More about the great Guy!

In a recent event, SAS Premiere Business Leadership conference, held at the Trident Hotel in India, INQUIRER.net multimedia reporter Lawrence Casiraya was able to interview one of the most popular Silicon Valley VCs and is also a well-known technology author - Mr. Guy Kawasaki.

source: http://www.inquirer.net/

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A Great Loss to the Filipino IT Community

This came as a surprise to me when I just received this afternoon an email from Sir Paco Sandejas of the Brain Gain Network about the demise of one of the most successful Filipino IT entrepreneur, Mr. Peter Valdes.

In behalf of my family, we are in prayers with the family of Mr. Valdes.

source: http://www.bgn.org/

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From Cagayan Valley to Silicon Valley

His World-Class Recognition

For the past few years, he has been consistently in Forbes’ Midas List and has been praised for having “developed advanced chip designs that helped put Silicon Valley on the map.”

In 1997, he received the prestigious Master Entrepreneur of the Year (in the US) award from Ernst & Young.

His Entrepreneurial Achievements

He is the managing partner and founder of Tallwood Venture Capital, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley with $500M+ under management. With his past experiences as an entrepreneur, he provides Tallwood with a unique perspective in technology investments. Tallwood invests in unique and hard-to-do semiconductor technology solutions for computing, communication, and consumer platforms.

Prior to forming Tallwood, he was a venture partner at the Mayfield Fund. He co-founded three technology startups: S3 (SBLU), Chips & Technologies (INTC) and Mostron. He also held positions in engineering and general management at National Semiconductor, Seeq Technologies, Intersil and Commodore International. He pioneered the PC chip set and graphics acceleration architecture that continue to be two of the foundation technologies in every PC today. As an engineer, he is credited with developing several key semiconductor technologies and is regarded as a Silicon Valley visionary.

He serves as Chairman of SiRF Technology (SIRF), InPhi Corporation, Quintic Corporation, Peleton, and Sequoia Communications and is on the boards of directors of Alphion Corporation, Redfern Integrated Optics, and T-RAM Semiconductor. He also served as Chairman and led investments in Marvell Technology Group (MRVL); Acclaim Communications, acquired by Level One (INTC); Newport Communications, acquired by Broadcom (BRCM); Cyras Systems, acquired by Ciena (CIEN); and Stream Machine, acquired by Cirrus Logic (CRUS).

He holds a B.S.E.E., cum laude, from the Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

His Early Days

He was born May 23, 1946 in Bo. Malabbac, Iguig, Cagayan and is popularly known by his nickname Dado. His hometown is about an eight-hour drive from Manila. His late father was a small rice farmer and was a humble family. The whole town was a farming community and so simple.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stanford University.

First of the Firsts

He spearheaded on the following technologies:

• First single-chip, 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator (while at Commodore in 1976)
• First 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS with silicon coupler data-link control and transreceiver chip; got 3Com into the Ethernet PC add-in card business (while at Seeq in early 1980s)
• First system logic chip set for the PC-XT and the PC-AT (while at Mostron in 1984 and Chips and Technologies in 1985)
• First enhanced graphics adapter chip set (while at Chips and Technologies in 1985)
  Pioneered local bus concept for PC (while at S3 in 1989)
• First Windows accelerator chip (while at S3 in 1990)
  Chips and Technologies - initially acquired by Intel, now an Asilent Telechnologies brand

His Insight for the Philippines

"For the Philippines to advance economically, the country should be capable of creating a lot of technologies and globally competitive products. The Philippines has to go back to basics, make sure kids are being educated well in sciences and engineering. We cannot keep on blaming others. We Filipinos should change our educational emphasis, our cultural outlook."

He is...

Diosdado "Dado" Banato - considered as the "Bill Gates of the Philippines" and it was Ayala CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala who had said that "Dado has a tremendous mind."

Truly, he is an inspiring story for all Filipinos!

sources: ey.com, tallwoodvc.com, wikipedia.org, newsflash.org

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Asia's Power Bloc

As we continue to feature the best of the best in the field of technology, this time we will feature the biggest names around Asia, Japan and India.

This is ranked according to company name, market value ($bil), sales ($bil) and country:

I. Semiconductor

• MediaTek. 17.2. 1.7. Taiwan.
• Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. 48.4. 9.7. Taiwan.

II. Software and Services

• Infosys Technologies. 27.4. 3.2. India.
• Satyam Computer Services. 7.9. 3.2. India.
• Tata Consultancy Services. 27.6. 4.3. India.
• Wipro. 17.2. 3.5. India.
• Yahoo Japan. 20.5. 1.8. Japan.

