Cash Money PayPal

So this is happening now--- PayPal has financed eBay shoppers before, but now they're moving into the lending business for ...small businesses. (I'm not that eloquent after long Friday nights, okay?).

This is interesting because, shortly after I started at Booth, I started taking copious amounts of econ and finance classes, and I surprisingly learned a lot. (Note that I didn't say that I learned enough by Booth standards, because, let's be real-- no one has ever learned "enough" by Booth standards, which is why we kill ourselves trying to take continuously more classes, do more school stuff and then feel overwhelmed by our overcommitment and feel forced to drink our feelings away.) One of the things that I learned is that in the past financial crisis, it logically followed that a lot of the nation's lending institutions stopped lending as much money as often because of all the newly introduced and very concerning risk that was introduced into the system. Although this sounds like a good thing ("Well if the economy isn't doing well then we should stop giving people money willy nilly because obviously that didn't work out too well for us.") it isn't as simple as that-- not only because the cause of the financial crisis has other roots, but because the potential solution out of this financial mess might be the exact opposite response.

When the economy goes south, it's natural that lending institutions would be less willing to lend because they're trying to keep more reserves in the bank for their safety (hedging against the possibility of a bank run or something like that) or because the government tells them to (which they did). However, even beyond what they're required, banks get nervous about lending money and when lending dries up, then a lot of the consumer spending that drives our economy (~70% of GDP) and infrastructure spending from private business/corporations (~10% of GDP) also stops. When that declines, our GDP declines, morale worsens, and then we potentially push ourselves into a tail spin.

So what does this have anything to do with PayPal? Well, it seems like PayPal saw the opportunity where it lay. They realized that small business was their life blood (statistically speaking, if they're anything like the previous clients that I've worked for, their small business segment makes up the majority of their revenues) and that they needed to encourage that to grow even if the market environment wouldn't. PayPal has gone through some rough spots recently. I'll be the first person to admit that-- they instituted massive layoffs this year and generally have been out of the limelight (more or less)  because of their outspoken opinion on the way that mobile payments will go (not NFC), and that's what everyone wants to talk about. They had a couple of exciting partnerships with companies like the Home Depot, but I was left wondering-- has PayPal taken a wrong turn? Their strategies and recent roll-outs seem disparate with what their core business is! But now I realize that they're just in the stage of trying to figure out what their NEW core business can be. I think they've realized that alternative payments is not going to be enough, so they're testing different things (of which mobile payments is just one very small functionality that they rolled out to test out the waters of this type of technology) to see where their next big idea can come from.

Some may argue this sounds the death echo for PayPal as a more negative person would argue that they're just grasping at straws. I'm still optimistic. They're trying things out for now, but I think they'll find their way.

The Shrinking Part of Time: Part Time Lifers

I was reading an article in the New York Times the other day titled "A Part-Time Life, As Hours Shrink and Shift", and for some reason, it really stuck with me. In the article, it details the life of a part time worker. Usually thinking that they'll get something like 30 hours a week, they sign up for a job at a retail or grocery store and begin working with 20-30 hours a week. Then, all of a sudden, their hours will get reduced to 5 or maybe 10. With an average wage of ~$10 (which they calculate, by the way, by accounting for $8 of salary and $2 of part time benefits) an hour, it's no surprise that single moms can't raise their children-- they're essentially only making $16,000 a year!

The logic around why stores do this is because, simply, it's cheaper for them. Having a bunch of part timers instead of full timers gives them additional flexibility, cost savings in not having to provide full-time benefits, and workers that, incrementally, don't really impact their schedules too much if they decide to leave (finding a replacement for a full-time employee can be much more difficult).

I think the reason why it struck me is that I came from an industry (consulting) where you're paid pretty well, and I think that sometimes people take that for granted. I once was talking to a few of my friends (also consultants) and we were chatting about what our "after" life could be (after we leave consulting, as we always did, because it's like talking about what you'll do when you get out of prison-- you glorify it to be this amazing thing. Whether it actually is glorious or not is a blog for another day...). One of my friends, who was a superior role to mine (manager) was saying that she could never work somewhere that would pay her less than $110K a year. I was aghast. $110K is almost three times the average household income. That's crazy! She was basically claiming that, because she had grown accustomed to the life that she led, she couldn't fathom a way that she would be happy living her life on less money than that. She estimated that $110K was how much she needed to keep her life "stable". Not even "nice" or "enjoyable" but "stable". Granted, consultants have a skewed version of the world (not living in one place for longer than a week at a time and spending a lot of time in airports will do that to ya), but this was crazy.

