Running a Volunteer Organization

Jason and I have talked about the value of running student groups for a long time. When companies recruit from Penn, though, they tend to care much more about your GPA than about your leadership accomplishments (unless you did something really amazing in your free time).

The interesting thing, though, that I personally believe is that managing a student group, a group of volunteers, is perhaps the most difficult form of leadership that there is. People only participate if you, as a leader, make it worthwhile to participate; otherwise they quit. Management author John C. Maxwell says that you can measure a leader by how well he can lead a group of volunteers. I happen to believe in that, and I think that the people skills and teamwork skills you learn from student groups is invaluable to the teams of people you will have to work with the rest of your life.

That's my two cents anyway.

Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is a venture capitalist blogger who I've subscribed to for a while now. He recently made it so you can't read his posts in Google Reader so that you have to go to his website. It sucks, and I won't be reading him anymore.

Should Penn Offer High-Priced Housing?

The Radian Apartments are new apartments going up on Penn's campus. They are at a great location and fully-loaded, and they come with a price tag to match. The rooms start at $1000/month, which is far more expensive than other housing. A prime spot on Beige Block, for instance, costs around $750/month. Experts are saying that Radian will have no problem filling the housing spots, so this is a real economic win for them.

The Daily Pennsylvanian, however, recently scolded the administration for bringing the high priced housing to Penn:

But why didn't the University work with a developer to ensure that their vision was something less upscale and more affordable? Something which would appeal to all Penn students, rather than just a privileged subset.

It's an interesting argument because the Wharton kid in me says that if the Radian company was willing to make the capital investment and created at least $250 extra economic value for consumers, then rationally that's a positive for our economy. They created value.

But I also understand the moral argument that says that we have the rest of our lives to live in a society stratified by money. Why does it have to start in college with some purchasing far nicer housing than others?

What a socialist sentiment. But I kind of buy it.

Apple in Ancient Greece

In my Ancient Greece class of 300 people, I noticed 12 laptops out - 9 of which were Apples. Apple has about 5% of the market share for computers, but 75% market share for people taking notes on a computer in an Ivy League classroom.

What does that say about Apple users?

Confessions of an Economic Hitman

This is a fascinating interview with John Perkins, the author of the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman. He talks about his job, which was basically to go into countries and get them to take on large, unprofitable projects so that they would be indebted to the United States. It's a long interview - about an hour - but it's worth watching.

Why Leopard Is Only One Price

Steve Jobs recently announced that Leopard would be launched at one low price ($129), when Microsoft Vista is launched at four prices ($100 Home Basic, $160 Home Premium, $200 Business, $260 Ultimate). Why might that be?

My best guess is that Apple realizes that their core user is the consumer market - not the business market. With one price, Apple is snubbing the business market and broadcasting loud and clear that Apple is for consumers. It is their niche. I only see adoption of Apple computer increasing in the years to come.

Izzy's and Zoe's 2007

I went to Izzy's and Zoe's with Jason, and they've made a number of strides in the right direction. The customer service was far nicer. I bought pancakes with bananas and strawberries, and they apologized profusely when they delivered my order and it didn't have bananas. Also, they put out the drinks and chips so that you can pick them up while waiting in line. Another suggestion I think that think they heeded was using broadband internet for their credit card machines, and I think they got a second machine - both should cut down on the length of time it takes to make an order.

Couple of things they still need to work on:

• Time. It takes them a long time both to wait in line to place your order, and then to wait until you get your order.
• Sound System. They are stilling yelling across the restaurant for people to pick up their orders once the order is ready. They definitely need to hook up a microphone to their sound system so that they cut down on the time it takes to get people to get their orders.
• Breakfast Menu. Their breakfast menu is old, faded and blocked by one of their soda machines.
• Drink Display. Right now, the drinks are in the refrigerators that you have to open to take a drink. If I were them, I'd take the doors off, so that it was easir for people to take a drink. I'd also put it as close to the line as possible for people to pick up.

I don't know if they have new management or what, but I think they're heading down the right track, especially with the customer service. Now they just gotta speed everything up and I think they should be in the money.

