6 Free Financial Modeling Lessons...and More.

Fred Wilson is a legendary venture capitalist; arguably the best in the game today. He's such a visionary that it wasn't hard to believe when PrivCo announced that Union Square Ventures netted a whopping 5,000% return on their Tumblr investment. What was harder to believe (or maybe I'm just jealous) was what the takeover meant for Tumblr employees in dollars and cents:

Tumblr founder David Karp, 26, walked away with over $250 million after dropping out of high school to work on the project. Fred Wilson reacted to closing the all-cash deal with Yahoo! with his typical class and humility, stating, "You can count on it — when a deal works out spectacularly everyone involved will take credit for it. This behavior is particularly annoying to the entrepreneurs who put the sweat, blood, and tears into the Company."

But did USV actually make a 5,000% return?

Every office has their winners, but here are just a few of the goofy things you might encounter while working with Chinese colleagues. Those with China experience, definitely sound off at the bottom here.

1) Now while I’m sure what I eat in the office gives my colleagues room for pause as well, there are a few things that should never happen. Probably number one on my list thus far is eating hot dogs on a stick and milk for breakfast.

A close second is eating spicy peppers on the hottest days of the summer, both so that they sweat to cool off and also so they breathe more heavily so their mouth cools down too. It’s all about balancing their Qi, I am told. Which brings me to number 2.

2) There is no need for a Qi or FengShui App on your smartphone to help you with your work. If you are following your Qi app that is telling you to drink chrysanthemum tea in the late morning because your inner temperature is too cool, I’m going to go ahead and argue that you’ve got a shedload more to study about this whole Qi thing before you call yourself an expert.

If you have been following my blog postings, you are probably aware that I have an obsession with equity risk premiums (ERP), and have done an annual survey paper on the topic  every year since 2008 (with the 2013 update here). I also post a monthly update for the ERP for the S&P 500 at the start of the month on my website. As a consequence, my attention was drawn to a post by Fernando Duarte and Carlo Rosa, economists at the Fed in New York, on the topic.

They argue that equity risk premiums are at historic highs, primarily because the US treasury rates are low, and note that these high equity risk premiums are a precursor to good stock returns in the future. I don’t disagree with their authors that equity risk premiums are high, relative to history and that the low risk free rate is in large part responsible these large premiums, but I am less sanguine about using the ERP as a market timing device, especially at this time in history.

Boston, Wed May 22nd, 6PM, Beantown Pub

Shanghai: Friday May 24th, 7PM, La Brasserie

Hong Kong: Friday May 24th, 730PM, BISOUS

NYC: June 7th (***NEW DATE***), 7PM Galway Hooker

Chicago: June 13th, 8PM, Midtown Kitchen (upstairs)

tbd June: London, Singapore (we need a host)