The Ultimate Road Trip

A good friend is riding a motorcycle from Atlanta, GA, USA to Buenos Aires, Argentina this summer. It’ll take him 67 days and he’ll ride around 20,000 miles. He’s sharing the experience through a blog, which you can check out here. He’s posting videos in addition to writing some excellent commentary (some videos are taken using a helmet cam).

It’s an amazing undertaking by an amazing guy – I’m looking forward to following him along the way.

The Summer Internship

Last week I started my summer internship. I'll be spending the next two months working in the private equity industry, an area of the financial world I find incredibly interesting. Undoubtedly I'll learn a lot, and I'm certain I will meet plenty of smart people with brilliant investment minds.

As a result, I probably won't be posting too much on my blog, but I'll continue to update my Twitter (see right) with random thoughts on just about anything. Have a great summer!

The First Year

Yesterday evening, following a Capital Markets & Financing exam, the first year of my MBA at London Business School came to an end. For me, the year was an absolutely incredible experience, and marking the end of the year came with many emotions (in addition to a few pints at the Windsor, the unofficial LBS pub). (The photo above is my Stream after the final first-year class.)

The people who surrounded me over the past 10 months are from all over the world, offer many unique experiences and perspectives and, most importantly, have become great friends. We sat in class together, travelled together and socialized together, and while not everyone got on well, we all challenged each other and along the way learned a thing or two from each other.

Now we’re all headed in different directions. We’ll be doing different things over the summer – some will stay in London while others will be leaving to work or travel. Some people will be working at the investment banks, others will be consulting to big companies and some will be starting their own business. I’m happy to see some of my classmates doing great things outside of the business world, from helping to organize the 2012 Olympic Games in London to working with non-profits in Africa.

Last week we welcomed the MBA Class of 2011 on campus for Admits Weekend. It seems like just the other day when I wrote this blog post about my trip to London for Admits Weekend. How time flies. I met a lot of nice and interesting people, but I am confident that they will not be as good as the MBA2010 class!

So what’s my advice to those people who may be considering an MBA? Like Nike says – just do it! You’ll learn a lot, but more importantly, you’ll meet people who you’ll know for the rest of your life. These people probably will be some of your closest confidants throughout your career, you may do business together, you’ll definitely challenge each other and you’ll become great friends.

Revisiting LTCM

Long Term Capital Management is widely recognized as one of largest disasters ever to hit the global financial system. A hedge fund founded by senior members of Salomon Brothers, LTCM came in to existence in 1994 and for four years delivered exceptional returns to its investors. Then, in 1998, the fund lost $4.8 billion when its bets started going sour following the Russian crisis.

Eric Rosenfeld was a trader at LTCM, and he recently spoke to students at MIT about his experience at LTCM. In this candid perspective Rosenfeld attempts to explain the facts of the LTCM collapse. Here is the link to the interview.

My technological revolution

I have a blog, I network with people using LinkedIn, I share my life with friends via Facebook and I tweet. A year ago I did NONE of these things. So what happened?

First off, I no longer work 12 hour days, so I’m sure the extra time has something to do with it. But there’s more. It’s interesting to me to see how the way in which we get information and share information is changing. I started my blog to share with my family and friends the experience of moving to a new country, travelling around the world and getting an MBA. Now, after integrating Twitter in to my blog (see right), my blog is the centre of my online footprint. I imagine the content and the way in which I use my blog will continue to change as time passes. The fun bit is that I have no idea how it will change, I just know it will.

For me, the most fascinating of these different technologies is Twitter. There is something very fundamental about expressing what’s happening in your life in 140 letters or less. When I joined the ‘Twitterverse’ I had no idea how interesting, useful and fun it would be, nor did I fully appreciate how much I would use it as a source of what’s going on in the world.

The Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN competition to see who could gather 1 million Twitter followers is a testament to the popularity of the service, and provides evidence of the power of the technology. (Here’s a link to the story, and here’s Ashton counting down to his victory) For a celebrity like Ashton Kutcher, or any celebrity for that matter, the ability to immediately connect directly with fans completely empowers them and eliminates the need for fans to rely on other forms of media as a source of information. I wonder what this means for TMZ or US Weekly? Will tabloids exist 5 years from now?

I also follow Lance Armstrong on Twitter, another early adapter of the platform. When Lance broke his collarbone during a race in Spain, I didn’t hear about it first on the news. I didn’t read about it on ESPN.com. I read about it on Twitter. Levi Leipheimer, one of Lance’s teammates, posted updates regarding Lance via his Twitter. I learned that Lance was released from the hospital when Lance himself sent an update and photo on Twitter. By the time the traditional news picked up the story it was old news. This is a great example of how Twitter is changing the way news reaches people.

There probably will be more innovation in media, and I’m sure the way in which the world deals with information will continue to change. That being said, I don’t know if I can handle much more. I can barely keep control of the various platforms I use today, let alone what the future has in store for us.

Skydiving

Humans are the only animal that voluntarily put their life at risk. I joined the ranks of this crazy group two days ago when I jumped out of a perfectly functional airplane 15,000 feet above southern Nevada.

