Now, after the two weeks were over, the real vacation began! Vanessa and the kids flew into Brisbane from LA, and I joined them on a commuter flight from Brisbane to Sydney. They arrived a bit late, victims of a breakdown on the intra-airport light rail line.. late enough for me to begin to worry, but not late enough to cause any difficulties making the connection. I’d never been to Sydney, which ended up being further south and somewhat colder than Brisbane, but was still a lovely city. A world city, as they put it, more than a place that typifies Australia. There are over 4 million residents, and this includes quite a number of Japanese, Indians, and Chinese. The mix of a Mandarin speaker with the Australian accent to English is quite a sound to behold!
Flying from the US to Australia is a thirteen hour journey, but it’s actually the best possible 13 hours, basically you leave at midnight, sleep as much as you can, and arrive in Australia in the morning. You can actually sleep more than you would on a regular night, and you’re almost inclined to by the darkness. Once you get there, the key, according to the chief engineer who brought us to Australia, is that you don’t, under any circumstances fall asleep during that first day. Here are Vanessa and the kids doing their best to stay awake that first day, starting with a ferry ride that took us past the Opera House, and towards a little outdoor market selling knickknacks, postcards, and used books. Apparently used books are a big thing down under.
Here’s a view of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, another climbable bridge. I guess the Aussies are big on this death-defying stuff. They’re also big on travel. We actually saw more Flight Centre offices per capita than we did either Starbucks or 7-11’s. The question isn’t whether they’ve traveled to America, Europe, Asia, but when they last did so. That strikes me as somewhat more akin to Europe, where international travel and exposure are more prevalent than they are here. Which is a fairly good thing- my grandfather found many of his ideas for businesses basically by adapting the best of what he’d seen abroad, but couldn’t find at home.
After our little excursion through the street fair, it was late afternoon. We took a quick stop by the National Maritime Museum, which had a battleship, a submarine, and an old wooden sailing ship docked outside.
Admission is free inside, and includes tons of exhibits, including the world’s fastest boat!
We slept quite well after dinner that night. And for the most part it worked, I think, since everyone was wide awake and ready for the next morning!
Day two started out with The Essential Tour of the Sydney Opera House. Really interesting stuff, including how the design was rescued from the discard pile during a worldwide competition to design it, the cost overruns that led to an estrangement of over 30 years for the architect Jørn Utzon, who, though he is now again working with the Opera House, has never seen it complete in person, and due to age, isn’t likely ever to do so. Seen in the picture below are the tiles, which aren’t white, and aren’t even a single color. It’s a two color mosaic that looks different throughout the day as light reflects off it at different angles.
One of the sights to behold was the amazing view from inside the Opera House, of the harbor. One of the reasons this particular design won, was that it was a side-by-side design, allowing eventgoers in either of the main halls to head out during intermission and enjoy the view of the ocean.
After learning the essentials of the Opera House, we headed outside for a visit to the sunday street market just below The Monumental Stairs. Vanessa and I have determined that it was indeed my dad who said that ice cream was best on a cold day, kind of a Zen-like observation that I still scratch my head about a bit, but here are the kids enjoying a frozen confection on a wintry day:
Next up was the nearby marketplace called The Rocks. Now this was a street fair! We’re talking row upon row of vendors under a semi-permanent tarp, with endless touristy, artistic, or houseware type stuff, along with restaurants and the occasional food vendor. One of these vendors was doing an insane business in corn- we’re talking four lines times ten deep, unabated. This street fair isn’t quite as tiny-kid-friendly, so we didn’t spend as much time as we might have, but it’s on my short list of places to return to.
Next up on the attractions tour was the Sydney Aquarium. The Aquarium is right off the harbor, in a shared building with the Wildlife World. And each of these attractions along with a couple others, including the Tower, are available as a combination pass. The savings are a bit convoluted if you have young children who might be free on one attraction, and might have to pay for another (as we did), but overall, we’re talking a nice credit card sized pass that gets you into all the good stuff.
They have tunnels underneath the shark tank and seal tank, as you can see here.
After racing through the aquarium (because the kids wanted to see the koalas), we headed to the neighboring Wildlife World. Where, while you could take a picture with a koala, you couldn’t actually hold one. And while you could get pretty close to kangaroos, you couldn’t actually feed them. In other words, Lone Pine was definitely the better experience, although that was back in Brisbane.
