Sakura Cherry Blossoms free essay sample

Transcendentalism and Romanticism free essay sample

All through time there have been numerous scholarly developments, a large number of which become overlooked after some time. Anyway they ought not be overlooked in light of the fact that they have molded American writing into what it is today. Two of the more significant abstract developments of the late eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century are introspective philosophy and sentimentalism. Introspective philosophy was an abstract development in the primary portion of the nineteenth century. Visionaries were impacted by sentimentalism, particularly such parts of self assessment, the festival of independence, and the investigating the marvels of nature and of mankind. As indicated by them, satisfying the quest for information came when one increased an attention to magnificence and truth, and spoke with nature to discover association with the ? Over-Soul? , a term utilized by Emerson instead of God. At the point when this happened, one was rinsed of materialistic objectives, and was left with a feeling of confidence and immaculateness. Pioneers of this development incorporate Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, William Ellery Channing, and Henry David Thoreau. We will compose a custom exposition test on Introspective philosophy and Romanticism or then again any comparative subject explicitly for you Don't WasteYour Time Recruit WRITER Just 13.90/page These individuals were all visionaries. Visionaries can be viewed as an age of accomplished individuals who lived in the decades prior to the American Civil War. (Lewis, ? What is Transcendentalism ) Transcendentalists intentionally approached making writing, expositions, books, theory, verse, and other composing that was plainly not the same as anything from England, France, Germany, or some other European Nation. The idea of introspective philosophy is unmistakably communicated in the exposition Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. His paper Nature recounts how one can pick up knowledge and profound purifying essentially from encountering nature. Emerson recounts how in the forested areas is unending youth and in the forested areas we come back to reason and confidence. These lines show the entire idea of introspective philosophy. In the accompanying lines, Emerson comments: Standing on the uncovered ground-my head washed by the gay air and elevated into interminable space-all mean narcissism disappears. I become a straightforward eyeball: I am nothing; I see every one of; the flows of the Universal Being circle through me; I am part or package of God. (Emerson, ? Nature? ) These lines show the visionary elief that virtue and information can be acquired from an association with and comprehension of nature. Emerson additionally relates the idea of introspective philosophy to human life in his paper, Self-Reliance. In this article, Emerson discusses another piece of introspective philosophy, the issue of confidence. He considers humanity to be to some degree a defeatist and that individuals never express their actual selves. Emerson asserts that people are hesitant to fizzle and regardless of what achievement may come to them, they will never be cheerful, they generally need more. He communicates visionary beliefs by saying that a genuine individual would be a non-traditionalist. Emerson articulates this confidence in the accompanying lines: There is a period in each man? s training when he shows up at the conviction that jealousy is numbness; that impersonation is self destruction; that he should take himself for better, for more terrible, as his bit, no part of feeding corn can come to him yet through his work. These words essentially summarize the possibility of introspective philosophy, that one must praise the person so as to get himself one with the universe. Another critical commitment to the possibility of introspective philosophy was by the creator Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau lived in a similar home as Emerson. His generally regarded and delighted in work was the story, Walden. In Walden, Thoreau clarifies why he picked the forested areas: I went to the forested areas since I wished to live intentionally, to front just the fundamental unavoidable issues facing everyone, and check whether I was unable to realize what it needed to educate, and not, when I came to pass on, find that I had not lived. I didn't wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to rehearse renunciation, except if it was very vital. Thoreau decided to live in disengagement since he accepted isolation was the best buddy so as to know one? s genuine self. In the paper, he felt that humanity was excessively up to speed in material belongings. Thoreau gave introspective philosophy three key thoughts, independence, information on nature, and the removal of material possessions. Introspective philosophy was one of the most significant developments of the nineteenth century. This development took into consideration one to comprehend the significance of getting familiar with oneself. In the event that an individual could associate their individual soul ith the universe, they could satisfy their potential throughout everyday life. Sentimentalism is a creative and scholarly development that began in the late eighteenth century and focused on forceful feeling, creative mind, opportunity from old style rightness in fine arts, and defiance to social shows. Sentimentalism likewise is a mentality or scholarly direction that described numerous works of writing, painting, music, design, analysis, and historiography in Western development over a period from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth century. Sentimentalism can be viewed as a dismissal of the statutes of request, quiet, congruity, equalization, glorification, and late eighteenth century Neoclassicism. (WebMuseum: Romanticism) It was additionally somewhat a response against the Enlightenment and against eighteenth century realism and physical realism. Sentimentalism underlined the individual, the abstract, the unreasonable, the inventive, the individual, the unconstrained, the enthusiastic, the visionary, and the supernatural. Among the trademark perspectives of Romanticism were the accompanying: an extended energy about the wonders of nature; a general worship of feeling over explanation and of the faculties over insight; a turning in upon oneself and an elevated assessment of human character and its temperaments and mental possibilities; a distraction with the virtuoso, the saint, and the outstanding figure by and large, and an attention on his interests and inward battles; another perspective on the craftsman as an especially singular maker, whose inventive soul is a higher priority than exacting adherence to formal principles and conventional systems; an accentuation upon creative mind as a portal to extraordinary experience and profound truth; a fanatical enthusiasm for society culture, national and ethnic social beginnings, and the medieval time; and an inclination for the fascinating, the remote, the secretive, the strange, the mysterious, the massive, the ailing, and even the sinister. (WebMuseum: Romanticism) A portion of the creators of this development incorporate Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried von Herder, and Justus Moser. Rousseau built up the possibility of the individual and advocated the opportunity of the human soul. One of his most well known expressions were ? I felt before I thought?. Goethe, Herder, and Moser cooperated on a gathering of papers entitled Von deutscher Art und Kunst. In this work the creators commended the sentimental soul as showed in German Folk melodies, Gothic engineering, and the plays of William Shakespeare. Goethe needed to mimic Shakespeare? free-form in hit Gotz von Berlichingen, a chronicled dramatization about a sixteenth century burglar night. This play legitimized rebel against political position. One of the incredible compelling archives of sentimentalism was Goethe? s Sorrows of Young Werther. This work acclaims assessment, even to the degree of defending ending it all because of adoration. These were only a portion of the numerous works that portrayed the goals of Romanticism. Without the supernatural and sentimentalism developments American writing would not be what it is today. These developments have molded the way today? s writers approach composing. Additionally these developments have took into consideration one to grow their brain to new thoughts and better approaches for moving toward life.

