Philip Wen’s Virtual Residence

What to expect from this bleak outlook on the economy

No matter where you turn, you can’t escape the depressing mood that has all but permeated all of media.  Blogs, Destination sites, TV, Radio– even ads have started using “The Downturn” to start their segment or its headlines.  For people that are constantly soaking in business news, I can’t see how there is any bit of ray of optimism left.

Then just a few minutes ago, I hit this blurb.

Downright discouraging, isn’t it?

So what is going to happening to the millions that have or about to lose their jobs?  With the job market shrinking rapidly, will these people just sit at home and hang their heads in despair?

Nope.  That’s not how the economy works.

For the fortunate few that have what it takes to immediately re-enter the workforce, things will immediately go back to normal.  Out of those that are not as lucky?  What will happen to them?

Of course, some (perhaps many) will suffer through some pretty rough times.  But as long as people are willing to fight and plow ahead, I have yet to hear that people can die from economic depressions.  Emotional depression can be deadly, but people do not die from the lack of money.

In this Land of Opportunity, it means a big chunk of these folks are actually enterprising enough, and will try to use this “down time” to try their luck at entrepreneurship.  After all, isn’t that how the Economy usually pulls itself back on its feet?

See this post here.  And if you are too lazy to, let me just spit out a quote from it here:

“Students are increasingly open to taking entrepreneurial risks now that the economy doesn’t exactly guarantee a dream job anyway” - Peter Winicov

So while we are only at the beginning of this downturn, and it may seem like the rain is really pouring down hard, the lesson here is - Don’t let it get you down.

Why?  Because!  Just because everyone is jumping off that bridge, doesn’t mean you have to.  The herding pattern is what got us here in the first place.  To quote that famous Apple marketing campaign: “Think Different.”

For some perspective on why there is never a better opportunity, let me quote our great friend Al:

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” - Albert Einstein

Paul Graham also wrote about this subject here.  And since he may be infinitely more successful than I ever will be, perhaps you will listen to him.

If you’re too lazy again, here’s the gist: “Fortunately it has gotten very cheap to run a startup, and a recession will if anything make it cheaper still.”

Let me put it this way - You have to take risks to succeed, and if you don’t have a job anyway, you really aren’t risking much. ;-)  With the cost of running businesses being so low nowadays, you really don’t lose much even if you fail anyway.

So what are you waiting for?

Update: This topic seems to be the subject du jour.  See articles here.

Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, Opportunities, Start Ups, Technology

Yahoo - Jerry Yang’s Ouster

Jerry valued his prized brainchild a little too high initially and is now paying the price for it.  See the posts here and here.  This is a classic case of the endowment effect- it is sad that the passion that Yang had for the company is also the one that is bringing him down from the top post.

What can we learn from this?  Once the company goes public, it belongs to the public.  And that no matter how much of a brainiac you are, you can’t escape the boundaries of human psyche.

Endowment effect is a double-edged sword.  Wield it wisely.

As for Jerry - I am sorry man.  Sometimes popular consensus is more important than having “the passion” and doing the “right thing”.  Just ask Galileo.  Or not.

Tags: jerry yang, Yahoo

Best current deal on external storage

Amazon has the LaCie drives here.

Update: Buy.com has it here - at an even cheaper price.

Check out this post on LaCie’s site on how to register for your free year of Carbonite.  Not only do you get a great looking external drive, but LaCie is bundling all of their externals with 1 year of Carbonite.

The combination make this one of the best value on storage in recent memory.  The unlimited Carbonite service means you can backup the content you’ve stored on the LaCie drive and all the drives you have dangling off of the same computer.

Even though the service is marketed as unlimited backup, there is actually a limit for every subscriber.  How much value you get out of it depends on the amount of data you want to backup, and whether or not you are on a basic DSL package or the top speed FiOS package.

I can only guess that companies like Carbonite and Mozy really hate FiOS. 

In any case, deals like this is great for smaller companies with limited budget allocated for disaster prevention.  But now that such things are so affordable, there is really no reason not to implement a backup strategy.

Tags: Backup, Business, Carbonite, dsl, FiOS, LaCie, Neil Poulton