Vanessa and I split up a bit this day. In a particularly cosmically aligned coincidence, the World Shakuhachi Festival was being held in Sydney, precisely the week after my scheduled business trip. This timing was one of the factors that helped convince us (well, Vanessa) that it would be worthwhile to leave the shop for a week, brave another trip with two kids in a tightly enclosed economy class row, and visit a country that wasn’t necessarily on our bucket list. But the concerts, held only every two or four years, featured her old music teacher Bill-sensei, with whom we’d had lunch not a few months earlier when she was working on getting back into practice.
I still remember sitting in her room in an apartment she shared with her siblings and a childhood friend from Oakland during undergrad at UCLA, on her twin mattress on the floor, listening to her play. The shakuhachi has what I’d think of as a more earthy tone to it than the flute, which is more clinical and precise. She’d play, practicing for a particular concert performance that was recorded and probably exists somewhere in the Ethnomusicology library, although my searches for it have thus far been unsuccessful.
She’s been playing a bit more recently, which has served as a reminder of the softness and delicacy of the instrument, compared with, say, the piano-playing downstairs at home by my brother-in-law which occasionally makes me want to beat him senseless with a metronome before my ears bleed.
Back in April, in the middle of my last quarter of classes, I got an email from my manager, asking me if I could support an external review of a program in Australia. Brisbane, to be exact. This caught my eye because I’d been there in a former life (well, job anyway), and very much enjoyed the climate and people. So of course I was interested.. only, not if it interfered with my graduation. Fortunately, after some fortuitous foot-dragging, and perhaps their inability to find someone more suitable, I was in! And in fact, so was another coworker, so I wouldn’t be going alone or with strangers, which was very nice. And we got to fly business class, which was very nice.
So I got to spend a couple weeks in Brisbane, during their winter, which is the best season to visit. It’s cool, like an LA winter, and not at all humid. The riverfront has beautiful scenery, including lots of places to dine, lots of places that fit nicely within the per diem in fact. Including, well, wagyu and seafood. Boy did we eat well.
Here I am standing in front of the riverfront one evening, with the Story Bridge in the background. Apparently you can climb the bridge in harnesses in jump suits, up to the top and along. Just the prospect of this made my hands sweat, so instead we just walked across it and back, one evening. That was plenty.
The only really tough part about traveling to Australia is that it’s really inconvenient, time-wise. There was basically no overlap in time for me to speak to the kids, who were asleep when I was home in the evenings, home when I was asleep, and at school in the mornings. Basically I got one phone call with them on the weekend, and any minutes I could spare during lunch (at exorbitant cel phone rates). Vanessa stayed up until all hours so that at least I wouldn’t be completely cut off, which made the lengthy time away at least somewhat bearable.
In the middle of the two week working portion of the trip, though, my coworker Samir put together a weekend of fun. He also brought a camera, and so we have photographic evidence that we enjoyed at least the two middle days (Saturday and Sunday) in Brisbane. Turns out it was also his birthday, and he was under strict orders from his family not to spend it holed up in our hotel working.
On Saturday, his actual birthday, we got to sail out to Moreton Island, on Solo, a racing yacht with a long history, including circumnavigating the globe and spending Christmas in the Arctic. These days, though, the crew takes on tourists for day sails out to the nearby islands, with its singing Dutch Captain (mostly to tunes from the 70s and 80s), a young mate who guided us on all the activities, and a woman who served us our tea, snacks, and a full buffet lunch cooked on-board on a tiny range oven which was built on a hinge, so it’d sway with the boat and stay level. That last part was the most surprising, all the goodies she pulled out of there, including trays of melt-in-your-mouth chicken, luncheon meats, breads, and salads (the green leafy variety as well as the potato variety).
Here I am, just after we boarded, early in the morning.
And here I am, illustrating the depths of my suffering while away from home and family. Apparently I wear my grief and loneliness like a skintight, full body, neoprene suit. Samir is also using his smile just to fool the public.
Actually, we were about to snorkel, out near “the wrecks”, basically a bunch of rusting old hulks of ships they’d dragged over to the island to make an artificial reef. I’m one of the two guys wearing a life vest, because, while I pride myself on being able to swim just well enough to not drown, I didn’t particularly want to prove it this day. Snorkeling is an interesting experience, made more so by the fact that we were really out in the ocean, and so it got kinda choppy, and oh by the way, you can’t wear your glasses while snorkeling… so, the fish that were close were pretty, and the rest were kinda blurry. And stories about keeping an eye out for sharks weren’t particularly appreciated.