The Art and Expectations of a Nap

• If your nap is not either 30 minutes or 90 minutes, expect to wake up feeling terrible.
• If you have to sit upright for your nap, expect to bang your head at least once.
• If you have a tray table, expect your arms to hurt when you wake up.
• If you have a mini-pillow, expect it to be a pain
• If you're on a train, it's a packed train, and there's a seat open next to you, expect people to wake you up from your nap to ask you if the seat's open.

Ask.com: Instant Getification

Ask.com's new advertising campaign is leaps and bound beyond it's old campaign for "The Algorithm." Its new slogan is "Instant Getification" because Ask allows you to search for a term and it returns you websites, pictures, audio, video, and blogs - all on the same page. It is a tangibly different offering, as opposed to simply trying to copy Google with "The Algorithm."

Apple Knocks It Out of the Park

So just to give you an update, Apple had a fantastic quarter, selling more of everything. Here's the Bloomberg article:

The company sold a record 2.16 million Macs during the back- to-school shopping season and shipped 10.2 million iPod media players after Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs released updated models. Apple sold 1.12 million iPhones, topping Jobs's July forecast of 730,000 units, helped by a $200 price cut last month.

Now that I'm an investor in Apple, I can't wait til the holiday season.

Google and Apple

I've decided to invest in both Google and Apple, even though they are both at all-time highs.

Google

Built to Last
With Google, to me it seems to be a company that was Built to Last, and it's only in its infancy. Wall Street is put off by Google's opaque earnings statements, but after reading The Google Story, I trust Google's management for its long-term, yet unconventional thinking. With their 20% rule, where people work on their own project 20% of the time, I believe Google will continue to be a center for innovation for the foreseeable future.

YouTube
In addition, I like that the company has begun to find an advertising model that works for YouTube. I know I've started to see advertising on YouTube, and I haven't minded it. That product in itself will be a whole new driver of growth.

gPhone
Since Google has not announced what it will be doing in its foray into the mobile industry, Wall Street has yet to value this business. But if what I've been hearing about the gPhone have been true, I'm excited to get in before they announce it.

Price to Earnings Ratio
Compared to Yahoo, its P/E (GOOG: 50.43; YHOO 56.79) and Forward P/E (GOOG 32.33; YHOO 48.43) are surprisingly low as well - most likely because of that lower future visibility which make it a bigger risk. I also like that they're starting to have.

Criteria Moving Forward
For me, as long as internet advertising is still growing, video advertising increases, and Google continues to innovate, I'm going to keep my money in the stock.

Apple
Let me be clear about one thing: I am not investing in Apple because of the iPhone. It was WAY overhyped. I'm investing in Apple because their computers are popping up everywhere. Microsoft botched Vista. You know how I know? Because even my friend Andrew, who used to build his own computers, is interested in switching to an Apple. And if all these people start buying Apples, it means they start buying the accessories and software that goes with it that they have to buy from the high margin Apple retail stores. What else does it mean when Leopard becomes a larger threat to Vista? I don't know exactly, but it'll be more money in Apple's bank.

Criteria Moving Forward
My money will stay at Apple as long as Steve Jobs is there. Steve's a fantastic businessman but has an ego that will prevent him from setting up a good successor. Once Steve's gone, Apple will fall once again.

Bulk Purchase Premium

In my pricing class yesterday, we talked about the bulk purchase premium, which is when you will actually pay more on a per-unit cost for buying in bulk rather than less. Grocery stores do this intermittently because people don't always compare the per-unit cost, so as long as the store switches it up enough, people won't notice.

Today I saw in Houston Market a four-pack of Red Bull being sold for $8.99, putting the individual Red Bull at $2.25. Compare that to the list price of $1.99, and you find out that bulk premium really does exist.

Shampoo for Men

I recently purchased my quarterly investment of shampoo. I noticed two things about shampoo.