Probability and Genetics Essay -- Mathmatics Math Papers

Likelihood and Genetics Likelihood hypothesis is the investigation of the probability of an event of arbitrary occasions so as to foresee future practices of a framework (2). The standards of likelihood are broadly utilized. In hereditary qualities, for instance, likelihood is utilized to evaluate the probability of quality conveyance starting with one age then onto the next. In business, insurance agencies utilize the standards of likelihood to decide chance gatherings. Likelihood is firmly identified with insights since vulnerability consistently exists when factual expectations are being made. A number somewhere in the range of 0 and 1 speaks to the likelihood of a result (1). The likelihood of an outlandish occasion is 0. Where as the likelihood of something that is sure to happen is 1. The hypothesis of likelihood is perceived as being created by Blaise Pascal with assistance from his companion Pierre de Fermat. Blaise Pascal was conceived at Clermont, France on June 19, in 1623. He was the third offspring of Etienne Pascal, and his lone child. Blaise was just 3 when his mom passed on (3). In 1631, his family moved to Paris to carry on the training of Blaise, who had just shown outstanding capacity. Pascal was home instructed, and to guarantee that he was not exhausted, his dad concluded that his investigations would just include the dialects, and ought exclude any science. At twelve years old, Pascal showed to his mentor an enthusiasm for geometry. He was animated by the subject, and surrendered his recess and decided to contemplate geometry. In half a month, he found the numerous properties of geometric figures, specifically, that the total of the heavenly attendants of a triangle equals180 degrees. Dazzled by Pascal’s show, his dad gave him a duplicate of Euclid's Elements, which Pascal read and soon mama... ...volve cash. By playing the chances right, somebody could win huge, either at a card table or on Wall Street. Likelihood makes irregular occasions look like entirely unsurprising ones. Work Cited 1. Campbell, Neil, Jane Reece, Lawerence Mitchell. Science fifth release. Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999 2.Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles, Probability. http://www.cut-the-knot.com/probability.html.( 12/5/99) 3. Pascal. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pascal.html. (12/5/99) 4. A Short History of Probability. From Calculus, Volume II by Tom M. Apostol (second release, John Wiley and Sons, 1969 ) On line: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_winter/Topics/detail meas/probHist.html. (12/5/99) 5.Wilkins, D. R. Blaise Pascal (1623 †1662) http://www.maths.tcd.ie/bar/HistMath/People/Pascal/RouseBall/RB_Pascal.html. (12/5/99)

History of the United States Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

History of the United States - Essay Example Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction offered exculpation to southern whites who made a vow of devotion to the U.S. what's more, acknowledged the abrogation of servitude. Essentially, the Reconstruction time frame from 1865 to 1877 saw threats between the North and South and President Andrew Johnson was killed over the issue of reproduction arrangement. In any case, Radical Republicans in Congress needed to rebuff the South for withdrawing from the Union. These two groups contended over Reconstruction approaches and made further malevolence between the North and South. Prejudice in the South likewise kept the recently liberated slaves from accomplishing fairness in the political, financial, and social fields of American life. (United States History to 1877) Therefore, Reconstruction in the United States which endeavored to offer importance to the opportunity that the previous slaves had accomplished was a long procedure which endured from 1865 to 1877 and this paper ma kes a significant investigation of the recreation approaches of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and the Radical Republicans. Abraham Lincoln made an essential advance towards Reconstruction in the United States when he kept up that the liberated slaves in the country ought to be conceded the privileges of the American residents as opposed to being encouraged to leave the nation. The remaking procedure of President Lincoln picked up the help of his devoted and recreated Unionists and this was a basic factor in the achievement of his approaches. As per the reproduction procedure of President Lincoln, the national government applied an exceptional measure of capacity to free the balms and assurance their equivalent rights as free residents. That is the reason the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution contained conditions that 'Congress will have capacity' to authorize these arrangements for freedom and equivalent rights. (Reconstruction, 1863-1877) Significantly, Lincoln's remaking strategy is best shown by the acclaimed expression in his Second Inaugural Address: 'With vindicti veness toward none, with foundation for all' and he couldn't finish the procedure of recreation because of his death in April 1865. After the demise of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was raised to the Presidency of the United States and he was the main U.S. Representative from the South not to leave in 1861. The reproduction strategies of Andrew Johnson denoted the conventional finishing of Reconstruction. Andrew Johnson's recreation strategies mirrored his firm faith in states' privileges, his overwhelming restriction of dark testimonial, and the extraordinary contempt of the pre-war Southern ranch gentry. Despite the fact that the official explanation behind the arraignment of Andrew Johnson was that he had damaged the Tenure of Office Act, the genuine explanation was his obstinate resistance of Congress on recreation. As per Johnson's remaking approaches, the states needed to swear loyalty to the Union and sanction the thirteenth amendment so as to reappear the Union. He was happy to acquit high-positioning Confederate officials and supported states' privileges on issues, for example, giving African Americans the opt ion to cast a ballot. He didn't bolster the Freedman's Bureau and adopted a mollifying strategy. (US History to 1877) In correlation, the remaking approaches of the Radical Republicans were against those of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew

Satago

