Economic Stimuli Make for Strange Breakfasts

It started with a strange email – “I told you so” and a link to an official Chinese government web site. I had to bluff my way through dim sum at Yank Sing, so I was completely lost – but when very smart old friends send you mysterious links, you pay attention.

The only English in it was – “we’re adding 250,000 users per day – how about you?”

I met my friend Kai Yunlan (normally haunting Singapore and Hong Kong) over breakfast fish and mixed fruit juice at the Rosebank. He was a Vignette customer, and since I was their training manager at the time he decided to read me the riot act over our poor Chinese language support (hey, it was 1999!). Later, we ran into each other again in London, both deciding that the breakfast buffet (complete with haggis) at the Stakis was “tai-ku.” I last saw him as we lamented both the Hilton purchase of Stakis and the proliferation of Starbucks all over London. The dot-com bust grounded both of us and we were limited to the occasional email.

So he really got my attention with his recent email – of course I wrote back begging for a translation. I didn’t know what to think when he let me know that a) the Chinese government was pumping 4 trillion yuan [about half a trillion $US] into the Chinese economy as an economic stimulus and b) he was heading to the US (including Austin) with a fat checkbook and friends interested in the best US e-commerce technology.

It will be great to see my friend and do some dinners on his expense account – guess its time to order some Garrett’s and drug him into a stupor. But the fact is that our current economic woes make US technology affordable.  Not for trade, but for acquisition.  We chuckle at our British friends when an Indian auto company buys Jaguar, but it will be something else entirely when sovereign wealth funds, Chinese conglomerates, and Indian holding companies decide that US intellectual property is the safest of investments.

Already, we find it difficult to maintain our own software.  When I take a look at my personal list of hot SaaS and Web Apps companies I am researching, they are all on the other side of the International Date Line.  Australia and New Zealand companies are becoming serious apps innovators, followed closely by Europe.  While US firms seem trapped by platform-itis, and the best US talent seems unable to create cool applications that have revenue potential, the rest of the world is buying our patents and mastering our open source.

Today (Sunday), the financial news pundits were discussing how much Larry, Moe, and Shemp . . . I mean the Big Three Auto Makers (yeah, Shemp = post spin-off Chrysler) may get in the economic stimulus package.  Having worked for one of them (Larry, uh, I mean Ford) I am incredibly underwhelmed.  This isn’t economic intervention – its wishful thinking.  Lets get the money to the Dells, the IBMs, the Oracles, and the Red Hats of the US.  Distribute enough to the old economy to help the workers, but let the Stooges go gently into that good night.  We may hate the socialists, but watch where Red China places its bet.  It will be in new technology, not old manufacturing.

Meanwhile, I’m off to discover if Whole Foods carries haggis sometime other than Rabbie Burns Day.  And some melamine for the breakfast omelets.  And of course, getting ready for:

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