1. It makes no functional sense to have an opaque bottle because then you never really know when it's finished.

2. There were no shampoo just for men. I don't even think the shampoo in the bottle has to be anything special - it could just say that it was for men and have a different look and it'd be differentiated. Seems like an opening.

Interactive Advertising

What if you could type a comment that would show up under the advertisement that everyone could see. Some brands might get some negative feedback, but I think some advertisers might see it as any attention to an online ad is good attention. Interactivity - it's the whole advantage/point of the internet.

A Blind Painter...Remarkable.

Challenging the Professor

So Andrew and I talked about this idea of challenging the professor and how many Ivy Leaguers won't challenge the professor. I said before that the reason most Ivy Leaguers won't challenge the professor is because it can be risky, and Ivy Leaguers know that they can get a good grade without taking that risk and so they don't. Think about it - professors are chosen based on their intellectual abilities, and so if in any way they feel like they're being "shown up" in class, then it'll bruise their egos and come back to hurt you. In addition, you risk being annoying to the class and overly argumentative, and all for the reward of being "right." The risk isn't worth the reward.

But professors do like to be challenged if you do it in the right way because it shows them you're engaged. The most important part of challenging a professor (or authority) is to ask it as a clarifying question. "You talked about A but you also talked about the opposite in B. How do the two reconcile?" When you challenge with a nonthreatening question, it actually allows the professor to consider your viewpoint and then show the class how smart he or she is because she can answer the question. Since it was nonthreatening and sincerely inquisitive, the professor appreciates you being engaged and rethinks his or her viewpoint.

If the professor doesn't accept your challenge, you can push again to clarify, but at the end of the discussion, the professor has to be right. No matter how right you think you are, you have to be smart enough to back down. I care more about keeping a good relationship with my professor and keeping a good grade than I necessarily do about being right.


Arguing with authority can be a risk because even if you're right and you win, you may have bruised the authority's ego. It's safer just not to challenge the professor.

PGW: A Financially Viable Company

If you go to the Philly Gas Works home page and look at their tagline, it says:

Philadelphia Gas Works: A Financially Viable Enterprise Providing Safe, Reliable Gas Service

I have to tell you, I've never really worried about the financial viability of my gas company, but now I'm kind of wondering if they are financially viable.

I think this is one of those cases where management marketed what they worry about most rather than what their customers worry about most.

Yahoo: Still Not Irrelevant, and we have users that we care about
Delta: We Haven't Gone Out of Business, and we fly people around the country

Come up with your own. It's fun in a dorky kind of way.

Blackwater Scares Me

I don't quite understand what the true purpose of Blackwater is because we have such an extensive armed forces already. Why do we need a closed, non-transparent White House hired mercenary force? I think it's the lack of oversight that is so scary and it's shroud of secrecy. If it were open and a part of the system, it wouldn't nearly be as scary.

Styky: Your Cell Phone's Social Network

Today, I went to an employer presentation by Acquis Consulting (who has a pretty cool firm), and one of the things their firm has been doing has been leveraging their consulting company's knowledge in helping startups succeed.

At the presentation was Kunal Gupta, a past Acquis employee and Wharton alum, and founder of a new mobile social networking website called Styky that is actually launching at Penn this Thursday.

Basically, what Styky does is automatically syncs your mobile phone with their online social network. Lose/break/dunk your cell phone in beer? Styky will automatically reload those contacts onto your phone.

I believe, but I'm not 100% positive, that Styky will also allow you to manage your pictures off your phone, caption them, and send them to other people. You can send text messages to all of your contacts in your phone (which I could see getting really annoying). It will also send you coupons from local stores.

I'm don't exactly understand how the website and your phone interact, and I also don't know how useful this application is on its own without everyone else having it as well. I think the most viral social networking sites are the ones that could stand alone but are just that much more powerful if everyone's using it.

I think another barrier they may need to cross is that teenagers don't necessarily know/understand what their cellphone plan will allow them to do. I don't use a lot of applications on my phone, like Google maps, because I'm not sure whether I'm going to get charged extra for internet time.

