Steven Loi - My thoughts, stories, and experiences.

Yahoo is supposed to launch “TechTicker,” their finance video website today. Not too surprising however, they have pushed back the launch date. Regardless, I’ll be eager to check it out. And have you checked out all the news going on surrounding finance sites? Here’s a mini recap:

• Rupert Murdock (News Corp.) buys out Dow Jones and looking to turn the Wall St. Journal to a ad-supported mode (no subscription wall!)
• AOL Finance launches redesign in beta in November when they were the third largest money and finance site.
• AOL Finance overtake Yahoo Finance as the largest money and finance site in December according to comScore’s data (does help to have blog sites like Blogging Stocks)
• CNN Money launches redesign focusing less on graphs and more on video, today.

That’s of course the previous news in the finance space:

• Google Finance (beta) launched nearly two years ago, but no one uses it. Spurs all competitors to improve their charts. (Interactive Flash Charts!)
• TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM) purchases 49% of startup Stockpickr (launched in mid 2006) in January 2007.
• TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM) purchases the rest (51%) of Stockpickr in April 2007.
• SocialPicks gets $500K from Bay Partners in angel round investment.
• SocialPicks teams up with Reuters to create new social site for them (essentially their site with a Reuter’s logo.)

What does this all mean? I hope to prove my assumption to be correct — there are still plenty of opportunity in the finance space on the web. There’s a need to improve the way we see, manage, and stay knowledgable about our investments/finance.

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This is a placeholder for me to write about my experience at Sun’s Startup Camp 2 held at The Westin in SF today, May 7th.

Updated: I haven’t gotten around to writing my personal write-up on this event yet; I’ve just been swamped. But, I did write about this event from my team’s prospective that I posted on my team’s blog here.

In the mean time, here are the notes that Jeff Clavier posted in his presentation on Startup Financing 101. Yes, very routine, but nonetheless, important to every startup.

This past week, above any recent weeks, was a difficult one. From my last post, you will see I was running on a bit of some octane as I was able to pull a long weekend last week to be able to complete my business plan for SEA for that past Monday. The rest of the week was also a hectic one:

1. Outside of the usual hours at the office, I had to make a speech for my business fraternity on Wednesday over entrepreneurship on Wednesday night at their Professional Night held at UC Davis.
2. As an vivid supporter of the student run organization now, I went to support their recruitment events Monday through Wednesday night.
3. I got a message from my former regional director asking for a favor for a fraternity brother in Newport Beach that needed paperwork from the Secretary of State in Sacramento and was very time sensitive. So I hauled over to Sac to make the errands.
4. Friday night, I started working on the Business Plan Powerpoint Presentation at 12:30am. I wasn’t too worried through the week just because I have experiences in both the plan and PPT presentations. But work is work, and I work all but two hours of the night till the 8:30am presentation time.
5. Helped a friend Saturday with their interview for this Monday.
6. Helped a friend’s exchange program friend with their resume Sunday night.
7. Replied back to some client e-mails.

And here I sit. 3:30am, typing this post. However, this post, as with any future posts, aren’t merely a laundry list of the things I did - I’d hate writing just a list of “Just completed” as much as any reader hates reading them as well. The real reason for typing a weblog is to remind myself (and as a consequence inform my small, but hopefully loyal readers) that through all the deadlines and promises that I had to fulfill, the effort and work wasn’t that difficult. I’ve been in many of the situations before so it’s nothing new. The real battles that I dealt with this week and weekend and that I will continue to deal with is:

My over seemingly strong will to do “whatever it takes to succeed at business” that sometimes affect my friends and surrounding. For instance, I continue to get the nagging comments from parents and most family members who all criticizes my decision to live in Northern California and to continue grow a small start-up company from ground up.

I believe my friends knows how I am and how I am disciplined. The latter really just eats me up sometimes. I don’t mind the doubt; it drives me to work even harder, to wake up an hour earlier, to work another hour, to think about those “What else can be done?” questions constantly to make sure we will succeed. But, it’s disheartening to hear it from the same blood-related members. Although I have far too thick of a skin to let that deter me, I’d love for one day to share my successes, even if its minor, with them. For them to realize and understand, not all 8am - 5pm means success. It does mean security and safety, but it doesn’t mean it’s the only way. For one that is on the brink of living in his seventh place in six years, one thing I doesn’t affect me is security and safety if the overall message and bigger vision is worth it. I find them hypocritical for them to constantly stress finding success and making money as a result of the success over the span of my life time, yet, when I fully embrace their words and bust my tail, they still believe its wrong.

I guess it brings to another point in which a friend brought up recently and I took notice. I am victim to and is guilty of the whole “lead them, guide them, suggest to them, but don’t force them” process. Everyone has their own creativity and everyone wants to have some sense of ownership. By having ownership and feeling a part of something, you empower them to do things sometimes beyond what they ever imagined. To give options and to lead correctly, you challenge one in the most positive way and inspire them to reach beyond their limitations.

I understand it. I fully embrace it. I breathe it. And while I’ll continue to strive hard to not only find success and proving to my doubters, I say it with a smile. I smile when walking this difficult route because there are so many more intangibles that you learn about one self on top of what you learn as an entrepreneur than you can ever learn walking the normal/safe route.

A quote I’ll leave you with is one I used for my speech that is by Stephen Covey, who wrote the book The 8th Habit:

“Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.”

I live it.