III. Technology Hardware and Equipment

• Lenovo Group. 5.1. 14.5. China.
• Ibiden. 12.4. 3.4. Japan.
• Nintendo. 63.0. 8.2. Japan.
• Chi Mei Optoelectronics. 7.5. 5.9. Taiwan.
• Compal Electronics. 4.0. 11.7. Taiwan.
• Delta Electronics. 7.6. 3.2. Taiwan.
• Acer. 4.6. 11.3. Taiwan.
• Wistron. 2.4. 6.8. Taiwan.
• Hon Hai Precision Ind. 42.1. 40.5. Taiwan.

IV. Telecommunications Services

• China Mobile. 216.5. 37.1. China.
• Bharti Airtel. 39.2. 4.3. India.
• Telkomunikasi Indonesia. 23.5. 5.7. Indonesia.

V. Conglomerate

• LG Group. 9.6. 70.9. South Korea.

Out of the 20 technology players, it is interesting to note of the following:

• 40% of the companies came from Taiwan while India has 25%
• 45% are in the technology hardware and equipment sector
• 50% has more than US $ 10-49 billion in market value
• 10% has more than US $ 50 billion in market value
• 30% generated more than US $ 10 billion in sales last year

Other interesting developments are:

• Lenovo is now one of the biggest names in the computer sector with its acquisition of the IBM Personal Computer unit
• Infosys, Satyam and Tata are some of the biggest names in the global BPO sector

reference: Forbes.com. "The Asian Fab 50", Deborah Orr and Scott DeCarlo, Sep. 06, 2007.

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On Global Tech Ranking

After "The Power of 2", I will continue with presenting 15 of the American's richest personalities in the field of technology by Forbes.com last March 5 (by company, global rank, name, age and worth in US $ billion):

• Microsoft. 3 - William Gates III, 52, 58.0
• Microsoft. 41 - Paul Allen, 55, 16.0
• Microsoft. 43 - Steve Ballmer, 52, 15.0
• Oracle. 14 - Larry Ellison, 63, 25.0
• Google. 32 - Sergey Brin, 34, 18.7
• Google. 33 - Larry Page, 35, 18.6
• Google. 142 - Eric Schmidt, 52, 6.6
• Dell. 40 - Michael Dell, 43, 16.4
• Ebay. 120 - Pierre Omidyar, 40, 7.7
• Apple. 189 - Steve Jobs, 53, 5.4
• Intel. 288 - Gordon Moore, 79, 3.7
• Yahoo. 462 - David Filo, 41, 2.5
• Yahoo. 524 - Jerry Yang, 39, 2.3
• Siebel Systems. 652 - Thomas Siebel, 55, 1.9
• Facebook. 785 - Mark Zuckerberg, 23, 1.5

It's worth to note that the youngest in the Billionaire's Club now is the 23-year old Mark Zuckerberg who founded Facebook.com.

Another interesting fact is that all of them are self-made.

Other things that we can learn from them:

• 7 are more than 50 years of age
• 7 have more than US $ 10 billion in worth
• 7 are in the top 100 richest people
• 3 companies have 2 or more billionaires

How I wish we will have a Filipino company who will make it in the list...

Excerpt from March 5, 2008, "The World's Billionaires" issue of Forbes.com.

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The Power of 2

Using the ranking made by Alexa.com, I'd like to share with you some interesting bits of information on the world's most popular Internet and technology companies of today.

This is listed by global rank, company name, founder/s and the year their companies were founded/established:

• 1 Yahoo - David Filo and Jerry Yang, 1994
• 2 Youtube - Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, 2005
• 4 Google - Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1995
• 5 Myspace - Brad Greenspan and Chris DeWolfe, 1999
• 7 Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew McCollum, 2004
• 8 Hi5 - Ramu Yalamanchi and Akash Garg, 2003
• 9 Wikipedia - Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, 2000
• 17 Friendster - Jonathan Abrams, 2002
• 18 Microsoft - Bill Gates and Paul Allen, 1975
• 23 Ebay - Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll, 1995
• 39 Amazon - Jeff Bezos, 1994
• 51 Wordpress - Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, 2003
• 89 Apple - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, 1974
• 162 Digg - Kevin Rose, 2004
• 196 Dell - Michael Dell, 1984
• 217 Linkedin - Reid Hoffman, 2002
• 233 HP - William Hewlett and David Packard, 1939
• 240 DoubleClick - Kevin O'Connor and Dwight Merriman, 1996
• 348 StumbleUpon - Gary Camp et. al, 2001
• 436 Skype - Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, 2003

Out of the list that I have compiled, we can see the following:

• 70% were founded by 2 persons
• 25% were founded by an individual
• 5% were founded by more than 3 persons
• 50% were established only from the year 2000 until 2005
• 30% were established from 1990 until 1999
• 5% were established in the 1980's
• 15% were established earlier than 1980
• 80% are Internet companies
• 40% are in the Global Top 20 Companies

Other interesting facts are:

• a handful of them started their companies in their early 20s
• a handful of them either started their companies in their garage or school dorm
• Youtube is one of the most successful startups in just less than 5 years of its existence
• Google is now the most dominant Internet company having more than 50% of the internet advertising market
• Myspace is the leading social networking site in the US, while Friendster is for the Filipinos
• Microsoft recently offered US $40B to buy Yahoo in its bid to compete with Google
• Apple made another wave because of its iPod line of products

How about our local technology companies? When can we see that we have some Filipino technology companies who will make it to the Global Top 500?

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Search > Google

In case you may be wondering how in the world did Google started, how it became one of the most success stories on the Internet and how will it continue to dominate the search technology, then check this brief history on how search technology evolved since the 1950s and the role Google played in it.

The history of document search dates back to the 1950s.

Search engines existed in those ancient times, but their primary use was to search a static collection of documents. In the early 60s, the research community gathered new data by digitizing abstracts of articles, enabling rapid progress in the field in the 60s and 70s. But by the late 80s, progress in this area had slowed down considerably.

In order to stimulate research in information retrieval, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) in 1992. TREC introduced new data in the form of full-text documents and used human judges to classify whether or not particular documents were relevant to a set of queries. They released a sample of this data to researchers, who used it to train and improve their systems to find the documents relevant to a new set of queries and compare their results to TREC's human judgments and other researchers' algorithms.

The TREC data revitalized research on information retrieval. Having a standard, widely available, and carefully constructed set of data laid the groundwork for further innovation in this field. The yearly TREC conference fostered collaboration, innovation, and a measured dose of competition (and bragging rights) that led to better information retrieval.

New ideas spread rapidly, and the algorithms improved. But with each new improvement, it became harder and harder to improve on last year's techniques, and progress eventually slowed down again.

And then came the web.

In its beginning stages, researchers used industry-standard algorithms based on the TREC research to find documents on the web. But the need for better search was apparent - now not just for researchers, but also for everyday users - and the web gave us lots of new data in the form of links that offered the possibility of new advances. There were developments on two fronts. On the commercial side, a few companies started offering web search engines, but no one was quite sure what business models would work. On the academic side, the National Science Foundation started a "Digital Library Project" which made grants to several universities.

Two Stanford grad students in computer science named Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on this project. Their insight was to recognize that existing search algorithms could be dramatically improved by using the special linking structure of web documents. Thus PageRank was born.

Larry and Sergey initially tried to license their algorithm to some of the newly formed web search engines, but none were interested. Since they couldn't sell their algorithm, they decided to start a search engine themselves. The rest of the story is well-known.

This is an excerpt from "Why Data Matters" by Hal Varian, Chief Economist of Google.

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trends and developments

Here are some of the excerpts on the recent news, issues, trends and developments in the Philippine innovation sector:

"Engr. Diosdado Banatao was cheered during the 2007 UP Alumni Association in America (UPAAA) General Assembly and Convention Gala Dinner held on September 2 at the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton in San Francisco, California when UP President Emerlinda Roman announced that he and his wife Maria had pledged USD$500,000.00 to the UP College of Engineering (COE).

Banatao talked about the pressing need for technology development in the Philippines. He said that technology development is necessary for economic development as they yield high value products that have an almost limitless demand in the global market. He cited neighboring Asian economies of Taiwan, Korea and Japan as examples. Banatao said that the challenge for a developing economy such as the Philippines is “to identify products and services that create a competitive advantage in growth sectors of the global economy.”

However, Banatao stated that the Philippines’ current technology infrastructure is not ready to take on such a task, as it requires sustaining technologies transferred from foreign investments. The problem may be traced back to the shortage of research scientists and engineers in the country due to flaws in the higher educational system, such as the predominant use of teachers with only bachelor’s degrees. He also cited the lack of cutting-edge research laboratories in the country as a problem.

For Banatao, the country’s only sources for research and development are science and engineering schools. Unfortunately, they too have their own problems, namely the lack of support from both the public and private sectors. He said the public and privates sectors, as well as academe, need to develop a culture that respects and rewards people who choose to go into the fields of Science, Technology, and Engineering, especially in advanced research." (Francis Paolo M. Quina, "Entrepreneur calls for Eng’g R&D, pledges $500,000", www.upd.edu.ph)

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