Web Startups: Tips For Raising Money

Great products, teams and business models are still most important.

As the market continues to recover from the 2008 dive and subsequent fallout, many investors are understandably jittery about throwing money at early-stage companies and have instead opted to join less risky rounds for more mature startups.

But for young startups with solid Web products, there's a silver lining: Statistics are showing slightly better numbers for seed and early-stage deals at Web startups than for startups in other verticals.

Have a killer product. Product is still the most important consideration when you're trying to raise capital.
Being the original is trumped by being the best, and sometimes--just sometimes--having an intriguing product is better than making money right out of the gate. One of social media's biggest startup success stories in recent years is Twitter, which without a doubt has turned out to be a killer product, one that the Twitter team focused on to the exclusion of almost every other business consideration, including revenue.

Most importantly, having a killer product is one of the few things that will help you raise money in the face of stiff and ever-increasing competition. In the current tech ecosystem, a clone is born every minute, but fighting off your competitors won't help you as much as looking inward and building the absolute best product you can.

Examples:
--TweetPhoto's Series A: This startup had competitors in spades--and popular, well-entrenched ones, too. But that didn't detract from its focus. When I spoke with the founders at Chirp, creators of TweetPhoto, they displayed single-minded confidence in their product; they believed that what they were building was better than anything else on the market. And they were able to convince investors that this was the case, as well.

 --Foursquare's Series B: Foursquare's core offering--a mobile check-in application--has seen iteration after iteration over the past year or so. As a result, the application has gone from being a spin-off, nerd-centric game to a potentially scalable location and marketing application.

--Collecta's Series B: The folks on this team were facing some serious competition last year, and not just in the company's vertical of real-time Web search. When Google ( GOOG - news - people ) and Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) simultaneously announced they'd be entering the real-time search market, the startups on that scene were definitely shaken. But Collecta focused on creating more value, more relevant results and a better algorithm, and investors rewarded that dedication.

Have a killer team. Quora, Brizzly, SimpleGeo and Square have all gotten funding over the past year, and it would be fatuous to think that their founders' backgrounds at Facebook, Google, Digg and Twitter had nothing to do with those deals. We suspect that the access to high-quality networks of investors, which generally comes along with working at one of the larger tech companies, helps in securing funding. But also, having been an important part of a world-famous and innovative team proves a lot to would-be investors. And look at Internet phenom Ze Frank; the meme master got $500,000 in seed money for his stealth social gaming startup.

But a "killer team" doesn't necessarily mean all-star tech pedigrees and Internet fame. Investors are looking for, to put it plainly, good people who are intelligent in their disciplines and flexible in how they see the product.

As VC Sumeet Jain of CMEA Capital wrote to us, "If we can't think of a better team, we're excited ... Seed and Series A companies can pivot several times, and the company at the end of several years of development can be radically different than what was first envisioned. The bet, therefore, has to be on the team to a much greater degree than any one idea or business."

Examples:
--SimpleGeo's Series A: Matt Galligan was the boy genius behind SocialThing, a product of the TechStars program and an AOL acquisition in its early stages. Joe Stump was the chief architect of Digg. When Galligan told us last year that they were working together on a social, location-based startup, his passion for the project was on par with his team's expertise. Funding a team like that was a safe bet.

--Quora's Series A: Facebook's engineers are reportedly some of the best in Silicon Valley. So when a few of Facebook's early hires--including the company's CTO, Adam D'Angelo--bolted to start something new, investors were certain that whatever came out of the company would be scalable and beautifully coded.

--Square's $10M Series A: It's true that investors love apps dealing with shopping and finance, but what jump-started Square's success early on was the big-name appeal of its CEO, Jack Dorsey. As a Twitter co-founder, Dorsey carried that most elusive of Silicon Valley trophies: mass adoption. Dorsey's cachet undoubtedly helped Square secure its atypically large Series A.

Have a killer business model and revenue opportunities. While we've seen a few examples of new apps getting funded as the founders steadfastly refuse to focus on revenue during formative product-development stages, we're seeing many more deals being made around apps that show solid, money-making potential out of the gate.

The technology market may boom and bust, the global financial market may crash and recover, but VCs will never get tired of companies that can make money.

