digging deeper in to online business

Today I had scheduled for the second session in the series of "DBMS for Entrepreneurs". So, the morning was spent in preparing for the session. In the afternoon, we had the Internet as a Sales Channel class, where Fernando took us on a tour of various SEO and SEM techniques and also introduced us to various firms and companies helping in web analytics and SEO implementations.

Learned about a few cool websites and Google products today, that can really help to get that competitive edge in the field of e-commerce.

After a good lunch, it was time for the DBMS session, where I taught the budding entrepreneurs of our intake about how to use MySQL and MS-ACCESS. Yes, today's session was about hands-on. I was especially happy because after this session ended, Danny presented me with a problem he was facing in migrating his website from Korea to Spain web hosting server, and I could provide him with a resolution.

And then in the evening, I came home for a quick one hour siesta. Right now, I just woke up and got ready for a long night ahead, which begins with the Japan Club's event 'IE Japan Cultural Night', where there is going to be Japanese food, drinks and dance performances from 9 PM until 12:30 PM.

The coincidence of the day is that I am going for a Japanese dinner on the Chinese New Year :-)

Anyways, I know that I am in for a fun night ahead, so enjoy your weekend readers and Hasta Manana :-)

A day to just sit back and listen :)

Morning started early today thanks to the city hall appointment. Yes, it's that time to renew my NIE already. Anyways, in school, we had the simulation debrief during applied corporate finance class, nod apart from registering our strategy, it was just a class to sit back and listen to what everyone has to say. By the way, we were the best group when it came to the acquisition offers that went through yesterday, buying the other company in least price.

And then, it was time for the IE Digital Forum 2014. Various panels with discussions ranging from SoLoMo to digital identity to big data to innovation models from companies ranging from Oracle to IBM to ideagoras to Deloitte to Indra occupied my day from 3:30 pm until 8:30 pm. An entire day spent listening to latest trends in technology and innovation. Was a good experience to have, and this experience was then followed by a small cocktail.

What can I say, some days are just good to have :)

Portfolio management & M&A, all in the same day

Today was a stressful day - we did programming of finding efficient portfolios for various market, regulatory and organizational constraints, both in excel and Matlab in the morning using Mr. solver and some Matlab function creations, and then we played the simulation for M&A and managed to get a deal done, buying one of the two probable targets that we're playing along within the available time of 75 minutes.

It may sound like just another day but the whole thing was not only exciting but also stressful. 

Thankfully, there wasn't much to be read for tomorrow's classes so I could come home early. Tonight I will sleep early, after missing a lot of sleep in last two days.

Feeling relaxed already :)

Some Old, Some New ..

While the applied corporate finance class today was all about why Mergers and Acquisitions are done, how can they create value, what are the types of M&A and what can be reasons that these deals fail, a premise which is quite new for me; the Internet as a sales channel class in the evening was all about how a typical internet platform development cycle, which resembled a typical software development life cycle from the RFP and requirements gathering to production roll-out and post release support.

So, a day with classes discussing some new concepts and some old or rather known concepts.

We also managed to finally complete the pre-simulation report for corporate finance, today being the last day to decide our reservation prices to be offered to other players for the M&A simulation to be done, and so all the brain storming between me and Hitesh for last few days finally concluded with a strategy for the simulation based o calculations in past few days.

All-in-all, a good day and a shorter one as well, compared to yesterday when we went home at 3 AM after a real long time :-)

Creating Efficient Frontier and valuating real options

As technical as it sounds, today's day was all about technical calculations in Finance. Antonio started the day with Portfolio theory and gradually, we all went from learning basics of portfolio analysis to creating the efficient portfolio envelope curve, that we had all only seen in the textbooks and reading materials so far, for the portfolio we had under consideration.

Day of course started with a quick look at the markets this week, and a brief discussion of what we can expect in the near times.

And then, Conchita took us into the world of real options. We took a look at evaluation of a patent, evaluation of a market diversification strategy, evaluation of whether to continue or to abandon a project, among some other theoretical details.

I also got started with my fast forward Spanish classes today. And after reading the technical notes for tomorrow's class, it was time to take some rest, only to resume working on corporate finance simulation.

What can I say?? We are back into the IE mode once again :-)

By the way, on a passing note, two news for the day - IE Business School is now ranked 13th in the Financial Times Global MBA list - down from 11th in the previous rankings. Was involved in a lot of talk around this topic today, with many folks form my intake and the November intake, hence thought mentioning it here.
And yes, today marks completion of 300 days for me here at IE.
Time surely flies ..

All Hail the Power of MATLAB !!

I have to say, I wasted my time a lot last week, when I was trying to write all those complex if and for loops to get various answers to the Applied Financial Engineering exercises for homework.
As I "discovered" on the web today, a lot of those things are already taken care of, by the MATLAB functions and all I really need to know is the right function for the right exercise.

If purpose of Antonio to make us do this exercise in both Excel and MATLAB was to show us the convenience that the MATLAB functions have to offer, he has already sold this to me now.

What can I say, all hail the power of MATLAB :-)

By the way, those interested in the video of the first among three sessions on "DBMS for Entrepreneurs" that I am conducting here at IE, can take a look below:

Of Career and Cash Flows

Well, two days back, I had submitted my resume for a review to a Career Executive here and today morning she got back to me with her feedback.
So the first half of the day today was spent in understanding and thinking on how I can incorporate those comments and feedback into my resume and improve it for better.
And then, there was the Applied Corporate Finance Online Simulation, which we need to complete by Wednesday. So, afternoon was spent in the simulation followed by some Matlab programming in the evening.
All-in-all, a day spent working on aspects of my career and working to analyze cash flow in the exercises assigned to me !!