Unfortunately, Styky isn't available for all phones, so I won't be able to try it on my phone for a couple more months. I'll report back though when I do use it, and for now, I wish the company nothing but the best of luck.

The Housing Market at Penn

New apartments are going up on Penn's land at 40th and Walnut. The sign outside the construction claims that it will be the "future of student living," and it should be done by next summer. As I passed it, I was wondering what the effects of an increase in the supply of housing at Penn will have on the housing, since everyone already at Penn can already find housing.

I realized that the biggest benefits from the increase in supply really go to the students:

• Service. Campus Apartments will have to become a little better at responding to their residents. The increased competition for housing means that students have more choice and more power.
• Price. If the increase in supply is large enough, Campus Apartments will find a more price sensitive customer and will have more trouble raising prices.

What I will also be interested to see is how graduate students react. Will they suddenly be interested in housing closer to campus, negating the increase in supply? My instinct is that they'll still want to stay as far from undergrads as possible.

As a student, I don't really see any downside in more housing, and I think it's the most effective way for the University to protect its students from bad price and service from their off-campus friends.

Ivy League Students Work the System

Marc Anderseen today talks to Ivy League students about taking risks:

In my opinion, it's now critically important to get into the real world and really challenge yourself -- expose yourself to risk -- put yourself in situations where you will succeed or fail by your own decisions and actions, and where that success or failure will be highly visible...

Why? If you're going to be a high achiever, you're going to be in lots of situations where you're going to be quickly making decisions in the presence of incomplete or incorrect information, under intense time pressure, and often under intense political pressure. You're going to screw up -- frequently -- and the screwups will have serious consequences, and you'll feel incredibly stupid every time. It can't faze you -- you have to be able to just get right back up and keep on going.

I think that Marc is substantially correct. What Ivy League students are so good at is working the system to their advantage but not necessarily at high risk. The Atlantic Monthly article I quoted in a previous piece said that Ivy League students are extremely deferential to their professors and are afraid to buck against authority. I don't think it's so much that we're afraid to buck against authority, rather we've found that it's far more productive to work with authority. In other words, bucking against authority isn't worth the risk.

For instance, let's say that a professor states something that is blatantly wrong in class. I might raise my hand to try to present a different point of view. If the professor holds onto his or her point of view, then I'm not going to keep arguing with them. One of the things my grade is dependent on is class participation, which is totally based on how much the professor likes me. In addition, I really believe that if a professor likes you, then they grade your papers more easily. I can't prove that, but I've noticed that I tend to do better in classes where the professor likes me because I have more leeway. Goodwill from the professor is worth so much toward your grade that it simply doesn't make sense to take a strong stand against them. What would winning that argument really win you anyways? A professor with a hurt ego.

The point I'm trying to make is that Ivy League students have gotten really good at working the system so they know what people in authority are looking for. That's what got them to the Ivy League schools: good grades, boards, and extracirricular activities.

That means when it comes to being an employee in the workplace, they are looking to work the system, not take risks. For instance, they know that promotions aren't based on the risks you take, but rather the perceptions others have of you and your work. That's the system - your peers' perceptions. That means that a substantial amount of time and energy is put into simply gaining your coworkers'/bosses' respect and goodwill, rather than taking big risks.

I think that when most people enter the system, they get average results and average compensation. But every system has to have its winners, and I believe it's the people who play the system the best that tend to win and get above average compensation. I think that that's what Ivy League students are positioned to do so well from their pedigrees: go into high paying jobs, make a six figure salary, and work hard but not necessarily with many risks. In fact, I think that Ivy League students can have financial success without risk. But what Marc is really right about is that they can't make significant impacts without risk, and that was one of his admonishments in his first post about Career Path.

Do Wharton Students Really Like I-Banking?

Wharton is often characterized as a place that churns out people who just care about money. I-Banking and financial services are supposed to be the epitome of this characteristic - they are thankless, grueling jobs whose only incentive seems to be big paychecks. However, from talking with some of my friends who are looking at financial services, most of them seem to genuinely like financial services. When people go into a career simply for the money, we tend to look down on them, but if they go into a career because they genuinely like it, we deem that to be noble.