Even if the tech world is full of bigger competitors than your company, your startup still has a chance at raising money (and at longer-term success) when there's a proven revenue model and enough customers, users and revenue to go around.

Examples:
--Shopkick's $15M Series B: Shopping and location apps are among the hottest for investors right now, and it's easy to see why. They connect to a direct revenue pipeline (advertising dollars for marketing campaigns and, depending on how the app is executed, user dollars for special features) and a huge amount of pursuant data on how, where and when people spend money. Shopkick is capitalizing on both trends at once and is primed to snag consumer and brand attention and cash.

--Blip.tv's $10M Series C: Blip.tv did revenue the old-fashioned way: It asked users to pay for their service. And although YouTube, which has chronically struggled to turn a profit, has proved to be the Goliath of the online video world, Blip.tv and a handful of scrappy video startups have fared well through offering clever partnerships and freemium benefits.

--LivingSocial's Series C: LivingSocial is competing with Groupon, the large and fairly well-known bargain-hunters' app. But when it comes to this market and this economy, there's enough room for more than a few smart-shopping sites and applications. By linking their product directly to consumers' buying habits and creating a built-in opportunity to partner with large brands and small local businesses alike, LivingSocial crafted an attractive investment opportunity.

Jolie O'Dell is a technology and social media journalist for Mashable.

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Computing at the Speed of Light

Replacing metal wiring with fiber optics could change everything from supercomputers to laptops.

By Tom Simonite

The world of computing could change rapidly in coming years thanks to technology that replaces the metal wiring between components with faster, more efficient fiber-optic links.

Seeing the light: A chip in the center of this circuit board contains four lasers that convert electrical signals into light pulses. The pulses travel at high speeds along a fiber-optic link. Credit: Intel

"All communications over long distance are driven by lasers, but you've never had it inside devices," says Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics lab in Santa Clara, CA. "Our new integrated optical link makes that possible."

Paniccia's team has perfected tiny silicon chips capable of encoding and decoding laser signals sent via fiber optics. Today, when data arrives at a computer via a fiber optic connection it has to be moved from a separate photonic device to an electronic circuit. This new system promises to speed things up because everything works in silicon.

Last week, Paniccia's team demonstrated the first complete photonic communications system made from components fully integrated into silicon chips. Electronic data piped into one chip is converted into laser light that travels down an optical fiber and is transferred back into electrical signals a few fractions of a second later. The system can carry data at a rate of 50 gigabytes per second, enough to transfer a full-length HD movie in less than a second.

The silicon photonic chips could replace the electronic connections between a computer's key components, such as its processors and memory. Copper wiring used today can carry data signals at little more than 10 gigabytes per second. That means critical components like the central processing unit and the memory in a server cannot be too far apart, which restricts how computers can be built.

The new Intel setup has four lasers built into its transmitter chip that shine data into a single optical fiber at slightly different wavelengths, or "colors." Chips with even more lasers should make it possible to communicate at 1,000 gigabytes per second, or one terabit per second.

"Having a chip the size of your fingernail that can deliver a terabit per second changes the way you can think about design," says Paniccia. Such chips could make a big difference inside the sprawling data centers operated at great expense by Web giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. "Data centers today are big piles of copper--that imposes the limits on how you arrange components inside a server," Paniccia says.

 "If I could just move the memory a foot away [from the processors], I could add a whole board of memory for a single CPU instead," says Paniccia, whose team is experimenting with prototype servers to work out how to build them with photonics links inside.

Moving a server's memory away from the CPUs would also make ventilating them easier. Since roughly half the cost of running a data center, used for everything from services like Facebook to banking records, comes from cooling, that could have a significant impact.

Further savings may come from the fact that optical links require less power to operate, says Keren Bergman, who leads a silicon photonics research group at Columbia University. "With electrical wires, the longer you go, the more energy you spend in an exponential fashion," she says. Optical fiber allows low-power signals to travel farther faster. Bergman's group has used data on the performance of computers at Lawrence Berkeley and MIT's Lincoln Laboratories to simulate how systems with optical interconnects might perform. "You can get an order of magnitude gain in energy efficiency," she says, with the largest gains seen for applications such as high-bandwidth image processing and video streaming, she says.

