May 2012 Archives

NAME
                       jj -- request a dining event at Jing Jing. Jing Jing is located at 443 Emerson, Palo Alto, CA, 94301.  Tel: (650)-328-6885.  Web:  http://www.jingjinggourmet.com/2005/default.asp

SYNOPSIS
                       jj [ -d date ] [ -t time ] [ -s ] [ -r list ] [ -h ] [ -o ] [ -a id ] [ user .... ]

DESCRIPTION
                        The jj utility is an invitation for a sharing a meal at Jing Jing.  It takes each user and records them as the proposed attendees.  If no users are specified, it is an open invitation for anyone.

OPTIONS
                        -d          The date of the event, specified as DD-MM-YYYY.  If no -d argument is  given, today is the default date.

                        -t           The time of the event, as specified as HH:MM, in 24 hour time.  If no -t argument is specified, 11:55 is the default time.

                        -s            Use the Wayne standard meal specification.  The standard specification is parameterized by the number of users specified.

                        -r           list is a quoted string specifying requests for dishes in addition menu items that might be included in the -s specification.  Commas separate dish items.  Note that the -r list is a heuristic only.

                        -h           Hiptard mode.  If -h is specified, utility is applied to Mission Chinese, not Jing Jing.

                        -a            An identifier for this request.  If there is a previous identifier on the given date and time, users are appended to the jj request all ready identified.  

                        -o           Old codger mode.  Print a random famous Palo Alto restaurant story to stdout.  Example:  A Digital Equipment salesman dining at Louie's is loudly arguing with an engineering manager about the cache architecture of the KL 10. The waiter, after taking their order, says beneath his breathe, "It's a 32K two way set associative not direct mapped cache" and scurries away.  The salesman is left with mouth hanging open -- what could the waiter know?  Turns out the waiter was Jeff Rubin, a systems programmer at the Stanford AI Lab, working as a waiter in exchange for Chinese lessons.

BUGS
                         Since id in the -a argument is user generated, ids are not guaranteed to be unique.

                          Users specified are only people that have been requested to attend not those actually attending.  The -s calculation may compute an undesired result because of the difference between those invited and those that actually attend.

Serial entrepreneur, Wayne Yamamoto, is quietly embarking on a new parallel "hobby."  Investing.  While merely a side show to his day job as CEO/Executive Director at Charity Blossom, he, like many successful entrepreneurs, dabbles in early stage investing.  Today, given the availability of some Facebook (FB) shares, he astutely went "all in." But, he quickly "got out" within a few hours.  We can't confirm the exact execution of the trades, but we speculate that he was in at $38/share (the IPO price) and out at $41/share.  While this is only a 7.89% gain, on an  IRR basis, it's been noted that this is over a "GOOGLE (sic) percent a year."

To put this perspective, returns of 50%/year on a IRR basis would easily qualify a VC or Private Equity fund as a top 1% fund.  Unless you are a limited partner or insider you will probably never know the actual returns on a VC or PE fund.  But it's pretty safe to say that even "rock star" investors such as Ron Conway, Jim Breyer, or Alex Lloyd will not see this kind of return in aggregate.  While many note that FB may still have some upside, this kind of IRR will probably never be seen again.

(Aside: Given the values of transparency and quantitative measurement that VCs "sell" to their portfolio companies, why is this data about VC's themselves so carefully guarded?)

We may never know the exact numbers of the gains made by Mr. Yamamoto.  Perhaps subsequent filings such as the Facebook 10K may reveal such information.  However. he was reportedly seen filing a Form 911 at the local Porsche dealer.  We'll try to extrapolate from this to understand the magnitude of this deal.  Stay tuned.

In a short statement, Mr. Yamamoto said, "I'm not a professional investor.  My job is to build successful companies and organizations. But, some investments are just no brainers."  Indeed, Wayne is noted for being an early engineer and VP of Engineering at Broadvision (which he helped grow to a publicly traded company with a $20B+ market cap) and is the co-founder of MerchantCircle, which was sold to Reply! for $60 million last year.

Disclosure:  The author is still long on FB.