So here are the wrecks. They were pretty, but they were sharp! We had special gloves, and were under strict orders not to rub ourselves up against them. Looking at them up close, this wasn’t particularly tempting.
Here’s actual proof I did this. It was somewhat out of character for me, and I’m still not quite sure why I didn’t just decide to stay behind and spend the day at Brisbane Casino or something. But I’m glad I allowed myself to get talked into it, because it was fun, and because it turned out to be Samir’s birthday, a fact I found out about when he asked the ship’s captain for a “birthday discount”, and I found myself wondering if I was in Australia alongside a charlatan (I was not!).
The next activity on the agenda was sand-tobogganing. This had somewhat of a dubious description as well: instead of snow, we’d be tobogganing on a large sand dune. And strange as this sounds, it actually worked. We trekked up this sand dune with little snowboard looking things, pasted them with wax, and slid down.
The sand on Moreton Island was a fine, light brown almost powdery substance, not like the little rocks we get most places. It was fairly pleasant to slide on, and not all that abrasive. It did, however, still taste like sand when sliding down face first. I’m of course actually moving much faster than the clarity of this image and the lack of kicked up sand would have you believe.
And here’s the view from the top.. So, when I say hill, I actually mean that I was doing some work dampening my fear of heights.
On the way back, the winds finally started to kick up a notch, and we did some actual sailing, rather than our prior activity of putting the sail up and then propelling ourselves with the on board motor. We even got to steer the boat for a bit.. Here I am playing “captain” for a minute, while the real captain kicked up his heels, and made sure we didn’t actually jibe a few of our sunbathing shipmates off into the ocean.
We also had the option to do something he called jet-boarding, I think it was.. Basically you cling to an inflatable half-raft which is attached to a small speed boat piloted by the Captain.. and he spins and pulls you along, making turns and figure-eights while you try to hang on. He warned us beforehand that only eight people had previously survived “calling [him] a sissy”, and so of course we had several tempters of fate, including our very own Samir, and I must say with some sadness that the count remains at eight today. (j/k)
So, that was Saturday. Sunday was much more sedate. We spent it shopping, visiting the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, and resting up for week two at the Australian office. Here’s a pic of me and the koala, a picture which caused me some grief when we discovered that basically, Lone Pine is the only place you can actually hold one.. You can’t, anywhere in metro Sydney, to the chagrin of my kids who are now saying that next time, for sure, we stop in Brisbane.
I had been thinking for a while now that I’d write a bit of a book review on The Last Lecture, book version, but instead I’m just going to say that I’m sadder than I suppose I should be for someone I’ve never met, and for his family. ABC News is reporting he passed away. He said he knew his family was going to go over a cliff soon, and that he couldn’t prevent it, but that he could sew nets to cushion the fall.
And boy, did he sew.
I guess that still doesn’t make the fall any less heartbreaking.
Now that I’m officially done, I can hand out my personal “Teacher of the Year” award/blog entry. More officially, I found out a couple weeks ago that Professor Sussman has won the class selected Teacher of the Year award, nominated and voted upon by my friends and classmates. I think he was the perfect choice, because he blended a raucous storytelling personality with meticulous lectures and case discussions, and strong expectations of excellence from his students. Although, I’ll admit to not having taking classes from all of the nominees (which, by sheer number, might not actually have been possible).
In winter quarter of this year, I took Professor Sussman’s Real Estate Investments course. He calls this course a barometer of the real estate industry, as he’s seen enrollments rise and fall with the fortunes of the industry. He was surprised at the high turnout, and full wait-list, during the housing and credit crunch. I’m thinking his reputation brings students in regardless, and also that student interest is probably a trailing indicator.
I took the course because I didn’t want to leave Anderson without taking at least one of what I’ve been referring to as “the big three”. I can’t remember if this phrase is more widely used and I picked it up from somewhere, but I think it’s fairly commonly regarded that there’s a trio of professors at UCLA Anderson who are particularly challenging and relevant. The other two are Professor Garmaise who teaches Venture Capital & Private Equity, and Professor Cockrum who teaches Managing & Financing the Emerging Enterprise.
I had thought, entering into UCLA, that venture capital might be a viable route for a guy like me.. I like to think I’m technically oriented, and I have had more than a passing interest in finance as it relates to technology. Similar to the thought that patent law might be an open avenue to a guy like me were I to get a law degree, I thought VC would be the best intersection of my choices in education. I learned fairly early though that a more logical path to venture capital would be to rise within my particular industry to a business development executive level, and cut over, than it would be to switch now and slog it out with the fresh faces at the starting line.
