[TED '10] Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero! & Thoughts on Petrodollar...
At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.
I'm interested these days on Zero Emission solutions. I've visited Better Place Center this week, it was very informative. I recommend everyone to go visit there and get familiar with their EV network solution that may one day help turn countries like Israel, Denmark and others into oil-free transportation zones.
The vision is here, but the challenges to deploy such solutions are huge. As part of my MBA study, I'm doing an essay on the EV market in general and on their ability to deploy and more interestingly on the chance of adoption. Stay tuned, I may put the results of this research on the net soon...
I don't care if this will be actually done leveraging EV, solar, gas or even nuclear (oh... maybe not) based energy, but we need to fight the petrodollars... I realized the geo-political petrodollar issue after reading "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" from Thomas Friedman... For those who may not know, a petrodollar is a United States dollar earned by a country through the sale of petroleum. You will agree with me, financing terrorists should not be our cup of tea.
In short, even Bill has joined this war, maybe not for the same reasons, but anyway... a inspiring speech.
A special thank to DanS for sharing this video with me.
Thoughts on VC & private equity world AND how to calculate EBITDA...
I'm learning more about Venture Capital and Private Equity these days... An amazing world...
Who knows... maybe one day I will switch industry and join a VC or a LBO, or even create one... One thing is sure: this sector sounds very interesting and extremely close to the real action.
I've noticed many times the valuation of a given deal/target company is expressed in number of times its EBIDTA.
For instance, in 1999, Cadbury Schweppes had agreed to sell all of its non-American soft-drink assets to Coca-Cola for 18 x EBITDA.
EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. It is a measure to gauge the profitability of a corporation or business. A person need not have an MBA to understand financial calculations. EBITDA is not as complicated to calculate as the lengthy acronym would suggest.
Instructions Step 1Calculate net income. To calculate net income obtain total income and subtract total expenses. Total income is defined as the amount of money obtained for services, labor or the sale of goods. Total expenses is defined as when a corporation uses up an asset or incurs a liability.
Step 2Determine income taxes. Income taxes are the total amount of taxes paid to federal, state and local governments. Step 3Compute interest charges. Interest is the fee paid to companies or individuals that reimburses the individual or companies for the use of credit or currency.
Step 4Establish the cost of depreciation. Depreciation is the term used to define a cash (machines or property) or non-cash asset (a copyright, a trademark or brand name recognition) that loses value over time whether through aging, wear and tear or the assets becoming obsolete. There are two methods of depreciation: straight line and accelerated. Step 5Ascertain the cost of amortization. Amortization is a method of decreasing the amounts of financial instruments over time including interest other finance charges.
Step 6Add all previously defined components. EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) equals amortization plus depreciation plus interest plus net income plus income taxes. The resulting figure is then subtracted from total expense. This final figure is then subtracted from total revenue to arrive at EBITDA.
Ce post m'avait valu de nombreux commentaires des analystes du secteur.
Ma prochaine prévision sur ce sujet: Il y de très fortes chances que Google n'arrivera pas a synchroniser son roadmap et les demandes du marche avec une version par an. Cette approche risque de causer encore plus de fragmentation dans le cas de Android, pour des raisons évidentes... les acteurs de ce secteur, OEMs ou opérateurs, n'attendront pas Google pour implémenter de nouvelles fonctionnalités requises afin de diversifier leurs services face a une concurrence acharnée...
De plus, il ne faut pas oublier que Google devra aussi synchroniser le roadmap de Android Mobile et Android TV, chose que Google n'a jamais eu besoin de planifier au paravant. Je parle d'expérience car je connais de très près les challenges de ce type de produits, car je dirige de tels produits et offres convergentes pour le compte de Sun Microsystems (Maintenant Oracle).
Since this monday, I'm a formal Oracle employee (LEC for Israel was on May 31st)...
I didn't truly realize this change until yesterday evening...
no, it's NOT the new email address, it's NOT the multiple orientation sessions we had, it's NOT the new introduction pitch during customer meetings (Yohan From Su... Oracle), or not even the new employee card (I still didn't receive btw...), but because a little sticker...
Last night, I had to remove the 'Sun Micro' sticker on my company car, and to replace it with the Oracle logo... To tell you the truth, it was both a strange and sad moment, like saying goodbye to very close friend you may never see again...
I had a chat with my kids today when they noticed the new sticker...
They were curious to understand who is this 'Ora... Oracle' ?!?
I tried to explain them Oracle is the largest entreprise software company worldwide, and that they have acquired Sun to beat IBM, the second most recognized brand in the planet (after Coca-Cola)... but they seemed not convinced ;-)
Looks like they didn't learn about M&A strategy at school just yet...
It has been a pleasure for me to meet some of you at the European Java Roadshow event in Hertzelia last week.
I hope you enjoyed my live demos showing JavaFX TV applications running on the Intel CE3100-powered STB ;-)
Again, feel free to visit the javafx.com site to download the SDK, learning more about this emerging technology leveraging the Tutorials & How-to pages, and the sample codes...
I don't care if this will be actually done leveraging EV, solar, gas or even nuclear (oh... maybe not) based energy, but we need to fight the petrodollars... I realized the geo-political petrodollar issue after reading "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" from Thomas Friedman... For those who may not know, a petrodollar is a United States dollar earned by a country through the sale of petroleum. You will agree with me, financing terrorists should not be our cup of tea.
