These People Will Fix Your Money

These are the men and women Barack Obama assembled today to advise him on how best to fix the cratering economy. They are a largely respected group, and though they ain’t perfect—so many CEOs and so much Larry “Women Be Unable to Learn Math” Summers!—they are certainly more reassuring than the ideologues and incompetents our last guy surrounded himself with. We’ve identified them for your benefit and their brief bios are below.

• Roel Campos (former Securities and Exchange commissioner)
• Eric Schmidt (chairman and CEO of Google)
• Antonio Villaraigosa (mayor of Los Angeles)
• William Donaldson (chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2003 to 2005)
• Laura Tyson (professor at Haas School of Business of University of California at Berkeley; chairman of the National Economic Council from 1995 to 1996; chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1995)
• David Bonior (member of the House of Representatives from 1977 to 2003)
• Robert Rubin (chairman and director of the Citigroup executive committee; secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department from 1995 to 1999)
• Jennifer Granholm (governor of Michigan)
• Paul Volcker (chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987)
• Richard Parsons (chairman of Time Warner)
• Anne Mulcahy (chairman and CEO of Xerox)
• Roger Ferguson (president and CEO of TIAA-CREF; former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve board of governors)
• Lawrence Summers (professor at Harvard University; managing director of DE Shaw; secretary of the U.S. Treasury from 1999 to 2001)
• Roger Ferguson (former Fed Vice Chairman, CEO of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund)
• Penny Pritzker (CEO of Classic Residence by Hyatt)
• Robert Reich (professor at University of California at Berkeley; secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor from 1993 to 1997)
• William Daley (Midwest chairman for JPMorgan Chase; secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce from 1997 to 2000)

By gawker.com

Paul Polak: 15 Rules for Business Success in Any Market

Paul Polak, a Pop!Tech 2008 featured speaker, has been starting businesses since he was 15. He’s now 75, and says he has succeeded — and failed — with more ventures than he can count. Polak’s first was a strawberry distribution operation in his hometown of Millgrove, Ontario. Later Polak prospected in real estate and oil and made millions. In 1981, he invested the proceeds into a nonprofit incubator of sorts called International Development Enterprises.

Most of the ventures Polak has debuted out of IDE have one thing in common: They specialize in delivering low-cost engineering solutions to “micro-businesses” in the developing world. The most famous is the $25 treadle pump: a simple, foot-powered irrigation system that millions of farmers in India, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Nepal have used to bring themselves out of poverty. Irrigation allows farmers to grow crops irrespective of season. When they can diversify, they are no longer subsistence farmers. They become businesspeople.

Since his customers are the poor, Polak is called a social entrepreneur. But he’s hardly the sort to sacrifice profits for “do-gooder-ism.” In fact, Polak won’t invest in a venture that can’t pay for itself in a year. One year! It’s a high bar by venture capital standards, but Polak says a one-year break-even is one of his top three “don’t bother” rules, along with a market opportunity of at least 1 million customers and having conversations with at least 25 of those prospective buyers.

Polak knows a lot about building successful businesses in dire economic circumstances. It’s a skill set in high demand these days, and Polak often lectures at Harvard’s and Stanford’s business schools. In addition to his three “don’t bother” rules, Polak points the way to success using 12 Steps to Practical Problem Solving, “because business is problem-solving…no matter what market you’re in.”

This week Polak shared his ideas with hundreds of business elites at Pop!Tech. He also sat down with Found|READ to flesh-out his wisdom, tailored to startups. It’s below.

The 12 Steps to Practical Problem Solving:
1. Go where the action is. “Spend significant time with your customers. This is how you learn what they need,” he says. Not hours, days. Polak lived with his farmers for 6 months.
2. Interview at least 100 customers a year. You do it. Not an employee. Listen to what they have to say. “Too many entrepreneurs build the product they want to build — not the one that’s needed.”
3. Context matters. If your solution isn’t right for the context, for example, if it costs too much for the customers you’re trying to serve, you won’t succeed.
4. Think big. Act big.
5. Think like a child.
6. See and do the obvious. Others won’t, which is opportunity for you.
7. Leverage precedents. If somebody has already invented it, don’t do it again.
8. Scale. Your business must have potential to scale. Remember, your market must include at least 1 million customers.
9. Design to specific cost and price targets. Not the other way around. (Celeste: it means — Do not price to your design, design to the price you need to hit to make your product appropriate to your customer.).
10. Follow practical three-year plans. Two years is too short. Ten is too long.
11. Visit your customers again. And again. “Any successful business in this country is based on talking to your customers all the time. A good CEO spends half his time ‘in the field.’”
12. Stay positive. Don’t be distracted by what other people think.

By Carleen Hawn