Satago Satago is a Software as a Service tool for crowd-sourced payment behavior (redit control) founded in 2012. The company is headquartered in London.Steven Renwick, Co-Founder and CEO of Satago, shares his insights on starting the company.He covers topics such as: (1) Funding the business via crowdfunding and Angelist (2) Finding a co-founder (3) How Satagos business mode works (4) His corporate and marketing strategy.If you enjoy it, please share the video with your friends.Martin: Hi. Today we are at Satago, an interesting start-up, and next to me is Steven. Steven who are you and what do you do?Steven: So, my name is Steven Renwick. I’m the founder of Satago and Satago is a platform that automates credit control for small businesses and freelancers to help them get paid faster.Martin: Okay, and how did you come up with this idea?Steven: Well, it’s an idea I had for years and my motivation for starting it is that I got a family business back home in Scotland in the construction se ctor and the construction sector is notorious for late payments. So it’s something I grew up with and I have always had this desire to try and build something to help small businesses like my family business get on top of their late payers.Martin: Okay and what did you do before you started this Satago Company?Steven: Well, my background is very eclectic. Immediately before Satago, I was working for Rocket Internet in London and Berlin, launching E-commerce companies around the world and before that, I did an MBA at Oxford University and before that, I was actually a research scientists. So I did a PHD in genetics many years ago and I worked in the pharmaceutical sector. Martin: Interesting, okay. Briefly describe how the business model in Satago works.Steven: Well its quite simple, its software-as-a-service (SaaS), so companies pay monthly to use Satago to automate their credit control. The price basically depends on the size of the company and because we integrate directly with the accounting software, it depends what type of accounting software they use. Theres a free level if you’re using that, a very low level and also we work with credit management agencies. Satago effectively becomes CRM for them and they use it with their own clients.Martin: What is the current status of your company, are you already launched or are you, I don’t know making millions and trillions of dollars, instead?Steven: No millions yet, we are very, very early stage and we basically announced our first kind of major round last week. The platform’s been open for a few months but really kind of launched it probably last week, for the first time.Martin: Okay, great. Tell us more; what are your plans for customer acquisition? What are the target of customer of your platform and how do you plan to target them? Maybe what are the proposed or hypothesized most efficient marketing channels?Steven: That’s tough, that’s something we’ve got to find out. In theory any company or freelancer is a potential user for Satago and now obviously that’s a pretty big market, we are only targeting UK to start off with.Martin: Okay.Steven: And obviously that’s two million SME’s, plus two million freelancers, we kind of target those. Now because we act as this kind of CRM for credit managers, also for accountants to help them manage their own customer’s credit control, our proposed sales model is that we actually target the credit management agencies and the accountants, so we become a tool for them to help them work with their customers and that gives us a much smaller subset of people we can target and then each one of those can introduce us to dozens or hundreds of their own clients to Satago.Martin: So you target the people and who are advising their clients? Steven: Yeah.Martin: Are you also targeting like software, like enterprise resource management systems like SAP for SME companies to make a plugin or something like that?Steven: We are not only targetin g SAP, people who use SAP because we are effectively a kind of SAP type product for the SME that don’t really use it and so in that respect, the more typical partner for us is the accounting companies. So the likes of FreeAgent or Sage or CashFlow, they all build their cloud accounting with APIs, so people like us can build third-party applications. They then have app stores where they promote these applications. So they are the sort of partners that are good for us, because they want to build their eco-systems as much as possible by having add-ons and we want to get access to their users, so if you go to Free Agent or Sage just now, you will see we’re in their app store and their teams will promote us. If one of their user says what do you have on credit control? They can say, well we’ve got this within Sage, but we’ve also got an easy integration with Satago, which is one of our partners. Martin: Understood. Let’s talk briefly about corporate strategy. How do you perceiv e or what is your plan of attack to create a competitive advantage and who do you perceive your main competitors and why do you think you can out- compete with them?Steven: Well, perhaps the main competitors are the accounting platforms themselves. Theyve always got a bit of basic credit control functionality built into them, but were essentially taking that to the next level, so for the accounting firms themselves it is a difficult enough task to build good accounting software and they concentrate on that. That obviously gave us the advantage. We can concentrate on just doing the credit control, and doing it better than they can do already. I mean long-term, I see the market. I see there is a gap in the market for a product like this, youve got what the accounting software can do already, youve got your ERP-level software, you don’t really have anything in the middle for SMEs. And I see Satago as being a bit like Zendesk for credit management. Zendesk came in when there wasnt rea lly good help desk software out there and they kind of owned that market, so now if you want to build help desk into your product, your first choice is probably going to be Zendesk and that’s what we use as well.Martin: The difference from my perspective for Zendesk, you have standard alone product that you can integrate and let’s say credit control it’s more kind of like a feature or add-on functionality to a typical accounting software that I can also use, that’s why if you’re competing with a typical accounting software, what happens if they would add just similar plugin like that?Steven: It’s â€" I wouldn’t say, no because you’re thinking about credit control maybe too simply, I mean credit control is about customer relation management, it’s not just a plug-in. So within the companies, you will have your accounting department but you will also have your credit control department.Steven: And that’s a separate department. We are building for those people in tho se departments, that does make it something unique from the rest of the basic accounting tools. Martin: Okay, that was good. You have a special story that you told me about you have this interest in sort of fundraising. Can you tell us a little more about that?Steven: Yes, so I think we are very much the new model of fundraising. We were pretty much the first company in the UK to raise crowd equity funding and we did that through Seedrs, so that was late 2012, I raised 30,000 pounds from 60 investors, that took about 10 days, it was quite amazing. And I did that as a solo founder. I used that money to build the MVP