Transcript Things they should taught me at MIT

A few of the things that they
forgot to teach me at MIT
…that I wished I had known about
sooner...
For example…the origin of
“Buffalo Wings”
Q: How many of you have wondered:
“Why don’t Buffalos fly?”
A: Their wings are clipped and sold by
restaurants as appetizers!
Would you believe they were created at The
Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY???
How this talk came about...
• Stuart: “How about an Internet talk?”
• Me: “How about a talk on charity?”
• Stuart: “So how about a talk that people
would want to come to?”
Agenda
• Your money
– How to make it, how to keep it, how to give it
away
•
•
•
•
Your time
Your business
Your health
Your family
– How to get the kids to do what you want
Details
• On my website
• Type
– Steve Kirsch
into www.go.com
YOUR MONEY
Best “thumbs up” investment
• EV1
• 42 mi range; 3 hr recharge; zero
maintenance
• Faster than my NSX (0 to 30mph)
• 180 mph (in first gear)
• Very effective donation to our environment
• Anyone interested in helping change the
laws for ZEVs in HOV in CA
How to consistently get a 60%
average annual return in the stock
market
Buy and hold
10 stocks max
Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Oracle, AOL,
Sun, Intel, ...
What your stockbroker doesn’t
want you to know: why trading
stocks may be riskier than
gambling in Las Vegas
•Spreads
+
•Stocks are completely unpredictable
over the short term
= YOU LOSE
Company announces great
earnings (above expectations) but
its stock tanks. Why?
“Who the hell knows?”
• Market explanations are done AFTER the
fact
The two most important facts
about the stock market
• The market is always right
• Stocks go up when demand exceeds supply
Why mechanical trading systems
don’t work
Because I’ve lost money in every
proven, tested system I’ve tried
How Steve personally made over
$200 million in a year
1) Infoseek went from 5 to 100 in
little over a year
2) Having 6M shares didn’t hurt
either
How to buy real estate for no
money down
Anyone seen those Carleton Sheets
infomercials (14 yrs on TV!)?
Do you think he’s doing that to help
you get rich or him?
Carleton Sheets, Tom Vu, Dave
Del Dotto
• Few houses that you can buy with no
money down. Many areas have zero.
• Assumable loan programs are disappearing.
• Buying houses and sticking renters in them
is really hard work and can be dangerous.
Wait until the first time you have a trashed
house without any money coming in to pay
the rent.
Get rich quick…
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Outdated techniques
No personal consultations without big $$
Risk: declining prop values, tenants leave
Complex
Can’t get a loan from the bank
Not enough detail on preparing offers
Course is meant to appeal to uneducated
with little money
Carleton Sheets
• He doesn’t tell you: The real money is in the
live seminars! The tapes are just a selling
tool.
• Think of 100 people in a room for two days
that paid $3,000 each.
• $150,000 a day is more than you can make
in real estate
Where are they today?
•
•
•
•
President of Allen Club in Atlanta: Jail
Charles Givens: dead
Tom Vu: 20/20
Dave Del Dotto: selling long distance cards
A better charity alternative to
private foundations or donoradvised funds
Supporting organization to a
community foundation
$1M and up
Why it is better to donate to
charity sooner than later
• No tax advantages to
giving after you are
dead
• No personal
satisfaction to giving
after you are dead
• Giving can benefit
yourself or your
family
deviated septum
Presbyopia
hair loss
Snoring
Lactose intolerance
psoriasis
receding gums
near sighted
torn ACL
type I diabetes
macular degeneration
ringing in my ears
Charitable investments that could
save the world
• Asteroid identification
• Nuclear disarmament
How to donate to charities when
your stock is locked up
• You can typically donate the stock, but the
charity can’t sell it
• Charity can short the stock
• Allows you to give charity lots more money
AND gives you a bigger writeoff
• Typically done through a community
foundation
How to give intelligently
•
•
•
•
Figure out the areas important to you
20 different criteria
Fund people, rather than projects
See my website for details ...
How to legally avoid paying
capital gains taxes forever
Always sell at a loss
Donate the stock
Die
A complicated technique...