I left the consulting biz and now I'm going back at school. I won't lie. I do miss making an income and generally not stressing about money all the time (I am very fiscally responsible, I hate having debt). However, I don't know if I need that much to live a comfortable life. Now I'm stuck in this self-analysis game of "Who's the weird one?" (a game I play often). Am I crazy for thinking that I could live comfortably on half of that? Is she the crazy one for thinking she needs that much to be happy? I don't know, and I probably will never know, but it was definitely a wake up call for me to hear that and then read this. Moral of the story? Just be happy for what you've got. You might not think it's enough, but it's probably more than what other people have. Feeling pretty grateful today.

Mary-Gonna-Make-Me-That-Money

Why are we still talking about this Marijuana Business? The Mary Jane roaches, the sweet purple smoke? C'mon, I can be a little gangsta. I listened to a Vanilla Ice album once.

I was watching a segment on MSNBC earlier today and the two talking bobble-heads (not to be mean, but they actually do bobble their heads a lot), and they were appalled at the very idea of legalizing marijuana. Even the Washington Post picked up the story soon after Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana in their state, with the ability to manufacture, process and distribute for medicinal purposes.

I know that everyone has heard the arguments against legalizing marijuana. It's a slippery slope, it's a gateway drug, it breeds an unsavory culture, it could increase the many opportunities for public danger. But what about the upsides? Tax revenue alone could help us in the gigantic financial hole that we're in, means more jobs if you're going to open it up completely like Washington and Colorado did, by regulating it, you're actually taking power away from the large black market that supplies it now, and you're also limiting the... negative international relationships that we're making in for the drug suppliers south of the border. Why not?

I feel like we have bigger problems to deal with as a nation. A fiscal cliff, a eurozone- now-global problem, an unemployment problem and other national drug problems that have a much larger consequence. Maybe it's time we focused on the important things.

A Myth in a Myth in a Myth...

In "The Myth of Male Decline", there is a discussion about how males are feeling a little.. well, down-trodden. Maybe a little like second class citizens. Women have been making gains in wages, education, leadership positions. However, it's really a relative game, isn't it?

Women may have been making gains in wages, but its because we have a lot more to make up for-- a lot more opportunity to "make up ground". But why does this matter? I mean, in this brave new world of voice-activated phones and vacuum cleaners that clean by themselves, do we really still need to be harping on and on about the rights of women and how we're really "fighting for our rights"? Are the blogs and articles covering the "progress" of women still needed-- this new-age form of bra-burning?

The short answer is yes.

When Marissa Mayer of Yahoo gets public uproar and an internet-wide controversy for deciding to  continue working throughout her pregnancy, there is still a worthwhile reason to keep the conversation going.

As a person who's currently going to a business school with an overwhelming majority of men, after being a consultant (another male-dominated society), sometimes its a little disheartening. If you're too aggressive, trying to compete in an atmosphere that's mostly men being ultra-competitive and aggressive, then sometimes you're just seen as "mean", "unproductive", "uncooperative", "not a team player". If you're more friendly, trying to make sure that you still retain a bit of yourself in the hurricane of what you're "supposed to be", you're seen as "weak", people take advantage of you, question your ability to lead. In the middle of all of this, everyone keeps telling you to "be yourself", "stay true to what you believe". Well, it's hard!

Especially during this recruiting season, when you're doing so much questioning about who you are, and what you potentially want to do for the next large chunk of your life this strange balance of character traits can begin to weigh on you. Despite what they say, I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed in the lies of the companies that are most interested in us-- potentially, the incoming ranks of their company. All companies say that they want you to be yourself. But some industries, some firms are definitely looking for a specific type of person-- they call it "cultural fit". I understand that, coming from consulting, where the fit is the difference between a successful project or a failure. But where is this line drawn?

Be yourself, but have the following characteristics. Everyone goes through it, but for women the added layer of "how to be a successful business woman", it gets a little more complicated. It's usually easier to make decisions when you can look at how it's been done in the past. With women, we don't have a lot of options to do that. Until we have more examples, more representations, it's worthwhile for us to keep the conversation going.

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Google-ful

Just when the Best Buys of the world thought that the travesty was over--- when they took the break to take a breath and wipe their brows, thinking that the showrooming phase was over....

They were wrong. Dun dun DUN!