for Satago just to kind of prove the concept, prove that we will get some interest and that did quite well. It got me into the final at Seed CampMartin: Yeah.Steven: And I was on my own there and everyone said we like the product, we like what you are doing, we like the market, etc. etc. But we are not going to invest in the solo non-technical founder.Martin: Yeah.Steven: I then spend the next 5 months solidly looking for a co-founder because it’s not easy finding a technical guy who would want to join you; it’s almost a cliché, business guys with an MBA looking for a technical guy to just build the product.Martin: Yeah.Steven: But I was very much looking for a partner, not someone to work for me, someone to work with me. And I was very lucky in the end, I found a guy call Adam who was at Palantir Technology, which is very well known kind of, or it is often describes as the biggest Silicon Valley company you wouldn’t have heard of. But if you have heard of it, you will know it is kind of at the same level as Google and LinkedIn and stuff like that. So he joined me as co-founder, we got into Seed Camp final week again and this time we got into Seed Camp, so I have done the Seeds, I have found co-founder and now we are at Seed Camp, okay keep ticking the boxes. And what happened then was that we very quickly got some funding committed by BDMI w hich is a VC arm of Bertelsmann and that kind of gave us the cornerstone of the round. And I started to do the fundraising as normal, pitching as many people as I could and it did quite well, we were aiming for 400,000 pounds. We very quickly got over a quarter of that committed but then it kind of stalled a little bit until we got featured on Angelist. Angelist is a very popular angel investor network from the US just coming to Europe and we got featured on Angelist.I woke up; I saw a tweet saying, “Oh, Satago is being featured on Angelist, okay that’s nice.” Looked to my email, had about 20 messages from investors, I then was getting phone calls from investors who didn’t want to miss out on their own and I had some very famous US firms from Silicon Valley emailing me and asking to get my pitch and within about 3 hours, I had an extra 200,000 pounds committed and it very quickly wrapped up after that. So we actually went from 400,000 to 600,000. 600,000 was the upper limit; I think in total commitments we probably had way over 700,000 possibly 900,000 but it was going silly, we didn’t need that much money, we’d just dilute ourselves too much.So yeah, we done, we done Seedrs, we done Seed Camp and now we have been featured on Angelist, and had the full round, so it was definitely not easy but it was a very interesting experience. Martin: Did you do something in order to be featured on Angelist or is it just by luck?Steven: No, it’s not luck. I mean one of the guys that heads up Angelist in Europe, Philipp Moehring knew Satago very well because he was previously at Seed Camp, so he knew us, he knew the company well, he knew the stage we were at, it was kind of pretty much â€" maybe we were on the early side but we’d already got a quarter of the money committed, so we weren’t just a random an idea. So we worked out with the timing and yeah, he decided to feature us, I didn’t actually see the email, until after months after it has been sent ou t. I thought we were just going to be one name on a list and a big email, actually it was an email entirely about Satago, which I think everybody on Angelist who’d said they were interested in FinTech in Europe, must have received this email.Martin: Not bad.Steven: Not bad.Martin: One part that we do is we try to teach our readers about tips from leading entrepreneurs and you have two interests in your experience that you made, one of them was crowdfunding and the other one was finding a co-founder. And first I would like to understand how if you have an idea and would like to put it on crowdfunding; can you make sure you get like say 30, 50K?Steven: Yeah, so I think you’ve got two ways of hitting your target, and all the platforms works in the same model, it’s like Kickstarter, if you don’t raise your target, everyone gets their money back. So you’ve got two options, either you’ve got your product which is already out there to some degree and therefore you have a crowd of people that are using it, they like it, you can say to a 1000 people, “hey, we are raising money” and they will kind of seed it for you. Or you mange to find first the kind of the cornerstone money. You will find that you can speak privately to a few people who said, “Yeah, okay I like that,” 2,000 pounds, 1,000 pounds, 5,000 pounds, not massive amounts in terms of real angel investing but enough to make your listing standout. Because according to Seedrs, if you get above 30% funding, most of them will close. It’s about getting the early traction.Martin: Okay.Steven: And you have to â€" it’s not just a case of listing on there and good things will happen, actually that’s what happened to me. I was lucky, I basically was on there at Seedrs launch, so it was a rising tide and I was on the ship, so I got the random crowd investing.Some people I knew put money in, but not an awful lot, yeah that’s the two ways, you speak to people, you get them to commit the cornersto ne money or you have the community which you think will probably invest. Martin: Will you get a high ranking if you have let’s say 30% of minimum total investment?Steven: Yeah, you will get more predominantly featured, because if you just â€" there is like a dozen or two dozen campaigns getting funded on there at any one time. I mean you go in there, you’re instantly drawn to the ones that, I think it sorts them by the most percentage funding, and you’re always drawn to the ones which are doing well, because you follow the crowd, it is herd mentality. It was the same with our investment round, like I said, it plateau-d a little bit but once we got to 70 or 80% invested, I was turning investors away on the phone. It was the same with Seedrs, “I got obsessed with pressing refresh and you see someone put 10 pounds in this and I said wow. Some strange person just put 10 pounds into my company and then one time I refreshed it and someone put 5,000 pounds and I was like “Whoo” , somebody puts 5,000 pounds into my business.It kind of hit that 30% and then kind of travelled steadily, steadily, steadily until about 70% and then everyone gets the fear of missing out and then boom! In like 6 hours it’s done.Martin: Okay, was this kind of equity investment or was it a grant? Steven: Yes, so we gave away 14% equity for 30,000 which on the face of it, it’s quite cheap but at the same time, Satago then was an idea in my head.Martin: Yeah.Steven: A Power Point and a video of me sitting in my kitchen floor describing what Satago is, so I didn’t have justification to have a valuation much higher than that.Martin: True, the same time you find the co-founder, what advise can you give first time entrepreneurs who are maybe