Postcard From Singapore

I have been in Singapore this past week at the INSEAD business school’s Asia campus. Today, I spoke at their Global Entrepreneurship Forum, which gave me an interesting window into entrepreneurship in East Asia. The interest in entrepreneurship and the energy is great. The ecosystem, of course, is significantly less mature. What VCs want to invest in is also somewhat customized to the nature of the ecosystem around them: get to revenue quickly, as opposed to long gestation projects. >>>

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 7)

SM: Based on your core market where you are selling into the $350 million install base, how far can you go? Can you double that?

MB: Assuming a $1 billion business, I would like to see the Internet as 40%-50% of my business. The remainder should come from a mixture of other businesses. >>>

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 6)

SM: Are you going to take it to the enterprise data center?

MB: Actually we won’t. We do not focus on running SAP, Oracle or databases. We are trying to take all the redundancy out of hardware that we can. We know servers are going to fail. Our view is that you should let them fail. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Carbonetworks

Carbonetworks helps companies develop effective carbon strategies by providing a software platform to find solutions to reduce costs and monitor energy usage. The software monetizes a client’s carbon inventory and provides a clear view of whether carbon represents a financial asset or liability to the company in the future, given its planned investments and business decisions. Once a company knows what it has, how much it’s worth and what its carbon inventory means to its future financial situation, Carbonetworks links the company to all of the reductions available in the market, including offsets, credits and energy reductions consulting.  >>>

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 5)

SM: Your retirement became more of a sabbatical.

MB: It sure did. I thought I was retired, but in Silicon Valley there is no such thing as retirement. I decided to sit on the board of a public company. I was looking for smaller public companies or for troubled companies that I could help. >>>

Newspapers Struggling: GCI, NYT, MNI

Poor economic conditions are plaguing all industries and companies alike. In late October several newspaper stocks announced their Q3 results, and, as in Q2 of this year, all of them turned in a disappointing performance. Given that during Q3 viewership was up on account of the US presidential campaigns and the Beijing Olympics, the results were positively depressing. >>>

Designs of the Week: Desserts

By guest authors Charley Bush and Kathy Hwang of brand, design and business strategy consultancy 3Strand Innovation

There’s just something about the experience of digging into warm apple pie and ice cream after a huge Thanksgiving dinner. In honor of one of our favorite holidays, this will be a week of exploring great dessert design. >>>

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 4)

SM: From your perspective, what does it take to become a $1 billion+ company?

MB: When you have your core, you need to identify key elements and prepare for the transition. You need to bring your install base with you and make sure you transition them. You need it to have multiple geographies and routes to market. >>>