http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3mYDwRTALo

I was using Google today and I didn’t know that you could play Pac-Man on it!!!

http://www.google.com

I was really impressed to find a Chinese Hot Pot restaurant in Montreal. Not even Toronto has one! The Little Sheep is specialized in hot pot and the restaurant is great.

It is a all-you-can-eat system. They give you a hot pot soup in your table with a heater and then you go to the buffet to pick your vegetables and meats. Then, you cook the food yourself and voilá.

For those who have never eaten Chinese hot pot before, this is a must experience.

Website: http://www.littlesheephotpot.com/

One of the reason why I quit Google and moved to Canada is because of Poutine. It is serious!

In 2006, I lived in Montreal to study French at University of Montreal and I discovered one of my favorite food: Poutine. It is a very simple food. In a big bowl, you add French fries, chicken based gravy sauce and some fresh mozzarella cheese on top. That’s the basic Poutine. I love it.

Now, I discovered that there is a restaurant in Montreal that has a very special Poutine. It’s a Poutine with Fois Gras!

I couldn’t resist it and I went there on Thursday. Au Pied de Cochon is a restaurant specialized in Fois Gras and the place is really comfy and invites people to eat seriously.

I went there and I ordered Poutine avec Fois Gras. I also ordered a special beer from the restaurant, I think it was biére de Pied de Cochon Rousse. It was a nice mix of red beer and poutine. The fois gras came in a generous size. It was mid-rare. I expected the fois gras to be more cooked so it would enable the fat from the fois gras to come stronger.

It was a nice experience for a poutine lover. Do you love poutine?

Restaurant Au Pied de Cochon

536, rue Duluth Est, Montréal, QC
H2L 1A9

514-281-1114

www.restaurantaupieddecochon.ca
Open 5PM till 12AM (close on Mondays)
View Larger Map

This picture was taken on March in Omaha. I was in this event where we had a Q&A with him. Most of the questions were related to the U.S. and China economies. Also, there were some other interesting topics about his story as a successful business person. It was great.

Warren Buffett was really nice to share his time to have lunch with the MBA students and he took pictures with each of us in the event. That was an unique experience.

The Central Bank in Brazil is launching a new set of banknotes after 15 years with the launch of Real. They are good looking. I can’t wait to have all of them.

You can read more about the launch here.

Today is a special day for Google’s Doodle team. It had to create and publish three different doodles. Except in Brazil and China, Google is showing the Winter Olympics doodle. In Brazil, Google is showing a Carnaval doodle and in China, it is showing the Chinese new year doodle.

Although not as popular and well known as the summer Olympics, the winter Olympics is being held in the beautiful city of Vancouver. Canadians are very excited for this big event.

I was curious to know that there are some athletes representing Brazil in the winter Olympics. We do not have snow in 99% of the Brazilian territory and the winter is not as harsh as in Canada. It is quite hard to develop a strong winter sport team in Brazil due to the climate. It would be very expensive to maintain artificial winter conditions in such a hot country.

I guess the Brazilian athletes train in Canada.

The Brazilian Carnaval happens once a year and it usually starts on a Friday and it goes until the mid-day of Wednesday. Carnaval dates change according to lunar calendar, which is the same one used for the Chinese new year.

Chinese new year happens according the the lunar calendar. The new year can happen at the end of January or the end of March depending on the lunar cycle.

The Google China website is slightly different from the traditional minimalist look of Google. I think that the minimalist concept is very challenging for the Chinese aesthetic point of view. Take a look at one of the most popular website in China. If you compare Google’s homepage and Sina.com.cn’s website, you can see that Google may give an impression that something is missing in the eyes of a Chinese.

However, nothing beats the cuteness and fluffiness of a typical Japanese website (http://lolipop.jp).

Happy new year (year of tiger), Carnaval and Winter Olympics!

RKP9PJUU7JTD

Kwedit is a strange name for a payment company. This is a startup that offers a new form of payment to social and interactive games that allows people to buy virtual goods. The strange thing is that it allows people to “promise” to pay for a virtual good and the user can pay the promise later with a bar code in a 7eleven store.

Even though this seems to be a great innovation, the idea of printing a bar code and pay it in a retail store is nothing new to date. The strong differentiator of Kwedit is the idea of promising to pay later. I wonder what would happen if everybody promises to pay but none of the actually pays anything. I believe that the CFO of the company would be scare of the increase in the account payable of the balance sheet.