If we look at the bit of data that we can find from Penn's Career Services, we find out that 64.2% of Wharton students in the class of 2002 went into financial services. In 2002, Career Services also published a survey on alumni that found that 41.1% were in financial services. Although these statistics are not directly linked to the same class, we still get a feel that about 1/3 of the Wharton students who went into financial services found out they didn't like it.

Unfortunately, we don't have any data to benchmark that percentage against. What percentage of people usually switch industries within the first five years?

What I think I can conclude, though, is that an approximately two-thirds majority is going into financial services because they genuinely like their field. I would also guess that a lot of the 1/3 who dropped financial services just didn't find it to be everything they hoped for.

So I'd like to maintain my original opinion that most Wharton kids are going into financial services because they legitimately like the industry, and not because they just like the money.

As for me, I'm still trying to get into consulting.

Just Replace Princeton with Wharton

This 2001 Atlantic Monthly article from David Brooks is pretty much my life. Just replace Princeton with Wharton:

A few months ago I went to Princeton University to see what the young people who are going to be running our country in a few decades are like. Faculty members gave me the names of a few dozen articulate students, and I sent them e-mails, inviting them out to lunch or dinner in small groups. I would go to sleep in my hotel room at around midnight each night, and when I awoke, my mailbox would be full of replies—sent at 1:15 a.m., 2:59 a.m., 3:23 a.m.

In our conversations I would ask the students when they got around to sleeping. One senior told me that she went to bed around two and woke up each morning at seven; she could afford that much rest because she had learned to supplement her full day of work by studying in her sleep. As she was falling asleep she would recite a math problem or a paper topic to herself; she would then sometimes dream about it, and when she woke up, the problem might be solved. I asked several students to describe their daily schedules, and their replies sounded like a session of Future Workaholics of America: crew practice at dawn, classes in the morning, resident-adviser duty, lunch, study groups, classes in the afternoon, tutoring disadvantaged kids in Trenton, a cappella practice, dinner, study, science lab, prayer session, hit the StairMaster, study a few hours more. One young man told me that he had to schedule appointment times for chatting with his friends. I mentioned this to other groups, and usually one or two people would volunteer that they did the same thing. "I just had an appointment with my best friend at seven this morning," one woman said. "Or else you lose touch."

There are a lot of things these future leaders no longer have time for. I was on campus at the height of the election season, and I saw not even one Bush or Gore poster. I asked around about this and was told that most students have no time to read newspapers, follow national politics, or get involved in crusades. One senior told me she had subscribed to The New York Times once, but the papers had just piled up unread in her dorm room. "It's a basic question of hours in the day," a student journalist told me. "People are too busy to get involved in larger issues. When I think of all that I have to keep up with, I'm relieved there are no bigger compelling causes." Even the biological necessities get squeezed out. I was amazed to learn how little dating goes on. Students go out in groups, and there is certainly a fair bit of partying on campus, but as one told me, "People don't have time or energy to put into real relationships." Sometimes they'll have close friendships and "friendships with privileges" (meaning with sex), but often they don't get serious until they are a few years out of college and meet again at a reunion—after their careers are on track and they can begin to spare the time.

I went to lunch with one young man in a student dining room that by 1:10 had emptied out, as students hustled back to the library and their classes. I mentioned that when I went to college, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we often spent two or three hours around the table, shooting the breeze and arguing about things. He admitted that there was little discussion about intellectual matters outside class. "Most students don't like that that's the case," he told me, "but it is the case." So he and a bunch of his friends had formed a discussion group called Paidea, which meets regularly with a faculty guest to talk about such topics as millennialism, postmodernism, and Byzantine music. If discussion can be scheduled, it can be done.

The students were lively conversationalists on just about any topic—except moral argument and character-building, about which more below. But when I asked a group of them if they ever felt like workaholics, their faces lit up and they all started talking at once. One, a student-government officer, said, "Sometimes we feel like we're just tools for processing information. That's what we call ourselves—power tools. And we call these our tool bags." He held up his satchel. The other students laughed, and one exclaimed, "You're giving away all our secrets."