Apple was recently rewarded for their EasyPay solution (allowing consumers to scan things in stores and buy them through their phones through an internet connection). This, in my opinion, seems not just like another one of those cases where Apple just like suing people for the fun of it (just kidding--though let's be honest, it makes sense for them to protect their turf that way, and who's to say that it isn't ALSO fun? Could definitely be part of it). I know, all the Appleheads out there right now are wetting themselves, celebrating the ways that Apple does all things in a miraculous way. But Apple isn't doing anything particularly new here, in fact, it's really taking a page from eBay's book when they acquired Red Laser or maybe even Google's book since they host a plethora of barcode scanning apps such as ShopSavvy and ScanLife and may be even *gasp* have been ahead of the game in incorporating it through Google Goggles (PS- Google Goggles might be one of the sexiest apps concepts I've ever heard of. Google basically said "Anyone can build a barcode scanner, we're going to build something that can recognize bar codes, print ads and OBJECTS. Take that!")

It's okay. Everyone wants to be like Google. Apple just announced a "Blue Sky" initiative allowing their employees to take on pet engineering projects... which sounds an awful lot like Google's "20% Free Time", one of their most productive, innovative management ideas to date.

Everyone likes to bring up the Google Wallet product, since it hasn't been an instant winner. At the IGNITION conference, Chris Haylen (Vice President and General Manager of Payments for Intuit) claimed that Google Wallet wasn't successful because their whole strategy was geared under their advertising agenda.  Another popular hypothesis is that they simply don't have the infrastructure to support their solution. Sure, some other companies, like eBay, are celebrating their recent successes in mobile transaction volume, but Google's got something special.


I mean, at least they're not RIM. It's a sad day when you get p0wned by Yahoo.


Finally, even with Google's not so awesome products, we still own it. As seen by this awesome ad.

Students Cheat. Yup They Do.

I know, I know, it's appalling that kids are still cheating nowadays. (Isn't that what the interwebs was supposed to solve?) Well... kids are definitely still doing it according to this article in The New Yorker. It talks about a cheating ring at Stuyvesant (read: hoity-toity, very prestigious high school) in New York City that involved 140 students. At the center of the maelstrom is Nayeem Ahsan, a 16 year old kid from Bangledeshi immigrant parents.

Being first generation, he talks about the pressures that are out there for him to do well. Even after getting into a super prestigious school, there is continual pressure for him to do well at said prestigious school so that he can go to a good college. Once in a good college, he hopes to get a prestigious education so that he can land a prestigious job and .... well, make lots of money.

Nayeem's argument is that studying was pointless because studying was more was not going to make much of a difference. Sure, maybe it could help, but "there are things I'm bound not to know". His argument, therefore, was that studying, when compared to outright cheating, was more effective because his end goal was high scores, and cheating gave him more incremental value per unit.

When I first read this article, I was angry. Angry because I've grown up around kids like Nayeem my whole life-- kids who have been told the "right" from the "wrong", but seemed so disillusioned or so disoriented that they didn't seem to believe it. Scarier still, I worry that these kids did believe it, but just didn't care-- the ends justify the means, right? As a hard worker myself, I've been told I'm smart. Sure, I'm probably smarter than your average bear, but I'm by no means a genius. I work really hard to learn the things I learn and I put a lot of time into these things. People who cheat make my work incrementally worth less because they get the same results with less time. It makes the whole "market of smartness" worse off through false inflation.

But then I started thinking about it more. And I get it. I still don't agree with what this kid did, but I understand it because this type of behavior still goes on. It even happens at school now. There are simply too many things to do and too little time. There inevitably will be people who have prioritized, say, recruiting, over classes because our main goal right now is getting a job. These people sometimes will take fewer classes or easier ones to compensate for the lack of time, sometimes they won't. Those that won't usually have to a.) accept that they're not going to do as well as what they're used to or, b.) they cheat.

I argue though that the true crux of the problem though isn't that it's inherently wrong (which it is though, by the way), not that it's "ruining it for the rest of us" (which it also is, by the way), but that it's really more of an indication of the type of students that we're creating. By placing so much pressure on our students, their perspective of what's "most important" gets skewed. As it becomes more and more disoriented, they begin to simply try to get by, instead of doing what they know they should be doing. On one hand, we're creating highly effective people in the skills of prioritizing, organizing and coordinating. It takes a lot of work to cheat I'd imagine (you'd need to find someone who knew the answers, etc.). On the other though, we're creating a whole new generation of "super achievers" that can't accept that they can't do everything and that they need to prioritize. Is that a generation that we want to empower with prestigious jobs and schooling? I'm not so sure.