How to precisely value Internet
companies
• Finally…for the first time...the secret
formula revealed…
• Say someone asks:
“Is Yahoo overvalued?”
• You say...
Well… If you have to ask, you
just don’t get it, do you?
Some of my other really cool
toys
• Panasonic digital phone
system + FLASH
voicemail/attendant
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking
Mobile
• Harman/Kardon Take
Control
• Covad DSL
• Tek 840/DP printer
• Runco rear projection TV
• Miele washer/dryer
•
•
•
•
•
Vantage lighting control
Audio Ease Monaco
Wolf FlashBake
BlackoutBuster
Mouse Systems optical
mouse
• Dual Pentium NT system
with 4 OSes
• SGI 1600SW flat panel
• Sony DCR PC-1
YOUR TIME
A tour of the high roller villas at
the Bellagio: how the “other half”
live
Fastest way to search the web
• http://express.infoseek.com
• Best way to index your site:
Ultraseek server
http://software.infoseek.com
YOUR BUSINESS
Do you have what it takes to start
a company??
• Q: Why are most startup companies started
by mediocre people?
• A: The really smart ones know better!
• So if you rely on Dogbert’s Management
Handbook for advice, you probably qualify
How to recruit really good people
• Take your time
• Network
• Advertise in places where great people NOT
looking for jobs would be
–
–
–
–
Java Search Engine
Big Fast Index (Python, C)
Personal assistant
Managing director for my charitable foundation
How to tie a tie
• What’s the right length?
• How many loop around your neck insideout?
Two courses everyone should
take after they graduate from
college
• Presentation skills
• Negotiation skills
• Survey…how many have taken these?
How to get your web page to the
top of the search results page
Pray
The single biggest mistake you
can make when starting or
running a company and how to
avoid it
Hiring the wrong CEO
How Steve made $10 million for
his second startup company as a
result of attending a 4 hour free
course taught at a hotel
Negotiation skills
How to sell $30 worth of
lemonade in only 20 minutes on
the Stanford campus and how it
relates to commerce on the
Internet
The most important skill for
success in the real world isn’t
taught at MIT, but that’s starting
to change
Interpersonal skills
How to get higher status frequent
flyer privileges even when you
don’t have the miles to support it
Ask!
YOUR HEALTH
Your hair
• Propecia
Medical collaboration
• Myth: all these medical researchers help
one another and build upon each other’s
work
• Reality:
– Highly competitive
– People out to discredit others and promote their
own ideas
– Collaboration is interdisciplinary or
university/commercial
How to avoid being a casualty of
our medical system and receive
premium, high quality medical
care
Ask!
Befriend a doctor
Research; find the best
You spend a third of your life in
bed: what you need to know
about sleep
•Survey: How many people average …
hours/night?
•James Maas, “Power Sleep”
•8 hours, most important is at the end
•Chocolate
•dairy products and lactose intolerance can
make your night miserable
This means that…
• Most students are learning while they are
impaired
• They don’t know it because it is unlikely
they would have learned it anywhere
• Having Maas give his entertaining 1 hour
talk on sleep on sleep at MIT is a simple act
that could make a substantial impact on the
effectiveness of an MIT education
How cancer and AIDS may
someday save your life
Cancer cells don’t age and divide
fast… immortality?
AIDS isn’t attacked by the immune
system so can be useful in gene
therapy
A charitable contribution to
research that may save millions
of lives, win the Nobel prize, and
make millions of dollars to boot.
Targesome
Agreed to donate all profits to charity
Ironic: IRS won’t let me donate
money to this...
Protecting your jewels…
NSV vs. regular vasectomy
How to save your marriage…
Somnoplasty vs. LAUP
YOUR FAMILY
My best personal investment (it
was $15,000 and it’s more than
paid for itself already)
Kodak DCS-520 digital camera
Check out the sample on my web
page
How to get your kids to always
finish their meals and go to bed
on time
I’d love to explain this, but I’m out of
time...
My personal notes
• I’m on the board of 6 non profits if you
count Infoseek
• Revenue and daily pageviews are same
• how many came for “how to get your kid to
do ..” this? I’ll save it for last.