Over the weekend, I managed to finish Randy Komisar's The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur. According to Booklist, Komisar is among a new breed of executives who have been called "virtual CEO's": unlike consultants, they not only advise but actually work for companies that tend to be very small high-tech or Internet start-ups. In addition to working currently for seven such companies, Komisar has also worked with WebTV and TiVo, was the "real" CEO at LucasArts Entertainment, and was one of the founders of Claris Corporation.

Monk is a fascinating book for anyone who has even the least bit of curiosity about the process of venture capitalism and how it works, especially in Silicon Valley.

His philosophy of "Zen capitalism" is also thought-provoking:

"...I inevitably find personal risks that need to be considered along with the business risks. Personal risks include the risk of working with people you don’t respect; the risk of working for a company whose values are inconsistent with your own; the risk of compromising what’s important; the risk of doing something you don’t care about; and the risk of doing something that fails to express - or even contradicts - who you are.

And then there is the most dangerous risk of all - the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet that you can buy the freedom to do it later.

...Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset - time - to what is most meaningful to you. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? does not mean, literally, what will you do for the rest of the life? That question would be absurd, given the inevitability of change. No, what the question really asks is, if your life were to end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow, would you be able to say what you’ve been doing is what you truly care about today? What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life?

What would it take to do it right now?*"

*my own emphasis

Like many of my college mates, I am incredibly relieved (and glad) that Obama was elected as president. He might be untested in terms of life experience as compared to McCain, but that is why you have advisors and the entire bureaucracy to work with.

More than anything else, a leader needs to provide strength, hope and vision - and I look forward to Obama proving his dissenters wrong.

It has been a busy week, with the CE team based at the Singapore Management University from Tuesday to Thursday for the accreditation course. We had a good and diverse turnout, with participants from as far as Bali and Israel.

SMU was an excellent location, although it would have been even better if there were reliable and easily-accessible WiFi (and more power points).

There's apparently free WiFi over a lot of Singapore, but from the places I've needed to connect (such as Borders in Wheelock Place and Starbucks at Holland Village), that usually hasn't been the case..