Tiago Costa

Internet entrepreneur and triathlete (Ironman Finisher). Founder of WayNext – digital agency and other companies. Blogging for myself, this is not the agency voice. Welcome!

14 April 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Sustainable energy (again)

Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air I have just came across another interesting view on sustainable energy and what it really means.

Did you know that for Britain to get 25% of its energy from growing energy crops, that would require 75% of the country to be covered with biomass plantations?

If this topic interests you make sure you read at least the synopsis – which in fact is all I had time to skim for now (but I will make sure I download the epub to the iPad and go through it during the weekend).

The author David MacKay has made the book available in all sorts of formats (web, ereaders, pdf, etc) so you just don’t have an excuse not to read it because it is free. You can find all about it here.

Credits: I found this book via @martinvars which I follow since I found he was twitting. If you are into entrepreneurship stuff you just can’t miss Martin Varsavsky, with some failures like the rest of us, and some huge (and I mean huge!!!) successful endeavors, he had always some interesting thoughts to share. I remember meeting Martin once at Ya.com offices in Madrid, back in 2001 and I got a very good impression ever since then.

13 April 2011
by Tiago Costa
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The education bubble

In case you missed it here is one of the best articles I’ve read in the last few days. Read it here.

It’s all about explaining with there is a bubble in education, since there is still a lot of people out there believing that having a degree from this or that university is like buying insurance for a “successful professional career for life ” (whatever that is…).

Maybe it has been that way, maybe it has not, but what I know for sure right now is that it doesn’t work that way any more.

Note: just a quick example, at WayNext the web designer with the most design education we ever hired was the worst web designer we’ve ever had. Ah, and don’t forget about people keeping their selves at the universities (or other schools) just because they can’t find a job, so they just keep throwing money at their education.

Update [15-Apr-2011]: another insight on this matter by Seth Godin. Just a quick snapshot that sums it up:
What would happen if people spent it building up a work history instead? On becoming smarter, more flexible, more self-sufficient and yes, able to take more risk because they owe less money…
There’s no doubt that we need smarter and more motivated people in our organizations. I’m not sure we need them to be better labeled or more accredited.

7 April 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Founders wanting to keep hands on the wheel

I just stumbled upon this interesting point of view about recent VC operations where it seems that more than before founders are wanting to keep their hands on the wheel after being funded. You can read the full article here.

Just a couple of highlights:

“The job of being a founder and executing against a big vision of the future has gotten easier.”

“For the next-generation opportunities around the Internet and social networks, I believe the biggest opportunities will be driven by young founders who maintain their C.E.O. positions”

“Through the spread of these ideas via the Web and word-of-mouth, more founders are securing advantageous financing terms, including higher valuations and stronger board control.“

6 April 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Venture capital by agencies…

…this reminds me of something. You can read it here.

“There’s certainly a lot of value in working with agencies, but they don’t seem like logical investors for us,” said Sam Altman, founder and CEO of location-based service Loopt. “We want someone who has a ton of experience building companies and understands what it takes to scale.”

What if the agency going ahead with the venture capital was founded by entrepreneurs that know by experience what it takes to make it fly? Creative meets entrepreneurial experience.

Update: the guys at Young Network have done it already.

4 April 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Kiting @ Lagoa de Albufeira

Having spent most of Saturday working and sorting K9 issues, I found a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon to go kiting. We had a nice session with 17-19knots, a bit gusty like you would expect at this time of the year.

The lagoon was very very crowded with lots of kites falling on top of each other, some shouting from the windsurfers to the kiters (and vice-versa), lost boards and the likes. But that is always part of the drill when it gets so jammed (they should put some traffic lights there) and this is one of the reasons why I prefer to ride on the sea…

Our friend 8Nós riding at the end of the session

 

31 March 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Price vs Value

Another great post by Seth Godin explaining the difference between price and value – you can read it here.

I would just highlight the following, which surely reminds me of Apple:
“In fact, I do think it’s probably true that a low price increases the negative feedback. That’s because a low price exposes the work to individuals that might not be raving fans.”.

While managing WayNext or any other company for that matter, pricing strategy is always a sensitive matter. If you price it too low, besides risking loosing money, with risk your prospect finds it cheap (like in a bad quality service). If you price it too high you risk not landing the project and that can hit you as hard as the former if you have a budget to meet (and you alwasy do if you are taking thins seriously…).

PS – I still remember sitting at the TFE (“Teoria Financeira da Empresa”) classes with Oliveira Marques, which was one of my favorite teachers at FEP, explaining the difference between price and value; in a nutshell, price is what you pay and value is what you get.

30 March 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Sustainable energy sources

We all know Portugal has been putting a major effort towards clean energy, not only by building dams on the rivers as well and developing the wind energy mills everywhere. We even have some other experiments waiting for prime time, aiming at wave energy (thanks to the work of the Wave Energy Centre which are Client’s of WayNext).

This strategy seems like it is paying off because we are, at least for now, out of nuclear energy and we already have 45% of our electric power being supplied by renewable sources (a huge rise from only 17% five year ago) – you can read it here.

I must say I have mixed feelings about nuclear because since we have a spanish reactor less than 200km away from the border, it seems like we are exposed to all the hazards but none of the profits of using this kind of energy.

Now recently with the earthquake and tsunami the argument of going nuclear or not is again under the spotlight and today I came across this very interesting article from Greenpeace, from which I would like to highlight the following:

“Nuclear power is used only to generate electricity. It doesn’t run our cars, our planes, our trucks or our container ships. Electricity itself only accounts for around one third of greenhouse gases created by mankind. Nuclear energy today produces less than 6% of global energy consumption.”