not technical, to find a technical co-founder.Steven: So I’ve got a lot of people asking me that, because I have written a couple of blog posts about it which did quite well, so it’s worth looking at my blog, if you can find it. But I can on ly say what worked for me and you’ve got to have unfair advantages, and I had several things which made me stand out beyond the crowd. You could argue, some of them weren’t necessarily good things, but they worked. I had the MBA, I had worked for Rocket Internet and I had raised money on Seedrs, I had built a prototype and I had gotten to the final of Seed Camp. So the way I actually found Adam was on a start-up job board, WorkInStartups.com and my title on the job advertisement was Seed Camp finalists looking for technical co-founder.So that’s an immediate filter, is that they can look at that and say well if it’s good enough for Seed Camp, to at least be a finalist, it’s not just some random business guy with his stupid idea for some social network thing. So you need to differentiate, you need to prove you can do things even when you’re on your own. So even though I’m not a developer, I was able to build a prototype using prototyping wire framing software called HotG loo. Now HotGloo is made for building wire frames, if you bother investigating enough, you can actually make a pretty interactive wire frame and you can build your super MVP there.Martin: Yeah.Steven: Now if you can do those things and prove you’re more than just the guy who goes, “hey I’ve got an idea,” everything you can do, just takes you a step beyond. If you can do that, if you can raise a little bit of money on Seedrs, enough to kind of build MVP, even if it’s just like the designs, not even the actual working model and anything you can do to take you beyond the guy with the idea makes you more attractive and then after that, it’s just about using your networks as much as possible. So when I was reaching out through LinkedIn, I was speaking to friends, I was going to any events I could, the problem is when you ask other technical people if they know anybody that would join a start-up, they would pretty much say to you, yeah you’re about the third person to ask me that this month.So there is no getting around supply and demand. Good technical people who could be co-founder level are in short supply. Martin: And the MVP that you built before you met your co-founder, was it only like wire frames or did you also had some back-end?Steven: No, because the MVP that I built before I met Adam was fully functioning, because I’d raised the money on Seedrs already, I had been working on it about for 8 months already and the first design was done the back-end worked, it was a different model because we pivoted a little bit but it worked properly, you can go in there and you can use it and thatsMartin: Did you hire some coders?Steven: Yeah, so I was very lucky and I basically used a contract developer â€" a contract development agency. Now, you hear a lot of horror stories about the business guy that uses an outsourced contract development agency. I was lucky that the guys that I picked had already built an e-commerce company website for a friend of m ine which had been very successful. It’s one of the biggest online second-hand book-sellers in North America, so I trusted that they would be good and yeah, it sorted out very well. Martin: Awesome, good. Thank you very much Steven for your time and maybe next time we can visit Satago.

International Investment And The Risks Example For Free - Free Essay Example

In its 2007, August 13 issue Business Week magazine called it the Bonfire of the Builders. Signalling what was already becoming the cause of a major financial crisis in the global markets. After the dot com bubble burst in the 2001 the U.S. was seen by many analysts as going through one of its worst periods since the stock market crash in 1987. However the U.S housing market started a period of unprecedented growth, brought in part due to the lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve which brought the rates down 11 times i.e. from 6.5% to 1.75% (Open Market operations, 2010). However, the boom started showing signs of warning towards the end of the year 2005. Rates remained flat much of the next year and towards the beginning of the year 2007 a downturn in the housing started. What should have been only a downturn in the housing market turned into a major global credit crunch and resulted in a run on a British bank (Northern Rock).This is not to say that the American financial institutions were any better off. Citi Group reported a 57% fall in its third quarter earnings that year primarily because of the sub-prime mortgage losses (USA Today, 2007). So what was the reason that this housing slump transformed it self into a global credit crunch? The Financial Times (2007) in its special report on the global credit squeeze blames the poor quality of lending by financial institutions in the U.S. primarily banks and mortgage providers gave loans to people with dubious credit historys and sold these mortgages as bonds to Wall Street institutions which in turn bought these mortgage backed by securities. This encouraged pension funds, hedge funds and other institutional investors to buy them. Things looked good until some of the mortgage borrowers found it increasingly difficult to meet their obligations and rates of default increased. Many of those who defaulted on their loans were sub-prime borrowers, people who had shaky credit histories. As the value of these assets began to come down hedge funds began to sell assets of all types not only those linked with mortgages as they found it increasing difficult to get finance from Wall Street banks who were themselves caught in the mortgage mes s. Once banks stopped lending to other institutions a liquidity crisis occurred. This crisis was became known as the Global Credit Crunch, the heat of which was felt across the globe and markets across the world from Beijing to Bombay and Sao Paulo to Singapore. Causes for the crisis Housing bubble and subprime lending: Between 1997 and 2006 the real estate prices appreciated and coupled with low interest rates borrowers were able to obtain housing loans easily. Banks in the anticipation of prices to rise further began to give easy credit to borrowers not realising the positional debt accumulation. As the prices of properties began to decline in second half of 2008 the borrowers ability to repay reduced. The graph below shows the significant increase in foreclosure activity signifying the rising inability of borrowers to pay during the various period of the crisis. Financial Innovations: This refers to the development of financial products designed particularly to achieve the client objectives i.e. to obtain easy financial assistance. These include the Mortgage based securities (MBS) and a form of credit insurance called credit default swaps (CDS). The usage of such instruments was increasing drastically during