So, that meant I was less likely to want to take Professor Garmaise’s class. While Professor Cockrum’s course would have been an ideal fit with my entrepreneurial aspirations, Professor Sussman’s real estate class dovetailed nicely with my grandparents’ history in real estate investment. I’ve had some limited exposure to high-density multi-family development, land, and apartment buildings through them, and so I have always viewed real estate as an opportunity. My grandfather swore by it, illustrating in his way the power of leverage. He’d say, something like
You buy a house for $100,000. (His timeframe of reference is clearly a few years earlier than mine, although he also did this for simplicity of math.) You put down 20%, or $20,000. A year later, it’s worth $120,000, up 20%. But not for you, you put down $20,000, and now you sell, and you have $40,000. You doubled your money. Now, you buy a bigger house, for $200,000. (rinse, repeat)
He came to the US in the 1970s, and employed this process himself successfully. Sadly, I’ve also known examples of people who fell on their swords pursuing just such a strategy. It turns out that cash flow considerations are just as important, and even my grandfather admitted to sleepless nights where he’d calculate how much interest expense he was accruing as the clock ticked.
I think after having taken the course, that my grandfather lived a little closer to the edge than he had to. He always risked his own capital, and he used bank financing exclusively. If anything, “Cases in Real Estate Investment” was about seeing opportunities in real estate through the lens of finance. Syndicating a deal to use other people’s money, structuring it to allocate tax ramifications and liability issues efficiently, using various forms of financing, and providing risk-adjusted returns to each category of investor. In retrospect, I’m very curious to see how those principles might have applied to some of the deals they did. Looking to the future, I’m very enthusiastic about trying out these concepts myself, and have been trolling the MLS for suitable starter properties for months now. I think it’s a testament to efficiency in teaching that I actually feel like I have the building blocks to jump into the fray, after only ten lectures.
Professor Sussman covered everything from single family homes (assigned reading and writeup before class even started), apartment buildings, land, shopping malls, commercial development, legal entities for syndications, lease negotiations, insurance companies, due diligence, and a raft of other topics in ten short weeks. The class was punctuated with a regular heartbeat of case writeups (at least two a week, of which roughly one a week needed to be turned in as a group or individual assignment), group teleconferences, and reading. It’s no joke, and the workload is heavy. Prof Sussman has no tolerance for people who don’t put in the work to keep up, and can have an exasperated, caustic sense of sarcastic humor waiting for those who lose focus during lecture, or (gasp) come to class late. He has a sixth sense about people not paying attention, and eyes on the back and sides of his head. Apparently he’s also well versed in how laptop network card lights blink when students are browsing the web. Really, he wants his students to learn, seemingly to the point of a combination of desperation and exasperation, and he knows he has so little time to teach all the topics in his syllabus.
The class culminates in a final group presentation of a particular, live, real estate opportunity. Each group researches, produces a thick binder of due diligence (including permits pulled from the city, comparable listings, loan documents, financial projections, renovation recommendations and quotes) and a slide deck to back up a “go or no go” decision on the property. While our particular choice, a 24-unit apartment building in West LA, turned out to be a no-go, this was a fascinating project, and I think a better capstone to the FEMBA experience than GAP itself.
No, I don’t sing.. Unless it’s along to a radio in the car, by myself, with the windows rolled up. And not at stoplights or in bumper-to-bumper traffic. You get the idea.
But that said, music has always been a constant- helping me to remember the past, reminding me of specific moments whenever I hear particular songs on the radio. Here are a few songs that trigger specific moments in time for me, in rough chronological order: Theme from Robotech: It was televised at 3pm on weekdays, and elementary school let out at 2:50pm. I power-walked home, and sometimes jogged or ran to get home just after these opening notes.
Shades of Gray: My dad liked to say that there were no absolute truths, whereas I liked to say (and still do), that, “right is right.” He’d play this song for me and tell me to listen to its meaning. He and I at least shared this appreciation of how a song could convey a meaning far better than we could by ourselves.
We’d sit in his restaurant in the Broadway Plaza in downtown, on those red pleather booth benches, with a double-tape deck boom box on the formica table between us, splicing songs together into mix tapes, after hours on a Saturday. And afterward we’d silk-screen a few more “Pit Stop Take-out” Hanes Beefy-T shirts, with the black checkered flag logos. Slip Slidin’ Away: This song, in a single phrase, demonstrates better than any I’ve known how a song can convey a meaning in such a compact, economic way. The phrase, “He came a long way, just to explain. He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping, then he turned around and headed home again.” For me, this is my dad and me in two sentences.