You can read the full article here and you will go through its conclusion which is

“(…) if nuclear power isn’t necessary to solving the climate crisis, we’re no longer forced to weigh the awful consequences of climate change against the awful consequences of Chernobyl and Fukushima. In fact, we’re paying an exorbitant human, environmental, and financial price, and taking even bigger risks, for zero benefit in the fight against climate change.”

So perhaps we really should stick to renewable and clean energy sources while working to bring down the existing nuclear plants because of all the connected hazards.

On a final note, we should also remember when going to the pump to fuel our cars that the high prices we are currently paying (1 liter of diesel at ~1.45€), besides the major damage they are inflicting on our wallets (I have a big commute everyday that I can’t easily change into other kind of transportation…) could on the other hand be the missing incentive to bring us affordable, mainstream and trustworthy electric vehicles.

28 March 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Running timetable calculator

For all of you running freaks out there just feel free to download the Excel file at the end of this post. With it you can find  your timetable for any given run, just by inputing your desired running pace.

I put it together because I wanted to find out at which time I should be passing, say, at km 10 ou 25 for the marathon according to my planned running pace.

I printed it and sticked it to my mobile phone wrist band so I could easily keep track of my timetable.

Feel free to use it at your own risk!

Download running pace calculador – Excel (53Kb)

28 March 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Barcelona Marathon: 4h32m

It was already 3 weeks ago (6th March 2011) but I had’t found the time to write about it

This was my first marathon but I have been running some 10k and half marathons in Portugal for the last 3 years and I really think Barcelona’s Marathon was a close to perfect event.

I was supposed to be in Barcelona Friday early afternoon but some work related matter got in the way and I had to postpone until the night. Meaning I got to the hotel already after midnight but I still had Saturday to stroll around the city (which is a favorite of mine in Europe).

On Saturday afternoon I went to pick the bib at the “Fira Barcelona” and everything went well. I even went to the “pasta party” which was already going on and had a nice “carbo-load” kind of meal. In fact I remember spending a lot of that Saturday eating here and there to load up my energy for the next day, but since we also walked some 10km strolling around the city it was not so much I guess.

On Sunday, the day of the race, the weather was perfect with 8-12C and the sun was shining. After loading up on an extensive breakfast 90 minutes prior do departure I got my clothes on. Even though it was not too hot, a t-shirt proved to be the right approach because after some km on the tarmac with the sun shinning it was enough (needless to say that I wasn’t wearing the Barcelona’s Marathon t-shirt because I believe you first have to earn it, so I never use them before reaching the finish line for the run 😉

We stayed in a hotel very close to the race start, which proved to be a very good option since the start was at 8:30am. Reaching the start line was easy and getting there I joined the 4-hour pacemakers. They were holding giant red balloons so they were quite easy to spot and to keep track of.

After the race started I quickly found it that it was useless to try to follow the pacemakers at a short range, because lots of people were trying to do the same, so I changed my strategy and gave them a 100 meters distance, so I could run without everybody getting in the way.

The course if pretty flat, which is a good thing obviously, and the sights are very pleasant. There are always lots of people cheering you up as you go. Enough water stations and some fruits also available after km 25.

I started on a slow pace aiming for 5m40s/km which is all you need for a 4 hour marathon. This is a pace about 40s/km slower than my average training pace, which is a comfortable speed to preserve my energy and muscles needed to go for 42km.  Everything went fairly well up to km 21/22 but then my knee (which had already sent some pain signals on the 4/5 weeks before the marathon on the longer training runs) just started hurting a lot and I had to alternate between running and walking fast which lead me to loose sight of the pacemakers and that was when I started wondering if I should just give up… but… being there and with all the commitment I had put into training I tried to keep going and at km 25 I decided I was going to finish the damn thing, even if I had to walk to the end (fortunately that wasn’t need since I could still run most of the distance or it would have taken me 6 hours or so…). In fact the first 21km took me ~2h and the last 21km took me ~2h30m because of all the pain.

I went through “the wall” at km 32, when all you think is that you are already on the tarmac for more then 3 hours and that you still have another hour to go, but then passing km 36 everything changes and although running 1 km starts looking like 5 km, my mind was very focused on the finish line.

So I reached the finish line which was my main goal. Nevertheless I’m not yet satisfied because I believe I could have made it in 4 hours flat if only my knee wasn’t hurting like hell.

This is the route: Starting at Plaza de Espanya, heading NW to go around Camp Nou then back again to Plaza de Espanya going through Tarragona, then on to Plaza Catalunya, up on Passeo de Grácia (km ~14), then to Sagrada Familia, then through Avenida Meridiana heading NE (km ~20), then back for a bit and down Pont Calatrava, a bit more to East and down Rambla Prim, then to go around Plaza de les Glóries and then via Avenida Diagonal heading SE to the Fórum (km ~30) and then on Avenida Litoral around the Torres Mapfre and Parc de la Ciutadella (km ~35), Arc de Triomf then again we go on to Plaza Catalunya, then heading South to Colon and then through Parallel heading North (km ~40) to finish line at Plaza de Espanya after 42.195m!

To sum up my experience with this beast:
– 42.195m are doable in 4 hours if your body doesn’t break and you train consistently 3/4 times a week for about 4 months;
– Barcelona Marathon was a very good event, well organized, lots of people on the street, more than 15k runners, perfect weather and nice sightseeing;
– If you have experience with running but still wondering about the Marathon go for it; just take aim for a 20% slower pace that what you are used to for the half-marathon and be careful with loading your energy level for the 3/4 days prior to the race.

[Update: after seeing the doctor I already have the MRI results and nothing too serious is going on (at least for now…), so see you on the tracks, preparing for another race].