From: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation®gmail.com>
To: "A. de Rothschild" .catier@ttelerfarmeter
Subject: Re: greece- software
Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 19:47:41 +0000
since 2008 the square meter in london went from 4000 -20000//////// anecdotes do not make an viable
economy. a new concept that is really taking off in the states , is the idea of a "barely viable product. "
people put out products that need a lot of work but get instanteous feedback, and develop it along with the
critiques from thousands of users. crowd sourcing, places like a web page called kickstarter might be
interesting for you to look at. people raise money by offereing out interests on the web, . its a new world
On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 2:39 PM, A. de Rothschild <ader ad f
@t'am.th> wrote:
Dear Jeff
I carefully read what you wrote about software.
In any case, i don t see why/how it would help the greek economy. And yes, the only reasonnable option is to
"export" greek( like other european) engineeers to the large, working plateforms.
The problem -like other european countries-is to look for industries that will be competitive and be job
intensive to absorb the amount of growing jobless people.
Like we discussed, these leaders are not / or can not change the existing models.
To tease you, i had lunch with a angolan entrepeneur. One of the things he was telling me was that the sq
meter in Luanda had gone from 40usd in2008 to 200 today.
It is not tomorrow s economic model but it nevertheless is temporary growth...
Sent from my iPhone
On 5 juil. 2013, at 22:14, "Jeffrey Epstein" leevacation@gmail.com> wrote:
Some thoughts on how to build out software assets in a country in a way that does not set you up for failure
that has been seen so many time.
Many places work hard to invest in capital to recreate silicon valley. This is not unlike the classic "industrial
park" model -- build out a center, provide tax breaks, hire a few experts. The same thing goes for the
universities that create extension offices in other countries. These all have the same failure points which is
that they tend to undervalue the intangibles.
This is a good article on silicon valley and how all the other places failed trying to recreate it, even within the
US -- http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516506/silicon-valley-cant-be-co fed/
Software has a virtue of being able to scale as a global workforce to some degree. Israel has a strong locus of
software and engineering people (hardware as well). But the market in country (and in Hebrew) is so small
that they realized early on that they would never create a substantial business within the borders of the
country. That was a wise observation as most countries see their home markets as "large" in a myopic way.
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Israel wanted to generate "outsized" returns on their investment in engineering. This makes sense because
engineers are still a scarce resource and even for Israel they could always pay salaries and put them to work
for IDF projects.
So what Israel does (which is different than say UK, France, Germany who see their home markets as huge)
is support people starting companies and going into software / hardware engineering at a few universities--
much like the old industrial park model.
BUT, they do one of two things differently:
• For homegrown new companies -- that is places where the idea for the product is one they think up --
they immediately upon founding the company create a sales/marketing/product (and in fact the CEO)
office in Silicon Valley. Essentially from the start the company is a multi-national and is guided by
leadership in the US "ground zero" for the industry. These people are from silicon valley. This is a
tough model and requires a lot of relationships but has worked for Israel.
• For employing today engineers -- that is when you just want to invest money and employ your own
engineers there is a second model. In this model you make connections to existing (new or mature)
silicon valley companies and your engineers serve as engineers within these companies. Essentially
you are outsourcing your work to US based companies. This is currently what we see a lot of from
Czech, Hungary, Poland, and to some extent Berlin. This model does not generally have equity
participation from the host country but it does start to create a network of engineers in the country and
people in university start to see options in their home country for doing good work and having a
connection to all they read about on the intemet.
To get started on the second one you need simply have a locus of engineers and a connection to the US.
What I see all the time are emigrants to the US who look to their own school friends and hire them. In just
the past few months I've seen companies in the valley hiring most/all of their engineering from Poland, (old
East) Germany, and even France. In all cases, the founders of the company are in the US and they run the
product definition from here so the product is right/ready for the US market from the start. They focus little
on the home market initially. That is key to getting attention, funding, support from the silicon valley world.
Things are really set up for this now. For example, we see tons of companies that have apps for
iPhones/iPads and need Android versions. The way things work technically it is just as easy to have a whole
separate team do the Android version. being able to have an entire team just "copying" what is going on
from the Valley team on iPhones is a big positive. I know a lot of companies that would hire an existing
Android team right away if they could--or hire an iOS team to maintain their iOS version while they make
the new Android one from here.
There are only a couple of requirements:
• Excellent software skills on modern technologies (open software stack
including: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStack, PHP, Ruby, HTML5, and especially building apps
on Android (first) and iOS (second)
• Strong infrastructure (fast, reliable, secure intemet connectivity to the US west coast)
• English skills (reading and writing proficiency, with verbal communication over Skype or Google
Hangouts)
My sense is there is a large frustration with India on at least two of these (skills and infrastructure). And the
cost advantage is no there as well. In fact, cost is not a primary driver but if you're going to pay the same as
the US then you at least want the same level of work.
In many ways that is why the Chinese, Korea and Japanese companies fail as well -- they are different
culturally and linguistically and by virtue of their market size they focus on the homeland first. It is why you
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almost never see a software product start in those countries and move outside of them, even if they make
products in country which gain popularity in a large scale way. But you see the reverse all the time
(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more).
Let me know if this makes sense. This doesn't employ 1000's of people but it does employ people in
software.
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constitute inside information, and is intended only for
the use of the addressee. It is the property of
Jeffrey Epstein
Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this
communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited
and may be unlawful. If you have received this
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