Glory Days: I remember that white film on our lips when we’d finished the last of our hill climbs, hoofing it dog-tired back to our cars up near San Vicente and 26th St. I remember our coach’s limping, twisted gait, and him waving at us from his red Jeep Cherokee. I remember the “sickly, sweet smell of Pierce in the fall”, its perpetually 99 degree temperatures, like the twisted humor of some weather god. I remember hanging out with the team on weekends, engorging ourselves on Sizzler or Hamburger Hamlet, and staying up until the earlier hours of the morning playing cards, chatting, sharing. It was the period in my life during which I had the most friends. Always The Last To Know: I played this for a girl who broke up with me. I shouldn’t have believed my coach when he told me three years earlier that he was introducing me to the girl I would marry, and in retrospect, I most certainly should not have been the last to know.
America: This one is 4th of July in Lake Arrowhead, walking towards the shore with a small boombox tuned to KOLA 99.9 FM to provide the musical accompaniment to the fireworks. Neil belting out America while we floated on the lake with our makeshift anchor (whatever heavy stuff we could find lashed onto 30 feet of repurposed waterskiing line. We could see the little buoy-like contraption sticking up from the lake where we were, which, I was told, was part of the piping system they used to use to draw Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water from the lake. now it’s just Arrowhead Brand Mountain Spring Water, and it comes from unnamed, various, mountain spring sources throughout the US and Canada.
Private Eyes: This song is like the MacGuffin of the as-yet-unscripted movie version of my life. The first go’round, this song is about years of Magic Mountain season passes, my uncanny ability to pick the seat that wouldn’t get soaked on Roaring Rapids, riding The Viper a day after getting whiplashed in my first car accident, and hearing my buddy sing this, as played on the loudspeakers outside a Magic Mountain recording studio (something he hadn’t quite consented to).
The second go’round, this song represents the name of my wife’s office! And no, I had nothing to do with it- my brother-in-law came up with the name, Private Eyes Optometry, which has been more popular with patients than I would have guessed.
Brown Eyed Girl: This is my girl, hand on her hip, impish smile playing lightly across her lips. Freckles dancing on her cheeks and nose in the sunlight. Ever since the first time her image came to my mind that way while the song was playing, it’s been her song. At least in my head. Your Song: Except Your Song was her song first. I did manage to sing this one with her in the room. Once. She told me later that she liked my singing voice, and it was then that I learned that love can conquer tone-deafness. Unless she was just being nice.
Buy Me A Rose: Because in the end, it’s not about three car garages and her own credit cards.
Darren is now at Dreamland Preschool, along with Jacqueline. He hasn’t been there long, and thus hasn’t yet learned the Korean word for “butt”, or most of their songs. However, he does seem to be enjoying himself, and has started scribbling his name, which is progress.
I’m not sure what possessed him to do what he did here, but the expression on her face is priceless.
My sister-in-law Van graduated from the PhD program at Michigan State University. which ranks in the top-10 nationally (currently #9). She also has a DVM (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine) from the same school, but now she’ll finally be returning to California after several years away for study.
In fact, it turns out that our visit to Michigan to celebrate her commencement ended up being the first time all of her siblings and parents were together in the same place since Kevin’s wedding in Korea in 2003.
Having been warned by good friend who spent unfortunate weeks of his life in Detroit, we instead drove straight from the airport to Lansing, MI, where the celebrations would be held. We stayed at the Baymont Inn & Suites in Dewitt, about 7 miles away, in a fairly quiet area bordering a small pond, with an amazingly warm indoor pool and jacuzzi.
The following day, we went to the graduation ceremony, at 7pm in the special events center. Strangely, they grouped all the departments together (must have been more than 50), for all Master’s and Doctoral candidates. As Van put it, “the MBAs were the rowdiest.” Unfortunately, it was tough to see Van down there in the “Advanced Degrees” ceremony, although not as difficult as the photo through my viewfinder makes it seem:
I think the worst part, though, was that this grouping meant that the sheer number of doctoral candidates precluded each of them from having their few seconds in the sun, on the stage. Van was hooded where she stood in the photo, by her advisor. I filmed it, but 3x optical zoom doesn’t do it justice, and there was no sound for that portion. After having worked that long and hard for a fairly prestigious degree, I think I might’ve felt gypped in her place, possibly even disrespected, by that ceremony.