This type of payment for virtual goods reminded me of Habbo Hotel. Habbo is a Finnish company that started its virtual goods operations before the internet boom. It is probably the first company to have a business model based on selling virtual goodies to users. Interesting enough, Habbo targeted in a very narrow market segment. Its targets on teenagers that love to chat in pixel-lated environment.

Habbo and its many forms of payments.

Habbo offers 7eleven payments too. OK, they sell pre-paid cards and Kwedit doesn’t.

In my humble opinion, Sulake could have grown much more if it had focused on the virtual good market as a whole market instead of just that niche teenager segment. It could have created a strategic plan of reaching all types of games and services based on virtual goods. Well, other companies grew upon this model and they are newer than Habbo. C’est tant pis.

Bookhu is a book review website that shows if a book is read more by men or women. It is a food for thought website. It shows if I have more male or female preference. In my searches, most of my books related to entrepreneurship, venture capital and languages are read more by men. However, my books related to culture are read more by women.

http://tinychat.com/

Tinychat provides free video and audio chatroom for the mass. People can use this tool as a DJ room, virtual meeting presentation room or live interactive TV. I like this website because it’s free and for startups, this tool can connect our team member even if they are in different parts of the world. I think this is a Webex competitor only that Webex is focused on corporate customers and Tinychat is focused on the consumer customers.

If this service catches on, it would be a great acquisition target for big companies like Cisco, Google, Microsoft and even Yahoo. I believe that with the adoption of higher speed internet network and the integration of video and audio into gadgets, the reality is that people will prefer to use video and audio to communicate rather than writing, SMS or IM.

It is hard to make money on the Internet. Currently, there are two famous ways to monetize on the Internet: advertising and e-commerce. In the advertising side, we have Google AdWords, Yahoo Marketing or Microsoft Advertising. These companies make money by having big audience that attracts advertisers’ money. For instance, Google gets money when users click ads. In the e-commerce side, we have eBay, Amazon, Newegg, etc. They gain profit from buying low and selling high price. They have strong brands and first-mover advantage. It is almost impossible to create a company to compete against these behemoths.

However, that did not stop entrepreneurs to come up with more startups. A lot of entrepreneurs created other viable ways to make money on the internet. One of the most interesting way is the Make-Your-Own-Stuff Web 2.0 companies. They are characterized by Ajax site structure with big buttons and fonts and crowdsourcing or customization features in their websites. They make money by selling cool things that a lot of people like. Some companies sell t-shirts, mugs or print arts for your iPhone.

I’m going to present four companies that fit in this Make-Your-Own-Stuff Web 2.0 category:

Threadless home page 2009 winter

Threadless is a company that sells crowdsourcing designed t-shirts (from Chicago). Simply, people send their t-shirt designs; other people vote for the best and cool designs; Threadless make t-shirts from those winning designs to the mass. People buy them. [This is a classic successful web 2.0 company that relies on crowdsourcing and social interaction.]

Gelaskins Canada Startup Homepage 2009

Gelaskins is a Canadian company that sells cellphone and other electronic gadget special skin protection with very interesting design. They have a lot of designers that create cool designs for all those cellphone protectors. The protectors are made of a special plastic-rubber easy to remove and glue that not only make your iPhone or Blackberry more beautiful, but also protect your gadget from scratches. [Great potential to grow.]

Scarfmaker an Estonian startup

Scarfmaker.com is a startup from Estonia and it allows users to customize scarf with their own designs. I think the idea is great and it may grow very very fast. Currently, I think the company is backed by Swedish VCs. I will be watching the developing of this company.

Crazy Custom Caps Home page 2009

Crazy Customs Caps is a typical company that offers customized caps. There are many many companies that allow people to create customized caps but not many of them set up a website. Although, the idea of this company may not be original, the business framework of allowing users to customize their products is definitely catching on in the web 2.0 landscape.

All these companies belong to the e-commerce category of money making website, but they are able to compete against big players because they have a special value proposition to customers. Most of them offer unique items created by the crowd or by user’s customization of the product. Interesting niche market.

I was using Hunch this weekend to see how it works. It is a quiz guessing website. You make questions and it gives you its hunch about what the best thing is for you.