Data centers aren't the only things that may see their insides lit up with lasers. "We've developed this technology to be low-cost so we can take it everywhere, not just into high-performance computing or the data center," says Paniccia. The components of the Intel system, including the lasers, are made with the same silicon-sculpting methods used to construct computer chips in vast quantities. "I'm drafting Moore's law," says Paniccia. "We've enabled the benefits of using light with the low-cost, high-volume, scalability of silicon."In consumer computers like laptops, that would allow innovations in industrial design. I could put the memory in the display instead, and change the design of the whole thing."

This could make it easier to swap in new components without having to open up a machine. It would also allow core components to be installed in peripherals. Extra memory could, for example, be hidden in a laptop or smart phone dock to increase a portable device's computing power when plugged in.

Fully exploiting the benefits of the optical age will, however, means changes to the components being linked up. "It's not just a case of whip out the electrical wires and replace them with optical fiber," says Bergman.
Ajay Joshi, an assistant professor at Boston University, who is also exploring design options for high-performance computers with optical interconnects, agrees. "If we speed up the channel between logic [processors] and memory, we need to rethink the way you design that memory."

The speed gap between processors and optical links is smaller, but ultimately, that too will likely change. "It would be nice to also see processors that work optically instead of electronically," Joshi says.

Latest Launch Brings China Closer to ‘GPS’ of Its Own

At 5:30 on Sunday morning, the Chinese government fired a Long March 3A rocket into orbit. It carried a navigation satellite — the fifth in a planned constellation of 30 or more Beidou orbiters that Beijing hopes will soon rival America’s Global Positioning System.

For years, the U.S. Air Force has owned and operated the system that the rest of the world uses to find its way home, synch its financial transactions (thanks to the GPS timing service), and bring its ships to port. That’s given America a huge military advantage; GPS enables America’s bombs to be targeted with incredible precision. It’s also made other countries nervous: What if the Pentagon decided to mess with the GPS signal in the middle of a war?

Enter Beidou (“Compass”), China’s GPS alternative. “A global positioning system is crucial to any country’s national security and defense,” the Chinese official in charge of the program tells People’s Daily Online. “It is unimaginable for China to go without such a system.”

Sunday’s satellite makes the fifth orbiter in the Beidou constellation, and the third launched this year. Another eight to 10 are supposed to be into space by 2012, providing regional coverage. By 2020, Beidou is supposed to ring the globe.

Which means China can get its own satellite-guided weapons — ones that hit within feet of their target, and stay on track in any weather.


“GPS has become so embedded in much of the world’s day-to-day commerce and activities, it is very unlikely that the U.S. would ever turn off the precision signal. However, given the immense military benefits from such a system, there is a strong motivation for China to develop its own system, under its own control,” says Brian Weeden, a former Air Force Space and Missile officer and a Technical Advisor to the Secure World Foundation.

Beidou is one of three potential GPS competitors currently under construction. The European Union’s Galileo project, which was supposed to have been up and running by 2008, has only managed to put in orbit a couple of test satellites.

Russia had its 24-satellite GLONASS navigation constellation up and running by 1995. Six years later, only six of the satellites were still working, and system was disabled, RBC Daily notes. But Russia has launched a rebuilding effort — one that is just about finished. 21 satellites are now operational, according to the Moscow government. On Friday, Russia that three more will be sent into orbit by September.

In 2008, Moscow opened up GLONASS access to civilians. Russian boss-for-life Vladmir Putin celebrated by giving his black labrador a GLONASS-enabled collar, so he could track the dog’s movements.

“She looks sad,” Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said. “Her free life is over.”
“She is wagging her tail,” Putin answered. “That means she likes it.”

If China starts to depend on its home-grown navigation system, it may actually undermine a key tenet of Beijing’s military planning: to threaten America’s reliance on the fragile GPS constellation. (Remember how China blew up a satellite in 2007?) “As China becomes increasingly reliant and invested in space,” Weeden observes, “it becomes vulnerable to the same sort of asymmetric anti-satellite weapon it used to shock the United States.”

By Noah ShachtmanNewscribe : get free news in real time 

See Also:

• Is This China's Anti-Satellite Laser Weapon Site?
• How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 1)
• Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive
• China's Moon Shot
• Experts Scoff at Sat Shoot-Down Rationale
• China's Mini-Sat: Orbiting Camera, or New Weapon?

