Zornitza Stefanova

The Service I've Been Waiting For

Several days ago, I started using Original Signal after reading Brian Benzinger's excellent comparison of single page aggregators. I love the service, not only because I find it increadibly useful but also because I have fun memories from working with someone on a similar idea in 1998.

Back then, I found it too timeconsuming to click through to all my favorite web sources several times a day in order to stay up-to-date. I wished a service that would let me quickly scan the headlines from my favorite websites before I actually visited them. My business partner and I also considered adding personalized domain name registration to enable people to host such a page in a familiar location. Through various connections, we had access to a top level domain space, which was already generating a solid revenue stream. A stumbling block at the time was how to implement aggregation: XML was not widely enough adopted to be suitable for such a service. Fortunately, it only took a couple of extra years to become pervasive. We didn't get the project off the ground. But the desire to have a personalized preview page of the relevant web news at my fingertips stayed with me. I think Original Signal comes as close as I've seen.

Wharton Graduation

I am a bit late posting about my graduation day from Wharton a couple of weeks ago. But it is worth the post-mortem. After two years of baby, work and school, graduating from Wharton was a big relief and, I am told so, an event to feel good about. I already feel sad that I won't be seeing an awesome group of people every other week, sharing both long, 12-hour days of back-to-back lectures and too many drinks at the Old Ship (if you have not heard of this establishement, you have not missed much, but it sure has great service and cheap alcohol).

The fact that we are done hasn't yet fully sunk in. But I am certainly finding a lot more free time in my day. I also fear losing the efficiency inevitably gained from managing career, family and school all at once. Wharton Extreme, as the dean of the Wharton School called it, (aka full, two-year Wharton program but on a part time basis) was a memorable experience, which I saw as a way to test my ability to be effective at having a family and continuing to be successful professionally.

At the end of two long years, I am glad I went to business school this late in my career. The pre-requisite for Wharton West is a minimum of 10 years of work experience, of which I had more at the time I started. In every class lecture there were problems I had encountered personally in my professional experience. This helped me appreciate more fully the value of the analysis, examples and solutions we studied. In a way business school was like an extreme training camp: prior experience at our favorite sport was a must, but we all got a lot better at what we knew how to do well anyway.

In addition, one of the most valualbe benefits of the program was the quality of feeback from my peers. I learned as much from them as I did from the lectures and professors. Pretty much everyone in our group was in middle and upper management executive positions, ranging from manager to director to CEO or CFO. Many people had major professional and financial successes behind them (of the kind often refered to as "retirement" events) as well as more than one failures. While we were in the program for the top Wharton faculty, top school brand name, and the desire to learn, I believe many of us were at Wharton this late in our careers also for an additional reason. People had been around the block enough times to appreciate that save for rare examples like Steve Jobs or Andy Grove (who came to speak to our class) being exceptional in business requires not only talent and good luck but also top training and stamina. Wharton West was outstaning in teaching the latter two.

Finally, our graduation was at a classic venue (Herbst Theatre), followed by a classy reception (at City Hall) and a thoughtful speaker (Dave Pottruck, ex-CEO of Charles Schwab). Some of us also joined our colleagues at the full time program for the graduation ceremony in Philadelphia. Pictures coming soon...

The Photo Sharing Site That Doesn't Exist Yet

I ran across a post by Thomas Hawk about the ideal photosharing site. He is right on every count. I especially loved the geographic tags idea, as would anyone who likes to travel.

The value of photosharing (besides browsing randomly for entertainment) is in being able to extract a set of quality images that match a topic or idea. Image tagging, personalization and quality ranking within a large libarary of images would all contribute towards creating a versatile yet useful (in addition to enteraining) photo image web site.

Raising $50,000 for Bulgarian Children's Health Foundation

I am rasing money for a non-profit after being profoundly touched by the tragic story of recently born Bulgarian twin girls.

The two baby girls, Tanya and Victoria Kyamilovi were born prematurely. They were saved by their physicians but were inflicted by a condition often found among prematurely born children. The disease is called Retinopathy of Prematurity and leads to gradual detachment of the retina, and blindness, unless treated at the first sign of its appearance (more information here: ROP). Tanya and Victoria have been scheduled for an eye operation in Belgium but their parents cannot afford the treatment. Moreover, I have found out from the treating physician in Bulgaria that the incidence of ROP has dramatically increased in my native country because many more premature babies are saved from an early death than in the past.

I am raising $50,000. A third of this amount will be used to help Tanya and Victoria gain a last chance to be saved from total darkness through surgical intervention at a specialized eye clinic in Belgium. The other two thirds will be used to fund a non-profit organization I have registered with the goal to transfer medical equipment and training for the treatment of ROP in Bulgaria.

I have been able to gain the support of the employees of Citibank in Bulgaria as well as of some of my US friends and associates. After only a short period, $5,000 of this amount have already been raised. If you wish to help my cause, please donate below.

1) Donate using a credit card or a PayPal account by clicking on the link below.

2) Donate by personal check. Write the check to Tanya and Victoria Kyamilova Fund. Email me at zornitza@zornitza.com to learn where to mail it.