The emotions surrounding my first skydive were incredible – worry, fear, excitement and anxiety, and that’s all before I arrived at Vegas Extreme Skydiving Saturday morning. The airplane we flew in was very rickety, made a lot of noise and normally would be quite scary, that is if you’re mind isn’t pre-occupied by thoughts of jumping out of it a few minutes later.

Somehow I got the pleasure of going first, which required me to sit right next to the door. After the fact, I think it was good to go first. My friends were the last ones out, and the thought of watching everyone else toss themselves out the side of the airplane probably would have raised my heartbeat above an already dangerous level.

Immediately after leaving the airplane, the feeling of fear and anxiety turned to excitement. Then, 10,500 feet later when the parachute opened, that feeling of excitement turned to satisfaction, relaxation and enjoyment as the likelihood of me making it safely back to earth increased significantly.

Did I ever think that I would go skydiving? No. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely! I would encourage anyone to do this at least once, even if you're scared.

To put the risk in perspective, the company we used, Vegas Extreme Skydiving, has been around for 7 years and has never had an accident. Also, a few of the instructors I met have over 20 years of skydiving experience and around 20,000 jumps a piece. While it only takes one mistake to mitigate all this experience, these few little facts helped me feel a bit more comfortable before my jump.

Richard Hytner at London Business School

A few weeks ago my class welcomed Richard Hytner, Worldwide Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi (the advertising company), to LBS. Richard joined us as a guest lecturer in our Discovering Entrepreneurial Opportunities course. Overseeing 150 offices and 7,000 people, Richard helps to lead one of the world's largest creative organizations, and his task at LBS was to help us find our inner creative being.

Richard's session focused on how teams can foster creativity, and he blessed us with some excellent tools to assist our brainstorming and creative process.

After the class I realized that Saatchi & Saatchi was responsible for a great television commercial currently running - the T-Mobile "dance" commercial filmed in London's Liverpool train station. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then take a few minutes and watch the commercial here.

I actually was in Liverpool train station when this commercial was filmed. On my way to a meeting, a few classmates and I walk from the tube into the train station to see the ENTIRE PLACE DOING THE TWIST! Not exactly sure what was taking place, we stood by and watched for a few minutes before moving on. It was fun to watch, and we left Liverpool station with a smile.

Another LBS MBA TV Episode

And this time yours truly makes a cameo appearance...

The Milkround

Summer internship recruiting is in full force, and only five days after the New Year. Over the past five days I've attended eight company presentations. The model is very simple - company presentation followed by networking event (and then repeat two or three times per day).

All the investment banks and management consulting firms made an appearance. However, the investment bank line-up was a little unique this year...Merrill is in the process of merging with BofA, all the Nomura reps were from Lehman, Credit Suisse just sold their asset management division to Aberdeen and Deutsche Bank is recruiting for sales/trading roles but their star credit trader just quit to start his own hedge fund after losing $1 billion during '08. Morgan Stanley and Citi, who are dealing with their own issues but didn't have any news last week, now are in talks to merge their wealth management divisions, transforming both companies. Goldman, who recently has been fairly quite on the news front, also was on campus, but surely it won't be too competitive to land one of those internship spots.

It'll be a fun, interesting and stressful next few months as my entire MBA class attempts to find their dream internship.

A Taste of the LBS Life

Here is a photo of my study group, taken in November during an all-day case study project as part of our Strategy course. The case study was on Zara, the Spanish clothing company.

There are many horror stories about study groups getting stressed out and not working well together during this project. It's a little stressful because we don't know the project until that morning, and we must spend the rest of the day writing a report and then submit it by 9pm. Our report was a nine page, 2000 word masterpiece.

Fortunately, for us, we didn't kill each other AND we managed to get 91 on the project (class average = 79, median = 75)!

Why I Love Running

Lately I’ve been running more outside, with the hope to prepare myself for the Paris Marathon on April 5. Yesterday I went for a run around Hype Park in London, and while running I thought to myself about all the fantastic places I’ve lived and how that’s provided me so many fantastic places to run.

Today a 6-mile run takes me from my apartment south to Hyde Park, all the way around the park (all 350 acres) and back home. A year ago a 6-mile run would take me from my apartment, through the Marina-district of San Francisco, along the San Francisco Bay to the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and then back home. And, four years ago, a 6 mile run would take me from my apartment in to Central Park in NYC, one lap around the outside loop and then back home. Needless to say, each of these runs offered a pretty spectacular setting, and each reminded me how fortunate I was to live in cities that offered such beauty.

So which is my favorite? Where’s the best running? Who knows, to each is their own, and to me each city holds its own magic. Winter running is a little colder in NYC and London, but the winds in San Francisco can be absolutely brutal!

MBA TV

LBS now is broadcasting a "mini-series", if you will, on YouTube. It's called MBA TV, and it aims to provide potential applicants with information about the School. Here is the most recent installment, with coverage of the LBS Media Summit. (I would of preferred coverage of the Asset Management Conference, but oh well...)