It’s already 20-10, but, to repeat last year’s personal annual report I thought of value, I’m trying here to summarize the most important of my professional activities that took place during 2009. The very limited posts that appeared in this blog didn’t help that much, so I decided to move on to twitter, and search across the 2340 tweets I posted in the last year to find, in between the noise, the ones better described my progress.
Calendar
January – Mostly research
– A paper of mine on holistic investment assessment is now available for early view – http://ub0.cc/49/16 (tweet)
February – Research and more
– Back from a friend’s PhD defense, clearly jealous (gotta isolate myself for 3 months to finalize my own one, too…) – (tweet, tip: I’m still looking for those 3 months…)
– The datamine.it team is getting 10 members strong and much more experienced – (tweet)
March – Interesting developments in various ends
– Just received a cease & desist letter on http://datamine.it for using the *brand* (?!) “datamine” in greece, sounds fun – (tweet, and relevant post, datamine.it was rebranded as to mineknowledge)
– RT @askmarkets new blog post: What’s in it for me? http://ub0.cc/4c/0h (tweet)
– Data mining paper on bioinformatics sent, moving on to a book chapter on prediction markets as a dss for competitive sme intelligence – (tweet)
April – Open Coffee grows strong
– packed, as usual #ocgr – (tweet)
and enables a trip to the Valley, including Stanford and Valley‘s Disneyland, among others
– Open Coffee Greece goes… Stanford! – http://ub0.cc/bd/2p #ocgr #occ – (tweet)
May – Meanwhile I took the time to give lectures in various universities (I think 6 in total during 2009), looking forward to expanding these in 2010
– lectures in 3 different unis within two days, the joy :) – (tweet)
June – After almost a year of preparation, the Openfund is announced!
– What an audience, thank you all http://twitpic.com/6h7bh #ocgr #occ (tweet)
– Introducing The Open Fund (slides) – http://ub0.cc/7H/16 – (tweet)
July – Full details on the Openfund released
– RT @openfund The Business Plan – http://ub0.cc/9p/7r – (tweet)
August – Legal Openfund R&D took August to digest
– 6k legal doc is almost over – (tweet, legalese was clearly one of the most harsh tasks to accomplish within the fund)
September – Spreading the word before the application deadline
– Early thoughts on how to apply for the Openfund – http://ub0.cc/36/5j (warning, 3k blog post :) – (tweet)
– Kathimerini newspaper on @openfund (in greek) – http://ub0.cc/g5/09 – (tweet, among the various mentions in both new and old media we gathered throughout the year)
October – Call for proposals concluded, initial screening
– RT @openfund First Round of Applications Concluded – Some Insights http://ub0.cc/4j/9l – (tweet)
– RT @openfund A letter of acceptance -or not- has been sent to all our applicants, including full reviews. Looking forward to the interviews! – (tweet)
November – Final selection takes place, very happy with the results
– RT @openfund 1st Round of Applications – Progress Update http://ub0.cc/7f/pd – (tweet, including a detailed business plan template)
– Just finished a 10h25m long conference call of @Openfund interviews, excited :) – (tweet)
– RT @openfund The Openfund, Round I: Start-ups Selected – http://ub0.cc/2y/nf – (tweet)
December – Another cycle begins
RT @openfund Applications now open – http://ub0.cc/sf/3j – (tweet)
As it is clear from the above rough summary, the Openfund expanded to literally almost squeeze each other activity of mine during the second half of 2009; clearly launching a seed capital fund based in Athens wasn’t expected to be much easy after all. I may also mention that the process and what was till now performed required essentially what I may call “reinventing myself”, in terms of required skills and virtues, next to experiences and expertise developed and accumulated. Needless to say, I’m really happy with the team we built and excited of the start-ups we work with; I’m looking forward to delivering expectations starting 2010.
Quotes
Scanning through my tweets for 2009, I also realized that some few of them may be of value extending the short attention span a tweet typically deserves, so I decided to list them here to those of you who may find them worth a read.
– As you grow up, work deteriorates in Mails & Meetings (M&Ms). – (tweet)
– Free is the man who spends his time according to his interests. – (tweet)
– The earlier you say no, the easier it is. – (tweet)
– An idea’s value is directly proportionate to the time you invest turning it into reality (no time -> zero value). – (tweet, more here)
– The calmness of your sleep is the more unbiased indicator of your happiness. – (tweet)
– Success is when you build something bigger than you, and you work with/ educate people better than you, not the other way around. – (tweet)
– Best things in life are humiliating; ego is such a poor common denominator. – (tweet)
– Success is always a coin flip away. The trick is to keep flipping. – (tweet)
– You learn, when you fail. You fail, when you don’t learn. Thus, you need to fail, at first. – (tweet, more here)
– When money is rare, trust is the currency that matters. – (tweet)
– Paradise shall be inbox free. – (tweet)
– Struggle turns time into enemy, habit makes time your friend. – (tweet)
– Truth, like money, saves you time; take advantage of it. – (tweet)