the years leading towards the crisis. As Warren Buffet put it these weapons of mass destruction were an agreement between two parties and government did not have any control over them. As a result there was no mechanism of reporting. These CDS were the reason why one of the biggest insurance companies, AIG, required a bail out from US taxpayers after it defaulted on $14 billion of credit default swaps it had made to investment banks, insurance companies and many other entities (Financial instruments responsible for Global Financial Crisis, 2009). Ineffective risk measures: In a speech in June 2009, U.S. President Barrack Obama said that culture of irresponsibility was a major cause of the crisis. A key reason for the crisis was also the insufficient capacity of financial institutions to fulfil their commitments. It is important for the sellers of risk to have capital enough to meet their bets. This applied to both consumers and financial institutions, as consumers were unable to repay their loans while the institutions were i ncapable of feeding their credit needs. Incorrect assessment of risk cost dented the financial system. Shadow Banking System: These were non institutional banks which aided the institutional banks to invest their money into more profitable ventures .To name a few, Lehman and Bear Stearns were such institutions. Though this system was assumed to do a better job by reducing risk and spreading investments, the after math of the mortgage crisis didnt quite aid the objective (Krugman, 2009, p158). Panic and fear amongst the people resulted in refraining them to participate in the auctions and increased the default rate in mortgage loans which lead to the global financial crisis. These shadow bankers were not under the governmental control and traded short term funds for long term riskier funds. However during the crisis they had to let go of the long term assets as depressing rates due to their vulnerability. Paul Krugman, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Economics, described the run on the shadow banking system as the core of what happened to cause the crisis. He referred to this lack of controls as malign neglect and argued that regulation should have been imposed on all banking-like activity. Rise in prices: The increase in commodity prices also was one reason of the recession as it diverted the expenditure of consumers in an importing country. For instance if the prices of fuel went up in US, the economy of the fuel importing country, in this case US would decline which in turn would enhance the economy of the oil exporting country (Light Crude Oil, 2010). There was a significant increase in the prices of metals and minerals which also contributed to the credit crunch (Taylor, 2009). Poor Corporate Governance: The financial crisis can also be attributed to the poor corporate governance incompatible executive remuneration structures. The lack of transparency in procedures of trading, handling financial instruments, recording and presenting financial repor ts also caused the market failure. Lax in regulations and legislations for the product innovations also caused a detrimental effect on the economy (Zandi, 2009). Ineffective economic forecasting: Business weeks cover story on April 16, 2009 accused the economists of being incapable of predicting the crisis. This is another school of thought which seems to be quite applicable. With assets bubbles being created, prices rising, liquidity drying up the market, why were the mainstream economists and analysts unable to foresee the crisis. Warren Buffet also said that the expectation of real estate prices to decline was something no one was willing to predict or believe. Such ineffective forecasting also set the economy on a back foot when it came to meeting the demands of the crisis and be proactive in order to bring up measures to curtail it (Zandi, 2009). Financial ill-literacy: People were able to understand that they can buy expensive homes with a subprime adjustable rate mortga ge (ARM) loan, assuming that they could sell it off quickly to make profits, however barely did they know what could be the repercussions of entering into such trade. Most the borrowers did not understand completely the mortgage terms and relied on their brokers to fetch interest rates they could afford and be rest assured that the agents would take care of their financial assets. The general financial ill-literacy contributed to the credit crunch and the borrowers did not make wise decisions on borrowing, saving and investing (Zandi, 2009). This could not have been the case 20 -30 years old as there were not so many investing options which could confuse an investor. But the complex mortgage options that were available during the subprime loans were mind boggling for the borrowers to comprehend at times to make decisions which not result in such perils. Inadequate and untimely analysis: Lack of timely and accurate information also disturbed the policy makers ability to response t o the crisis. Most of the data on mortgage crimes and defaults come from private sources and data banks which makes it difficult for the regulators to monitor and foresee trends. The government does not track the number of foreclosures being made or umber of defaults in payments that are happening (Zandi, 2009). The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) provides for the reporting of some information pertaining to loan application and approvals. However they do not provide for reporting of foreclosures or delinquencies that happen in mortgage loan cases. This contributes to the inability of the regulators to understand the forthcoming perils which may lead to unexpected situations. Effects of the Crisis: U.S.-based credit watchdog SP said that total losses to be booked by the global financial sector from subprime asset-backed securities could reach $285 billion, but opined that the end of write downs was now in sight for large financial institutions (Edwards, 2008). However, the loan default activity of U.S. banks suggested that the floor in the real estate market is not yet in sight. Lets consider some of the macro effects of the subprime crisis: Impact on Financial Institutions and Banking Industry: Subprime crisis created a vacuum in the bank business model, eliminating volume and income while limiting resulting in net effect of large reduction in credit availability. In the long run, loan origination would now imply retention of the asset as default option. Banks had limited funding, revenue options. The entire sector was under pressure to reduce leverage. When the market is good the bankers try and increase their leverage by building up their assets of both loans and securities. However in bad conditions they take a back foot to try and reduce their debt burden. With the fall in property prices, the banks had to write down their book values of such mortgages and by spring of 2008, the globes biggest banks had collectively written down their