10 ways of doing without FDI

A Question of Business
By P. GUNASEGARAM

A STIR of sorts has been caused by the story that foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country for 2009 fell 81% to US$1.4bil (about RM4.5bil) from US$7.3bil (RM24bil).

But really it should not. If we want higher value-added, then labour-intensive industries are not our target. This is the area which many foreign investors like because they can get tremendous cost savings by using cheap labour in places like China, Vietnam etc.

If greater value-added is what we are after, then increasingly more investments have to be made in the services area – think tourism or education for instance. That does not necessarily need foreign investment – we can use local money.

We have plenty of money in Malaysia – as much as RM250bil at last count. That’s roughly the excess of deposits over loans sitting with the banks throughout the country.

All that money and nowhere to go within the country, is our problem. The money is not chasing investments in the country. And that can mean only one thing – there is a lack of opportunity here.

The question then is what is it that is reducing business opportunities in Malaysia? Is there too much red tape? Are approvals not forthcoming? Are there too many equity strictures? Do we have sufficient workers?

FDI flows in any particular year into Malaysia pales in comparison to the amount of idle money in the system. What we have to do is to find ways to use that and we will more than mitigate the effects of reduced FDI. Here are 10 ways we can do that.

1) Shift from manufacturing to services. This is inevitable if you want to move towards higher income. Our manufacturing is low value-added. Much of it is low-end assembly. Things like tourism and education offer so much more opportunities and are already large contributors to foreign exchange savings;

2) Reduce export dependence. Old habits die hard and we must realise that we cannot continue to export ourselves out of trouble all the time. What we must do is create a market for ourselves right here. Get our consumers, who seem to have a lot of money, to spend – think restaurants, entertainment, lifestyle etc;

3) Identify and target the high growth areas. Old-style low-cost manufacturing is out. We need to identify some areas for good growth in the future and focus on this. We could easily become a quality education hub for the region for instance and benefit ourselves in the process. We could set aside areas for international universities to be set up;

4) Make incentives the same for both domestic and foreign investors. The days of giving more incentives, latitude and preference to foreign investors must end once and for all and the playing field levelled. In fact, greater encouragement and incentives must be given for the development of local enterprises based on the simple premise that we must help ourselves more;

5) Cut tariffs and taxes. Tariffs are non-competitive and cutting them increases competitiveness of all industries as they are able to source supplies and services which are the cheapest and of the best quality. Cutting taxes provides incentives for making money. Our taxes are still relatively high;

6) Do away with equity targets altogether. With bumiputra equity targets probably already met if we measure using the right techniques, there is no need to force non-bumiputra industries to continue to enter Ali Baba-style partnerships to do this, a highly inefficient process that benefits very few bumiputras in any case;

7) Cut red tape. For all the lip service made to cutting red tape over the years, this is still very much with us. As long as officialdom puts all kinds of barriers in the way of genuine enterprise, expect enterprise to be hobbled;

8) Do away with yearly renewal of licences. If you already have a licence, why renew it yearly? Why can’t it be given to you indefinitely unless you flout licence requirements? Doing away with licence approvals on a yearly basis helps cut bureaucracy;

9) Improve educational standards. We can’t emphasise this enough and the steady decline in educational standards both at schools and universities has not, so far, elicited a strong enough response from the Government which will stop the slide; and

10) Cut corruption. This insidious, widespread problem is eventually the cause for much bottleneck, inefficiency, higher costs and a downright hindrance to improving productivity at all levels. It’s incredible how little we have done to stop this scourge.

Yes, FDI has dropped and it may continue to drop. But really, that’s not the end of the world. Anyway, it’s high time we reduced dependence on FDI and did something to pump up domestic investment instead. And there are many more imaginative ways to do that.

·Managing editor P. Gunasegaram is amazed that some foreign companies are taxed by their home countries for the taxes they don’t pay here; in other words, the tax incentives given to them here goes to a foreign country instead.

Corporate governance and doing it right

What Are We To Do
By TAN SRI LIN SEE-YAN

OF late, the issue of governance has been in the limelight. I have just returned from the Asian Shadow Financial Regulation Committee (ASFRC) meeting, held in conjunction with the Asian Financial Management Conference in Singapore.

Corporate governance (CG) was the sole preoccupation of the 10 ASFRC members present. To better cope with the unique characteristics of corporate Asia, its communiqué emphasised that real improvements in governance have become ever more urgent and critical.