I chose the What’s the best profession for me quiz. It started showing me the following questions:

And I’ve got the results here.

I’m currently taking the MBA course at Ivey business school here in Canada. I started on August and it is impressive how many things we learned until now. I am very sure that I do not see business, organizations, finance, accounting and career management in the same way as I used to. Even though I’m just here for about 4 months in the course and in Canada, my knowledge about business has improved significantly. For instance, I can provide assessment in the optimal capital structure of a firm, I can read and understand balance sheet in the point of view of managers, investors and shareholders, also I am starting to see how strategy can drive employees and managers behavior and how a leader can drive the direction of a company.

The course lasts for 1 year and its main focus is in general management.

Besides the academic life of an MBA, I’m participating in many different activities. Maybe too much.

I’m one of the four Executive Directors of LEADER Project, a student run not for profit organization aimed to teach entrepreneurship in universities in Eastern Europe countries (Russia, Macedonia, Moldova and Ukraine). I founded with Ali the Innovators club. I’m member of the Finance, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Wine and Presentation Skills clubs in the MBA side and I’m member of the French, Portuguese and Visual Arts clubs in the University of Western Ontario side.

Also, I’m creating a business plan with John, John, Matt and Pema. We think we may have a great opportunity in the online advertising industry (I always worked in Internet monetization, my expertise). Besides, I’m participating in the Canada’s next top ad executive competition with John. I will also participate in some others competition in the beginning of next year.

After all of this, I’m also making some new friends! Friends from China, India, Venture Capital industry, Automobile industry, Canada, Peru, etc.

A lot of things are happening, that’s why I am not updating my blog as much as I used to. The great thing is I’m able to manage and prioritize all my activities. Thanks for my Google experience where I learned how to do things fast.

My next posts will be focus on the monthly Canada’s Venture Capital Firm list (I’m posting on December 3rd). I will add more information for each of the firms. Also, I will resume my posts about the case studies from the Entrepreneurial Finance from the MIT OpenCourseWare. I promised in the beginning of this year that I would go through all the cases from that course at MIT and I think I am much more prepared to discuss the cases in that course.

Here are some of my previous posts about the Entrepreneurial Finance course:

Horizon Communication

Venture Capital Valuation Method

What happens when the schedule slips in startup?

Technical Data Corporation

I will resume from the Horizon Communication case. Probably, I will make a podcast for about it.

Stay tuned!

I am having fun and great time with my MBA classmates here at London. Today, we are having an amazing race, so we can know each other and the city better.

My team is the number one team. Mike, Peter, Kyle, Elika and I are running throughout the city to catch clues, do some tasks, take some pictures, shoot some videos and have great fun.

Until now, our team is doing great. I can’t tell you how well we are now because of competitive issues but I believe we will definitely be the first.

Here are some of the pictures. Enjoy!

Thanks Googlers!

Last Friday (July 17th) was my last at Google as a AdWords Product Specialist in Brazil. It was a fun, growing, interesting, deep, challenging and awesome experience.

As a Google fan, I was lucky enough to work in the product development, engineering, marketing, project management, education, training and sales sides of this great company. I was able to see the wholeness of how this behemoth company works and the more I knew the company, the more I admired Google.

Besides that, I admired Googlers the most. Googlers are extremely smart, intelligent and nice to work with. They do have a really high standards about any kind of work. That environment challenged me to do my best and to grow even more.

It was sad my last day, but I believe I will see my coworkers from Google someday again.

Now, I’m focus on my MBA in Canada.

Some of my Google experience left on the Internet:

Novos Recursos do Google Analytics (in Portuguese only)
Google University – AdWords Além da Busca? – SMX Sao Paulo
Google Developer Days 2007

Leslieville is home to an array of cafes and antiques stores.

Toronto is a very international and diverse city. It is one of the biggest city in Canada with 2.5 million of people (Greater Toronto has 5.6 million). 

I went there three times in my life and I have to say that it has its own big city charm with its Eaton Center and the Queen West District. Compared to other Canadian cities, it has a metropolitan vibe with its traffic and people rushing to schools, work and entertainment. 

It has a strong theater, music, painting and modern art scene. 

You should read the New York Times ‘36 Hours in Toronto‘ and follow its recommendation of how to visit this pretty city.  Also, visit my Google Maps that I created based on the article.