assets by almost $275 billion (Zandi, 2009). These losses were a direct hit to their capital. What further aggravated their wound was the lack liquidity in the market at a time when they were in desperate need to reduce their leverage. The International Monetary Fund estimated that large U.S. and European banks lost more than $1 trillion on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009. One of the first victims was Northern Rock, a medium-sized British bank. The highly leveraged nature of its business led the bank to request security from the Bank of England. This in turn led to investor panic and a bank run in mid-September 2007. Reduced risk appetite: The subprime crisis has changed investor and lender preferences dramatically. Structured assets of all ratings grades were shunned in favour of simpler cash securities. Dealers are walking away from low-risk markets such due to concerns about capital availability and fair value risk (Whalen, 2008). As the Bear Stearns collapse illustrates, there had been a huge reduction in market liquidity overall, and a sharp decrease in leverage used by all market participants. Lack of credit in markets : Economist Paul Krugman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner explain the credit crisis via the implosion of the shadow banking system, which had grown to nearly equal the importance of the traditional commercial banking sector as described above. Without the ability to obtain investor funds in exchange for most types of mortgage-backed securities or asset-backed commercial paper, investment banks and other entities in the shadow banking system could not provide funds to mortgage firms and other corporations. This meant that nearly one-third of the U.S. lending mechanism was frozen and continued to be frozen into June 2009. According to the Brookings Institution, the traditional banking system did not have the capital to close the gap as of June 2009. It would take a number of years of strong profits to generate sufficient capital to support that additional lending volume. While traditional banks have raised their lending standards, it was the collapse of the shadow banking system that is the primary cause of the reduction in funds available for borrowing. Insolvency causing retrenchments: The global financial crisis, brewing for a while, really started to show its effects in the middle of 2007 and into 2008. Around the world, stock markets had fallen, large financial institutions had collapsed or been bought out, and governments in even the wealthiest nations had to come up with rescue packages to bail out their financial systems. On one hand many peopl e were thinking that those responsible for the financial problems were the ones being bailed out, while on the other hand, a global financial meltdown was affecting the livelihoods of almost everyone in an increasingly inter-connected world. The downturn in economic activity took effect earlier in the United States, where the unemployment was 4.9% and reached 10.1% by October 2009 (Goodman, 2009). Effect on the global economy: Theres no doubt that conditions in the major economies took a sharp turn for the worse in the period following the Lehman collapse in September 2008. Business and consumer confidence deteriorated drastically, as did the financial sentiment. In the general climate of uncertainty, households around the world responded by cutting their discretionary spending. This seems to have had a particularly pronounced effect on demand for manufactured goods. The result was a sharp fall in global industrial production, and significant contractions in GDP in most of the major economies. The Chinese and Indian economies continued to expand, but at much reduced rates. Indications are that world economic conditions have remained very weak in the early part of 2009. Decline in exports for developing economies: Recession in the United States and other G7 countries will in general reduce the demand for their imports, as these markets are important destinations of developing-country exports. A sign ificant proportion of US imports are from developing countries. Many of these imports are also imports of services, not just goods. Thus, the Indias software sector, which exports IT services to the United State, for instance, and other advanced economies have registered slower growth. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 Source: IMF (Between 2007 and 2008, as estimates of December 2008) Description: 1 Countries in official recession (two consecutive quarters) 2 Countries with economic slowdown of more than 1.0% 3 Countries with economic slowdown of more than 0.1% 4 Countries with economic acceleration The above chart displays the spread and impact of the global crisis across the globe, with clear indications that though the developed countries were facing severe downturn the developing economies were also being affected gradually. Impact on Balance of payments: For many countries, primarily commodity-importing countries, the reduction in export earnings will come at a time when their balance of payments is already under pressure due to rising food and fuel prices in 2007 and 2008. Such countries may be in particular need of balance-of-payments assistance from the IMF and other sources. Developing countries require financial inflows from the rest of the world to facilitate and a ccelerate economic growth, trade and development. These flows include official development assistance (ODA), investment flows (portfolio and foreign direct investment (FDI), trade credits and flows of remittances. All of these are set to be affected negatively during the current crisis which will have adverse impact on the current account of BOP. Portfolio risk management lessons learnt The financial crisis has forced investors to take a more nuanced approach to portfolio risk management. Dan Farley, global head of Multi-Asset Class Solutions at State Street Global Advisors, said the crisis exposed the need to understand the limitations of traditional practices, such as Modern Portfolio Theory, and heightened the need for new approaches to strategic and tactical asset allocation. Many investors have gained a more nuanced reminder of portfolio risks centring on market volatility, portfolio construction and trading liquidity. It has been observed that investors have moved increasingly away from risk models centred on average market behaviour and normal return distributions, instead adopting strategies that focus market turbulence, risk, liquidity and diversification. Based on the understanding of the crisis situation the following important portfolio risk management lessons have been identified. Intelligent Diversification Matters: Traditional approach of d iversification will always hold good. Owning certain asset classes like treasuries, certain commodities, and cash did help in 2008. Benefits of diversification provide beneficial shock absorbers for most investment portfolios. Economist Burton Gordon Malkiel