3) Donate directly to the children's benefit accounts in Bulgaria. If you choose this option, I can provide correspondence banks. Email me at zornitza@zornitza.com

BENEFICIARIES' BANK:
UNITED BULGARIAN BANK PLC
VELIKO TARNOVO BRANCH

(HEAD OFFICE ADDRESS)
5, "ST. SOFIA" STR.
1000 SOFIA
BULGARIA
/SWIFT: UBBS BG SF/

________________________
Tanya and Victoria's Account Numbers:

BENEFICIARY CUSTOMER:
VIKTORIA ALIEVA KYAMILOVA
2, "MIZIA" STR.,
5000, VELIKO TARNOVO
BULGARIA

ACCOUNT NUMBER:
USD  80023-1103852916
EUR  80023-1406596017

BENEFICIARY CUSTOMER:
TANYA ALIEVA KYAMILOVA
2, "MIZIA" STR.,
5000, VELIKO TARNOVO
BULGARIA

ACCOUNT NUMBER:
USD   80023-1103854014
EUR   80023-1406598112

Rob Reich

I heard an interview with Rob Reich on Marketplace today Was there any moral message. I wrote in an earlier post why I didn't find Kerry inspiring but didn't even come close to Robert Reich's clarity and eloquence. He nailed it! Still, I wish Kerry had won. What a disappointment.

Also, it is ironic that blue states subsidize the red ones ...

Red States Feed at Federal Trough, Blue States Supply the Feed

Google is Becoming Useless

It has become increasingly frustrating to search on Google. Until about a year and a half ago it was still possible to do a search, and find a decent mix of both non-commercial and commercial links. These days, a search on Google mostly produces sites selling stuff. For example, I was trying to research a pair of tennis shoes for my nephew. Typing "boys tennis shoes" in Google's search box returned a page on which every single link points to a shopping site. "Boys tennis shoes reviews" was not better: with the exception of a few lame epinion entries on single brands of tennis shoes there, nothing in the ranked results represented information about shoes rather than opportunities to buy shoes. "Boys tennis shoes comparisons"? Nope -- I got the same result. The experience was truly frustrating. This caused me to reflect that many of my searches on Google lately have been fruitless and time-consuming -- and equally frustrating. Is Google Froogle? I doubt the intent is evil. But maybe the link relevancy model is starting to break down, and the time for a new and improved search engine has arrived.

Wharton India Trip

It has been a few days since I got back from a trip to India with my classmates at Wharton West. The purpose of the trip was to get a sense if the current economic boom in India (annual GDP growth in the last year was about 7-8%) is for real. Although, I must say, hardly anything on a one week trip to India seems real. Our group met with both government officials (Dr. Abdul Kalam, the President of India and Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission) and CEOs at large Indian companies and Western multinationals. The companies we visited included McKinsey India, Tata Group, Reliance Infocomm, Pfizer, Sony Entertainment, IBM-Daksh, DSP Merrill Lynch, Birla Group, Hindustan Lever and a few others.

The net-net of the trip was that you can make a lot of money in India by investing cautiously -- and little at a time -- while knowing how to create profit from a small market. This sounded counter-intuitive in a country of a billion people but the reality is that still few people can afford to buy more than the absolute daily necessities. The infrastructure problems in India are still staggering, and the lacking education and basic hygiene for the masses -- quite severe.

A couple of conclusions stood out from the trip:

1. While many people hope that India is where China was 25 years ago -- with equivalent prospects -- an important difference exists between how the two countries are governed. Economic decisions in China, including the massive investment in infrastructure which was critical for the country's development in the past two decades, are made by an autocratic elite. India's democratic method of government, which is further complicated by a federation of quite autonomous states, has actually turned out to be an impediment in pushing through major economic reforms. As the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission told our group, "There is not lack of understanding of the economic priorities in this country: but to be even in a position to work on such reforms, one must take into account a very difficult political process." So, for basic infrastructure, China in fact benefitted from central planning and a forced reform. Not the case in India.

2. IT has been touted as India's miracle. It is true that the sector has grown very rapidly. Visiting companies like Datsch and Reliance Infocom felt like being in the familiar surroundings of Silicon Valley (Reliance actually felt futuristic even by U.S. standards -- or maybe this was just a marketing ploy). Yet, the whole IT sector is a tiny fraction of the Indian economy. Biotech and pharma, in fact, seemed much more likely to significantly impact to the continued growth of the Indian economy than high-tech.

3. The entrepreneurial drive is there. But not many expatriats are going back to India at this time. People are cautious and want to see how capable the government is in pushing through privatization. Nevertheless, recruiters are busy. We probably met more of them at our Wharton mixers than company executives. A good sign with a caveat: it's still a small market and a handful of companies in each industry who are hiring (and can afford) foreign-trained management.

4. You can only make money in the Indian market if you have deep understanding of it; if you are doggedly persistent and very patient. VCs are not investing in expatriats -- only local entrepreneurs. And they invest small amounts cautiously.

The memories from the trip are starting to fade but the overall impression is of a country that is both fascinating in its potential and sad in the extent of its poverty. It would be interesting to see where India is ten years from now. We had hoped to see many construction sites in Mumbai and Delhi but there weren't many of them yet... The Taj Mahal, however, is magnificent.