Swine Flu - HSBC Pig Saving Ad

Look what I found. HSBC’s ad with a pig linked to the Swine Flu News.

Another great tool from Google: Google News Timeline.

Google News Timeline - Venture Capital results from 2001

It shows all the news that you search in a timeline! You can see the news in a more coherent way. It is much easier to build stories and check for historical patterns.

Before moving to my comparison of Internet Burst news and the current crisis, let me ask you when these headlines were written (don’t read them yet)?

Venture Capital On The Rocks

Venture Capital Firms Face Stricter Regulations

Venture capital harder to find for companies in search of funding sources

Venture capital investments plunge 23%

Boston-Area Venture Capital Firm Slashes Investment Fund by 63 Percent

Attempts to Find Capital Frustrates Toledo, Ohio, Wireless Internet Founders

Venture Capital: Cautious VCs again looking at incubation

Second-Quarter Chill Continues for Venture Capital

Venture capital downturn worsens

Guess what? All these news were written in 2002! They are very similar to the news that we have about the venture capital industry today as you can compare here:

Venture capital slashed $476 million in quarter

Is Venture Capital in Trouble?

Venture capital performance among worst in a decade

College Endowments Deserting Venture Capital

Bleak outlook for venture capital as Silicon Valley tries hand at self-funding

National Venture Capital Association predicts investment slowdown into 2009

Venture capital industry squeezed

Venture capital-backed IPOs hit 30-year low in 2008

Venture Funding in First Quarter Drops 50 Percent

As you can see, it looks that the news are very similar between 2002 and 2009. Who knows if we may have a similar downturn period of two years as you can see below.

Internet Boom Burst

The bad news started to pop up from April 2002, with the news: Venture capital harder to find for companies in search of funding sources, until February 2004, with the news: Technology Venture Capital Fund-Raising Accelerates.

2 years of VC industry downturn.

Current Crisis

It started from October 2008, with: The Tech Sector’s Venture Capital Is Drying Up, and it continues with today’s: Venture Funding in First Quarter Drops 50 Percent.

Seven months of VC industry downturn.

If this pattern happens again, we may still have to wait 17 months before any big good news! It will be the time of my MBA graduation.

This is an impressive beta tool from Google: Similar Images.

As you can see, I’m searching for Sao Paulo’s images in the tool.

Google Similar Images - Sao Paulo

Then, I select one of the picture to get similar images and the tool gives back a list of images related to what I was looking for!

Similar Images results for Sao Paulo

Impressive!

Yesterday, I baked some cookies. I followed this recipe:1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup (110 grams) light brown sugar
1/4 cup (50 grams) white granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup (140 grams) all purpose flour
1/4 cup (30 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups (260 grams) white chocolate chips or chunks

For more instructions, visit: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateCookies.html

The result: 

Chim's Chocolate Cookies

I made a lot of them. And I’m giving some to my coworkers!

But I also got another result. It is too expansive to make my own cookies. If I sum the ingredients price (I spent around US$ 20) and my work, each cookie costs around US$ 0,55! In the grocery store a pack of chocolate cookies costs US$2.50 with almost 20 cookies. I think it’s better to buy it from a bakery.

Sometimes, I use this same kind of rationale to think when it’s worth to do a thing by myself or ask somebody to do it for me.

Imagine the following hypothetical situation.

I have a great idea for an Internet consumer product: a website that chooses the best cookie recipe based on your personality.

After thinking a lot, I figured out that it would take me 100 hours of work to get the platform done (I already added the hours I would have to learn programming and stuff). Imagine that my hourly pay is around US$ 8 (California’s lowest hourly pay). So, the website would cost me around US$ 800. CERTAINLY, in California, the cost of creating such a thing would cost thousands of dollar if I hired someone. In this hypothetical case, I would build the website by myself.

This exercise illustrates very well when you have to buy a service or product  from someone or you should do it by yourself. In the case of cookies, it would be better to buy it from the grocery store. In the case of website, it is better to build it by myself.

don't leave your Easter Eggs alone if you don't want them to be eaten ...

There’s an interesting photo stream from a user called doc18 from Flickr.com. Happy easter! (It’s Easter today in Brazil)

Know more about Easter!