But nowhere did I find any real unhappiness with this state of affairs; nowhere did I find anybody who seriously considered living any other way. These super-accomplished kids aren't working so hard because they are compelled to. They are facing, it still appears, the sweetest job market in the nation's history. Investment banks flood the campus looking for hires. Princeton also offers a multitude of post-graduation service jobs in places like China and Africa. Everyone I spoke to felt confident that he or she could get a good job after graduation. Nor do these students seem driven by some Puritan work ethic deep in their cultural memory. It's not the stick that drives them on, it's the carrot. Opportunity lures them. And at a place like Princeton, in a rich information-age country like America, promises of enjoyable work abound—at least for people as smart and ambitious as these. "I want to be this busy," one young woman insisted, after she had described a daily schedule that would count as slave-driving if it were imposed on anyone.

The best overall description of the students' ethos came from a professor in the politics department and at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Jeffrey Herbst. "They are professional students," he said. "I don't say that pejoratively. Their profession for these four years is to be a student."

That doesn't mean that these leaders-in-training are money-mad (though they are certainly career-conscious). It means they are goal-oriented. An activity—whether it is studying, hitting the treadmill, drama group, community service, or one of the student groups they found and join in great numbers—is rarely an end in itself. It is a means for self-improvement, résumé-building, and enrichment. College is just one step on the continual stairway of advancement, and they are always aware that they must get to the next step (law school, medical school, whatever) so that they can progress up the steps after that.

One day I went to lunch with Fred Hargadon, who has been the dean of admissions at Princeton for thirteen years and was the dean of admissions at Stanford before that. Like all the administrators and faculty members I spoke with, Hargadon loves these students, and he is extraordinarily grateful for the opportunity to be around them. "I would trust these kids with my life," he told me. But he, like almost all the other older people I talked to, is a little disquieted by the achievement ethos and the calm acceptance of established order that prevails among elite students today. Hargadon said he had been struck by a 1966 booklet called "College Admissions and the Public Interest," written by a retired MIT admissions director named Brainerd Alden Thresher. Thresher made a distinction between students who come to campus in a "poetic" frame of mind and those who come in a "prudential" frame of mind. "Certainly more kids are entering in a prudential frame of mind," Hargadon said. "Most kids see their education as a means to an end."

They're not trying to buck the system; they're trying to climb it, and they are streamlined for ascent. Hence they are not a disputatious group. I often heard at Princeton a verbal tic to be found in model young people these days: if someone is about to disagree with someone else in a group, he or she will apologize beforehand, and will couch the disagreement in the most civil, nonconfrontational terms available. These students are also extremely respectful of authority, treating their professors as one might treat a CEO or a division head at a company meeting.

"Undergrads somehow got this ethos that the faculty is sacrosanct," Dave Wilkinson, a professor of physics, told me. "You don't mess with the faculty. I cannot get the students to call me by my first name." Aaron Friedberg, who teaches international relations, said, "It's very rare to get a student to challenge anything or to take a position that's counter to what the professor says." Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist, lamented, "They are disconcertingly comfortable with authority. That's the most common complaint the faculty has of Princeton students. They're eager to please, eager to jump through whatever hoops the faculty puts in front of them, eager to conform."

For the generation of runners of things which came to power in the Clinton years, at least a modest degree of participation in college-years protest was very nearly mandatory. The new elite does not protest. Young achievers vaguely know that they are supposed to feel guilty about not marching in the street for some cause. But they don't seem to feel guilty. When the controversial ethicist Peter Singer was hired by Princeton, there were protests over his views on euthanasia. But it was mostly outsiders who protested, not students. Two years ago the administration outlawed the Nude Olympics, a raucous school tradition. Many of the students were upset, but not enough to protest. "It wasn't rational to buck authority once you found out what the penalties were," one student journalist told me. "The university said they would suspend you from school for a year." A prudential ethos indeed.

For the rest of the article: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200104/brooks