Furthermore, new recognition that financial institutions should “assist in protecting taxpayers... creates new challenges” for their boards of directors. This realisation can result in a “potential dilemma” which requires a new mindset to resolve.

The big picture 

The recent financial crisis, triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, raised serious issues on governance of SIFIs (systemically important financial institutions) and how they are regulated and supervised.
The massive injection of public monies in the United States and Europe – estimated at up to 25% of gross domestic product – raised a huge outcry among taxpayers about the moral hazard and the diminished responsibility of private stakeholders.

The European Commission’s Larosière report highlighted three crucial gaps: Boards of directors (BoDs) and supervisory and regulatory authorities (SRAs) failed to understand the nature and scale of risks taken, shareholders failed to effectively perform their role; and lack of effective control mechanisms led to excessive risk-taking.

What’s most worrying is that CG determines and regulates business life, which raises the question: Is existing CG deficient or at best, badly implemented?

Traditionally, CG is relied upon to chart the relationship among senior management, BoDs, shareholders and other stakeholders (e.g. employees, society at large, creditors), and to determine the organisation and means used to meet goals and monitor their implementation.

But interdependence and connectivity among fast growing SIFIs can lead to systemic risks. In the recent crises, this led governments to shore-up bad large banks with public funds. Consequently, taxpayers have since become reluctant stakeholders – adding a new dimension of CG.

At the heart of it all, as I see it, is greed, mostly at the expense of the innocent, perpetuated within organisations supposedly well-run by professionals with business acumen.

In reality, key management were lying, living-it-up and cheating, or just being downright suckered by liars and cheats around them. Those charged to notice didn’t do so, or failed to raise their hands.

To reform, an effective CG system (based on smart control mechanisms with checks and balances) must make the main stakeholders (BoDs, owners, senior management) assume greater responsibility with transparency.

Bear in mind rule-based supervision focused on internal control, risk management, audit and compliance structures could not prevent excessive risk taking by SIFIs. To restore confidence, a number of critical issues have to be addressed.

Conflict of interest

The model of shareholder-owner who looks to long-term business viability has since been severely shaken. The emergence of new shareholders with little long-term interest have amplified risk-taking for short-term gains (and contributed to excessive remuneration).

This is reminiscent of the old Jack Welch adage that a firm’s sole aim is to maximise shareholders’ return, which dominated US business for the past 25 years.

With the crisis, even “Neutron Jack” had since retracted: “(Maximising) shareholders value is the dumbest idea...” he said last year. Traditionalists in the US and UK showed disdain for “stakeholder capitalism” practised in Europe where interests of employees, creditors and society at large are taken seriously.

Such conflict came to the fore in the recent BP US oil spill – many BP shareholders were eyeing hefty dividends and didn’t pay enough attention to environmental risks.

Given systemic risk and the high volume, diversity and complexities of SIFIs’ business, conflicts of interest can arise in a variety of situations, ranging from exercising incompatible roles and activities to clash on performance measurement between management and shareholders/investors.

The current travails of Goldman Sachs epitomises the conflict. When it went public in 1999, Goldman embraced the axiom of maximisation of shareholders’ value.

As wooing sustainable customers became increasingly important, concentration on maximisation over the short-term put at risk building stable relationships that rely on long-term success.

Or, when US Senators questioned Goldman on their fiduciary duty to clients when selling them sophisticated products, it admitted caveat emptor is the only rule.

To improve CG, perhaps long-term shareholders (LTShs) should be given more clout. In the US, shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange changed hands every three years on the average in the 1980s. Today, the average tenure is less than a year (10 months).

Last year, a taskforce comprising seasoned investors (Warren Buffett, Peter Peterson, Felix Rohatyn, et.al) advocated in a report “Overcoming Short-Termism” measures to encourage LTShs, including withholding voting rights for new shareholders for a year.

Netherlands is considering loyalty bonuses for LTShs. Roger Carr (Cadbury’s ex-chairman) suggested that investors who bought shares in a takeover bid should not be allowed to vote on the offer.

Would these work? As I see it, the real issue is not the length of time investors hold on to shares, but how to encourage them to take their duties as owners more seriously.