Still, she took it better than I would’ve. And the kids didn’t notice at all. Jacqueline had lots of fun, exploring Van’s large backyard. Vanessa made a garland for her that turned out really nicely, although it didn’t last very long:
When I started writing about FEMBA almost three years ago now, I told myself I’d do my best not to go radio-silent towards the end, and at the very least talk about this thing, this thing I’d circled in red pen between years two and three of the program: The Global Access Program.
I think it’s safe to say I dreaded it from the start: friends, workmates, classmates all laughed when I said that this was the one major stumbling block to my decision to attend UCLA again, and most told me they were looking forward to GAP. That the prospect of international travel, working with a startup (probably a technology based startup) in another country, and helping them to develop a comprehensive business plan, all of this sounded terribly exciting.
It’s been over and done with now for about four months. Since that time, I debated long and hard about what to say about this experience, and I think I’m going to go minimalist: I can’t think of better teammates to have gone through the process with, and I’ll be happy if I never have to go through anything similar, ever again.
One of my groupmates put it best when he said, “the ratio of learning to effort is the lowest of anything I’ve done here.” Which doesn’t mean that there isn’t learning, because there is quite a bit of it, what it really means is that the work involved to get it is far in excess of every other experience at the school. I can’t really put into terms how far in excess this is, but if you insert your favorite metaphor for comparing really large objects to really small ones here, you should have some indication of what I’m not saying here.
Interestingly, you don’t see the same kind of enthusiasm wafting from recent GAP survivors, and “survivors” is how we’re referred to by our subsequent professors, and how we refer to each other for the most part. But what I have, at least, is a set of suggestions for those who will follow:
Pick your team wisely. Really. This is the single most important task you’ll probably have in the entire FEMBA experience. Don’t just go along with your study group from your core classes, and don’t just implode your study group without a plan. Make a list of the people you want, and talk to them early. Talk about what your real goals are, whether they be high achievement, work-life balance and survival, or whatever it happens to be. Make sure you’re on the same page. Consider the possibility that students say one thing, and maybe think another. Go back to your shared experiences, and figure out what they’re really about. As Randy Pausch said about understanding men, “just ignore everything they
say and only pay attention to what they do.” Figure out what you’re really about- maybe it isn’t what you’d tell people. Compatibility is key.
Pick your project for the most boring, established company you can find. Preferably one that has been manufacturing a widget successfully in their home country for years, and wants to see if they can’t export their widget to neighboring countries or the United States. This is the second most important thing you can do to enhance your odds of survival. The alternative could be working with a company that constantly changes its focus and product roadmap to chase the sexy. Oh, and they could also run out of money before the 6 month GAP project is up.
Understand how you’re going to be graded, if that’s a component of your goals for the project: there are basically two main deliverables, the business plan itself, and the presentation. These are graded by committee, including your own advisor and a “paired” advisor who also has significant input. You need to impress both with the volume of your primary research. This is a category where weight is just as important as quality. Detailed surveys with lots of related industry respondents at trade shows might be a more value-added way to spend time than chasing down senior executives.
Develop a skeleton of the business plan and the presentation on Day One. Put everything you subsequently do into it immediately, and think about everything you might do in the context of whether or not it’s going to add value to these two products. Do only those things that will directly add bang to the products. Don’t wait until the interim deadlines to update a musty business plan, because in the meantime, you might be pursuing information you won’t be able to use in the end.
Figure there’s basically two possibilities here: One, the company isn’t viable for US entry unless certain conditions are met, some of which might be ridiculously hard or prohibitively expensive. Two, you come up with some unforeseen use for their technology that really hits gold for a particular target consumer. Don’t flatter yourself, it’s got to literally be gold, and you’ve got to be able to prove it in volume, with multiples of people holding out checkbooks.
If you can swing it, save a week at the end before the presentation of vacation or sick leave. This is crunch time, and it’s quite frankly very difficult to meet your responsibilities at home, work, and school here.
Hope that helps!
Oh, and in case you don’t want to go through the food processor that is GAP, and come out pureed on the other end, here’s what you learn: primary research, defined as feet hitting the street, talking to as many people as you can, asking them similar questions, and proving or disproving theories based on this input, is vital to learning about the prospects of a business.
Newly opened in the Orchard Hills Shopping Center off Portola Pkwy and Culver Drive, Ayame is a Japanese sushi bar and restaurant by the folks that brought us Zipangu. We ended up there in our neverending search for a decent neighborhood sushi joint, which gained new urgency now that Wasa in the Irvine Marketplace is temporarily closed.