Amazong Friday :-)

No, that's not a spelling mistake in the title of the day. Today was Internet as a Sales Channel class, where we had the Amazon case, of its story from being an online book shop to a full fledged service industry leading various sectors of the value chain that it has created.

Fernando was on fire today, with the case that he had himself authored along with Alvaro. So, I had more than one reason to enjoy today's case -considering that I am also working with Alvaro for my fellowship and we have also authored a conference paper together :-)

Thanks to the overwhelm about Amazon's business model and its corporate mission that was shared with us by Fernando, it was the day to be amazed with Amazon.

Thanks to the Africa Club Ethiopian Dinner and a Birthday drinks invite later tonight, the entire day of Friday today has turned out to be quite amazing !! Or shall I say Amazong :-)

A day for Ventures ..

Well, today was the day when I helped some friends who are budding entrepreneurs with an introductory session on dbms. This is going to be a three session series and we are video taping it.
These videos will also help a venture lab idea of one of my friends and I have started working on developing an idea for the knowledge incubator I will be taking in the next term, for which this video will also help.
So, the morning was spent preparing for the training, afternoon was the time for giving training and when it was all over, today I also went down to the Area 31 - the IE venture incubator for Thursday evening pitches.
There were three pitches as per every week with each idea at a different stage of execution, and with different needs from the investors.
It was interesting to know about them and to see people pitch before investors. I think I am going to continue with this thursday evening routine, considering that I am in electives periods anyways.
By the way, I had no class today, in case you are wondering about it. Today was spent altogether around ventures and ideas :-)

Saturday Preponed :-)

Well, when there are no classes for two days in a row, it seems just like a relaxing Saturday. Today was one such pre-poned Saturday :-)

Thankfully, I have a training session that I have planned for tomorrow, where I am going to teach about DBMS to some friends, so today morning went in preparation of the training related slides.

Afternoon was another round of corporate finance studies and then the day is going to end with a nice Italian dinner with my applied corporate finance work group. Feels like a weekend already :-D

Options & Options

Well, in the applied corporate finance class of today, Conchita started with discussion on various Option contracts - how their values change depending on the market changes and how these options can be evaluated. Various theories of evaluation, call-put parity equation and all the technical stuff about options was covered in a really simple way of explanation today. I liked this class a lot, for making me understand the nuances of options valuation.
And then, it was time to discuss how the behavior of option contracts can in fact be used to replicate real life valuation scenarios, to give us what are now come to be known as real options :-)
yes, real options can be anything form patents to oil drilling plants, and such projects can be evaluated more accurately using real options methodology, which we will learn in the sessions to follow.
Our group for this class also met to discuss the possible candidates for our presentation at the end of this term. A short and productive meeting it was, I would say :-)
And yes, as there is nothing scheduled for me tomorrow, I decided to come home in the evening and take a brief siesta, before starting with any studying for the day :-)

Picking up pace ..

Well, it was the same routine as last Monday this time - with Applied Financial Engineering double session to start the day, followed by Applied Corporate Finance and Internet as a Sales Channel to wrap the day.

Only difference, this time around, now that we are already at least a couple of sessions old in every class, there was a lot more learning done today than what was done last week on the first day of courses.

While day started with discussion about the Wolf of Wallstreet, thanks to the trading background of Antonio, soon we were doing portfolio analysis first using excel and then using Matlab; this was followed by a session on derivatives by Conchita and lastly it was about KPIs and performance indicators and cost allocations of the internet business.

Stayed back in school for some more time to read some more of corporate finance and came back home after getting groceries on the way.

All in all, a busy Monday with all classes paced up really well. I can already see a lot of work coming my way soon :-)

Time to get hands dirty again :-)

Well, finally, I started with the Matlab programming for exercise we had to do. Today morning was in fact spent in the school, trying my hands on the if loops and the break and the case statements.

After almost an year, I found myself doing the ground work, making my hands dirty with the real work that is programming.

All was well until I decided to go watch the latest movie about wall street - the Wolf of wallstreet !!

Well, the movie was long, slow and anti-wall street, so not too many positive things to talk about it, specially when most of my day was spent trying to code for financial market related exercises :-)

Finance Saturday

Well, as the classes begin to take pace, the need to catch up with all my finance concept revision was troubling me since last couple of days.

So today was the day when I spent time studying and revising the basics of corporate finance and tried to catch up with my applied corporate finance study so far. It was a day well spent.

In fact, later in the evening, I also started with excel exercises for applied financial engineering, and could complete most of them. The next step is now to put it all in Matlab.

Anyways, after this fruitful day, and thanks to the fact that I finally got my groceries after landing here in Madrid, I cooked today. In fact, I was able to try a east-west combo, with stuffed eggplant half made by Indian style and half made by Italian style. And then, without thinking too much about the calories that would add up to my bear tummy, I just enjoyed the home made meal in Madrid after a long time. Weekend pleasures, what can I say :-)

The Business of Online Business

In the solo class today, prof Fernando took us through a brief outline of the entire course and through this, made us acquainted with different aspects of setting up and successfully operating the e-commerce business. From strategy planning to HR structuring, from SEO to Legal issues, we mentioned them all and we had inputs from everyone in class.

Going by the course content, i can anticipate that its going to be a really useful course and I am looking forward to start studying it :-)