One hat is enough

The US is unusual in lavishing power on chief executive officers (CEOs) who also act as chairman of BoDs (chairman).

Splitting the job is commonplace in the UK, Canada, Australia, and much of Europe and Asia. In the UK, 95% of FTSE companies have an outside chairman.

In contrast, 53% of Standard & Poor’s (S&P) top companies combine the two jobs. Activists in the US have since been up in arms against these “imperial bosses.”

In April 2009, they forced Ken Lewis to surrender his second hat (chairman) at Bank of America. The case for “two” lies in the basic principle of separation of powers.

How to monitor the boss when he sits at the head of the table? It conjures images of CEOs writing their own performance reviews and determining their own salaries.

One of the notable steps taken by troubled US banks (Citigroup, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo) when the crises hit was to separate the two jobs. No doubt, the arguments are compelling.

Empirical evidence is not conclusive. Enron and World Com both split the jobs as did Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Rock.

Separation has its problems – it’s harder for CEOs to make quick decisions, ego-driven CEOs and chairmen do squabble over who’s in charge, and shortage of talent makes separation sub-optimal.

Be that as it may, BoDs have since become more independent; 90% of the US S&P companies now have a “lead” or “presiding” director to act as counterweight.

Indeed, recent changes make the old-style strongman an anachronism. However, I see no one-size-fits-all solution. Best way has to be evolutionary: split or explain-why-not (comply, or explain).

Independent directors

Independent non-executive directors (or indies) are at the apex of CG. Widely criticised during the crisis, indies failed to foresee troubles ahead or push management to find solutions.

They are usually well connected and often sit on several boards as companies seek their experience and connections. SRAs now want them to be more diverse.

Traditionally, when appointing new indies, existing BoDs are inclined to look in the mirror – appoint in their image rather than look through the window and recognise diversity.

This “old school tie” approach is too cosy. Also, BoDs need to be more transparent in recruitment. In the UK, the Financial Reporting Council code now requires firms to explain if indies are not put up for re-election.

More controversial is the annual election of chairman and other board members in an attempt to promote the best long-term performance in an intensively competitive environment.

However, says its critics, this promotes a focus on short-term results, makes boards less stable, and discourage robust challenges in boardrooms.

Good CG relies on indies to set smart checks and balances, and fix the boundaries of organisational behaviour. They hold the key to maintain confidence in the company’s integrity.

To do their job well, indies need to be independent from management, business relationships and substantial shareholders.

In practice, they ensure that internal and external rules of conduct are applied, risks taken are commercially sound and consistent with the board’s risk appetite, and future success of the business is reasonably assured.
This is an onerous task. To succeed, its best practices code needs to operate under well-defined core values which the board and management are committed.

A true indie knows how much work he can take on and still be effective. He needs no code on age, maximum appointments or terms served or time spent to bind him.

Integrity demands he will not accept a role he can’t fulfil, unlike many who comply on paper. Companies and stakeholders cannot be readily protected from the vagaries of human frailty.

Like it or not, their behaviour reflects the ethics and mores of society. What is really needed is to rediscover moral values. SRAs just can’t regulate for ethics and common sense.

 Asia on the go

Asian economies encounter two rather unique limitations in CG. First, cultural differences and being more “tradition-bound” place less emphasis on formal contacts but face greater subservience to authority and age.

Second, Asia has a limited pool of qualified and experienced indies since CG is a relatively new phenomenon.
While it is desirable for Asia to recognise and learn from new codes of conduct being proposed in the US and Europe, these need to be adapted and modified to fit local culture and experiences.

In Asia, while CG sets the tone, it is imperative that indies take individual responsibility not only to do the right thing by the firm they serve, but also as individuals when it comes to ethical behaviour. After all, Asia has 5,000 years of history, diversity, culture and tradition.

An evolutionary approach towards excellence in CG is what’s really needed. Best practices work best in an ecosystem of “comply or explain.”

Augmented critically by purposeful continuing education to develop and improve skills and expertise. Building, in the process, a culture of strict compliance, rigorous risk assessment and common-sense ethical behaviour. To succeed, CG and ethics must go hand-in-hand.

·Former banker Dr Lin is a Harvard-educated economist and a British Chartered Scientist who now spends time writing, teaching and promoting the public interest. Feedback is most welcome at
starbiz@thestar.com.my.