sums it up succinctly, Diversity reduces adversity. While consumer financial services were down 54% in 2007, healthcare outperformed the SP 500 by 10% only a few years ago, the situation got reversed (Siegel, 2007). Lehman had placed too many of its financial eggs in one basket: mortgages. When the mortgage securities market went bad, it had nowhere to hide. When you concentrate your investments in any single company, industry, sector, or country, you run the risk of being hurt by a calamity like the collapse of the mortgage securities market (Young, 2009). Rather than investing in a single stock or single sector of the economy, one should invest in mutual funds that distribute the investment across many businesses. Anoth er option, index funds, which are less subject to seismic shifts in the market because they are based on a set of rules of ownership that remain constant, regardless of market conditions. Diversification does not mean in spreading investments over 10 stocks, overseas investments should also be considered. Diversification by itself cannot guarantee a profit or protect against loss, but it can give you more chances for success and reduce the effects of volatility on your portfolio. Managing Risk Appetite: People when they are over confident enough to believe that the investing laws dont apply to them tend to make decisions which dint work for them. One such law is that leverage, the act of borrowing other peoples money to invest, it can work both ways-for you and against you. Lehman had financed around $600 billion worth of assets at a time when it only had$30 billion of equity (Young, 2009). This is a clear example excessive risk. It is important that investor invests keeping in m ind his risk appetite is comfortable making adjustments over time. Any panic caused out of unexpected risk will result in decisions which will be extreme and eventually affect the portfolio adversely. Investor should create portfolios which are not excessively complex for them to understand. It is necessary to have full transparency of investment performance, attribution and investment strategy along with the premise behind the strategies. Investor should try to have as much information about all aspects of the investment process so that there is a lower likelihood of significant problems. Maintain Substantial Liquidity: As the crisis unfolded we realised that one of the major damages was caused by the lack of liquidity in the markets, which resulted in cases of default in payments. It is important for the investors to remember to maintain enough liquidity in order to protect themselves from the market volatilities. Not having liquidity forces the investors to sell off assets in case of highly illiquid markets. Northern Rock suffered from funding liquidity risk in September 2007 following the subprime crisis. The firm suffered from liquidity issues despite being solvent at the time, because maturing loans and deposits could not be renewed in the short-term money markets (Tobias Shin, 2007). For long term investors it can mean that they have to compromise on their long term objectives in order to meet their short term liquidity demands. Conclusion: Flawless execution of risk management does not guarantee that losses wont occur as losses depend on upon business decisions and luck. The risk models established during the crisis failed due to the unexpected fall in mortgage prices. Thus systematic risks are bound to exist and financial crisis happen as a result of cases which have not been experienced in the past. Significant monetary, political and risk management changes are underway in order to cope up with the crisis; however the formal risk management m odels cannot substitute for judgement and experience. By analyzing the root causes of the financial crisis, it is possible to estimate the costs of resolving the crisis utilizing current policies of bailing out investors who made poor investment decisions. In any event, it would seem imperative that the financial managers of the future be better educated in the art of credit analysis and investement management.

Parkinson’s disease is a disorder that progresses over...

Parkinson’s disease is a disorder that progresses over time. It affects your movement through your nervous system; the disorder causes stiffness, and slow movement in your body. Most noticeably started in little â€Å"tremors† in your hands it gradually increases over time. Early stages consists little expression in your face or no movement in your arms as you walk. Your speech may also slur, or slow down. Symptoms usually worsen over time. Symptoms of Parkinson’s disease vary from person to person. They often affect one side of your body and steadily make its way to the other side. Regrettably, the first side is usually affected the worst. Tremors usually affect the body. Shaking begins in your hands or fingers. You can tell when your†¦show more content†¦Also exposure to toxins such as herbicides, and pesticides slightly increases your risks due to the chemicals. Parkinson’s disease is also accompanied by dementia in some cases. Your thinking be comes difficult due to cognitive problems in the brain. Depression and emotional changes in your person may develop also. You may feel panicked, anxious, or even lose motivation to carry out your day. Symptoms like these can be cured with anti-depressants. Drooling may become an issue due to it being hard, or slowed swallowing. Also patients with Parkinson’s may develop sleep disorders. Waking up in throughout the night, or waking up early or sleeping earlier than usual can be expected. You may also experience rapid eye movement, which involves actin gout your dreams. Being unable to control your bladder, or difficulty urinating is also a complication of Parkinson’s. Due to a slower digestive tract, you may have constipation. Your blood pressure also changes. You will feel dizzy or lightheaded when you stand; this is due to orthostatic hypotension, a drop in blood pressure. You may also experience problems in your sense of smell. You may have trouble identifying a cert ain odor, or differentiating between smells. Fatigue and pain are also complications of the disease. You lose energy and quickly become tired. Pain is usually associated in different parts of the body. There are different leads to Parkinson’s disease. As time progresses certain neurons in yourShow MoreRelatedTaking a Look at Parkinsons Disease1450 Words   |  6 Pages Parkinson’s Disease Parkinson’s disease is the most common movement disorder; its characteristics are loss of muscle control, stiffness, slowness, shaking, and impaired balance. My grandmother had Parkinson’s very bad and she couldn’t walk anymore or hardly talk, it’s very sad because they are just unable to do anything. Muhammad Ali is one of the best boxers of all time and now he also suffers from Parkinson’s; he also has all of these symptoms and is hardly able to talk. 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