in this case. That is for the police and the attorney general to figure out. What interests me is whether our interests as Israeli citizen are being or can be protected by Olmert and that answer is categorically NO.

Olmert is under investigation for the 5th time during his 5 years in office. His finance minister and old colleague resigned and was recently indicted on embezzlement. Remarkably, in this country of unstable politics, his coalition has hung together (the alternatives are all worse for them). This is a colossal distraction. Olmert should be the busiest and most focused man in the country but instead he is distracted by endless investigations. And this one is more serious as it pits him against his long time partner and attorney Uri Messer.

Today, Shimon Peres described the HIzbullah coup in Lebanon as internal Lebanese business. I wish. That is another Iran on our doorstep now, in addition to the sabre rattler in Damascus and the nuclear lunatic in Teheran. Peres is wrong. It is our problem but the bigger problem is our CEO/Prime Minister cannot possibly deal with this now as he is completely distracted. For this reason, Olmert needs to resign. We need a full time Prime Minister at the helm to deal with Iran, Lebanon, Syria and the terrorists in Gaza. We need a full time prime minister to deal with a collapsing Global economy. The conservative in me things it is sometimes better to have politicians whose hands are tied and not distracted. They do less harm that way. But not now. We need someone who is not distracted and now.

Dan Gillerman

Dan Gillerman has been a fantastic Ambassador to the UN. He has spoken with tremendous moral clarity and sharp wit since arriving in New York and has been a terrific spokesman to Israel. Two recent remarks of his have really caught my attention.

Most recently he called former US President Carter out for what he is, a morally bankrupt diplomatic failure (not to mention and unsuccessful president). Said Gillerman:

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, "went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas,"

Not long ago in a poingant exchange in the UN Security Council, Gillerman produced a rhetorical gem in response to some self-righteous moral rebuke targeted at Israel by Syria and Sudan. Retorted Gillerman:

"I want to express my "gratitude to the assassins of Damascus and the butchers of Sudan, both beacons of human rights, for their expert presentations on terror and genocide."

Dan Gillerman, who I met briefly when he was Chairman of the Israeli Chambers of Commerce, has shown tremendous diplomatic skill in the cauldron of anti-Israel activity, the UN. Unlike many of our mealy mouthed politicians he has shown an unwavering moral compass and his clarity of speech has helped our cause tremendously. Sorry Yossi B., we need Dan Gillerman back here in Israel serving in government! He should be a candidate for foriegn minister or even Prime Minister as nobody is better than him at presenting Israel's case to the world. If you can be heard in the echo chamber that is the UN, imagine how much more effective Gillerman would be on a bigger stage.

update: for more on Carter's unethical behavior and questionable morals, read Alan Dershowitz on Carter's ties to Saudi money and Ken Stein on Carter's book..

retroactive apology

Sorry for the long lapse in posting. Passover intervened. Happy Summer to all and more posts coming.

Good Thing Elliot Spitzer is Otherwise Occupied

Because Henry Blodget is at it again! This time with the SAI Top 25 valued private companies. I wonder what Mary Meeker will have to say about Blodget's math here.

The list might as well be called the Techmeme top 25 as it is a reflection of the 25 most talked about companies in the blogosphere.

just a collection....

I have been totally swamped and have not had time to really post anything thoughtful. Here though is a list of really interesting links and post that I highly recommend:

1. David Jackson, CEO of Seeking Alpha (Benchmark Company), on the Killer App of Searching Transcripts. A must for stock market investors.
2. Jeremy Liew on Forecasting Ad Sales for Start ups.
3. Mark Andreesen and Jeff Berkovici at Seeking Alpha on the inane NYT article on the perils of Blogging.
4. Fred Wilson on Umair Haque and the atomization of the internet (my term) and Umair's original must-read HBS post on edge economy.
5. Noam Wasserman of HBS in a Jerusalem Post article on entrepreneur's dilemmas. (with Noam's bio, he could start writing this blog..although I am not a retired little league coach)