TechnicalogiVentures (Bar & Grill)

I'm the bartender. My bar is a simple one named, somewhat non-sensical word. That's how you know I'm legit. I sit, I watch, wipe some cups, give knowing smirks when required of me.

Across the room, PayPal is a little gun-shy-- coming off of a small dating rut from the PayPal Here and layoffs, she's definitely ready to get back in the game with record mobile sales this holiday season thus far. Google and Apple are peacocking (look this up if you don't know what this means, it's a real thing...and hilarious that it's a real thing), sidled up by the bar in their hoodies and wayfarer sunglasses. Google is proudly showing off their new functionality for Google+, the fact that Barack Obama used Google Hangout (true story) and their general awesomeness high after finishing a year where they got big props for their Hurricane Sandy Emergency System (unfortunate cause, but fantastic response) and their winning (?) battles against their many legal suits. Maybe their Google Wallet hasn't been perfect, but they're tweaking it--adding new functionalities like P2P payments (much to PayPal's smugness). Apple released the iPhone5 to the delight of Appleheads everywhere....and to the sadness of the Apple Maps maker (really? You were "Surprised by the popularity of the maps function"?) / happiness of AOL's Mapquest (yes this still exists). Nevertheless, they still pin their iPad Mini's to their shirts, and play with their drinks while chatting with their "its complicated" significant other, Intel.

Microsoft is still in the dating game. Known for being one of the most exclusive bachelorettes (c'mon, I have to be gender neutral), Microsoft has long been a powerhouse and is warily testing out the waters with its new Surface tablet to complaints about it being too highly priced but also to cheers of it being filled with potential in bridging the gap between work and play.

I mostly console Groupon as he sits, hunched over his whiskey sour at the bar. He's had a bit of a rough year. His IPO didn't really work out like planned. Launched late last year, it was too be a match made in heaven--I mean, it seemed so good at first! IPO was The One, it was going to change the way that he could business, and for good reason! In the increasingly saturated market of e-couponing/ e-offers, Groupon is probably wishing they took Google's offer now that it's clear their business model needs a re-tweaking. Groupon has been reduced from eligible newbie to disheveled hipster-type, with his CEO under fire for plunging stock prices going so far to say that he would fire himself if he ever thought he was the wrong man for the job.

I just don't know how to help the guy honestly. I mean, if Restaurant.com is even getting in on the local deals business with their Double Deals, it seems like the whole world just wants to be single and try to make it on their own. Restaurant.com has a compelling story on his own, since he can leverage his existing market share that he's achieved through his restaurant coupons, but that just means (unfortunately) just more competition to pile on-- on top of the Gilt City, LivingSocial, HomeRun and LifeBookers of the world.

Maybe this is the time for the couponers to look at some of the non-central players that are also here. There's Visa who's hanging out casually shooting pool-- with their new e-commerce authentication system (driven by real-time risk analysis) its a true signal they're looking forward to more e-business and on-the-go quick payments. Since Groupon has also moved into that space, it could always be a good partnership-- sipping wine in front of a fireplace, discussing a right-time, right-place offers/payment solution.

Or maybe look at other relationships for inspiration. Amazon Payments just inked a deal with FailSafe Payments for merchant processing. Maybe not the sexiest relationship-- I mean, Failsafe is no Italian supermodel. But it's a stable one-- they have complementary interests, AND it provides substance to the relationship. Amazon gets more of that processing pie, FailSafe gets a little more big-name branding. That one might just work out.

I heard there might be some new eligible bachelors/bachelorettes coming on the scene-- a crowd-sourced fraud detection system, NCR and Ingenico are strong on the prepaid payments front (always an overlooked watering hole) and Square cut their pilot with New York Taxis short, so maybe they're looking.

Not everyone can be lucky in love. So don't give up hope yet, you lonely and looking. You'll find someone.

Until then, I'll be here to lend a sympathetic ear, talk it out. Maybe give out some hugs. Let me fill up your cup.

Update: Poor Groupon. Google just acquired a Incentive Targeting, and Mason finally caved to an interview with BusinessInsider yesterday, which people are dissecting as we speak. Poor PayPal! Visa has been seen about town with Bank of America and RBS to tout V.Me.