Category Archives: Travel

Required viewing. Tell me this doesn’t make you want to buy a ticket to somewhere, anywhere right away…

I spent last week in Italy (Milan and Naples) launching the The Start-Up of You there. It was my second visit to the beautiful country. Some quick impressions / thoughts:

Unemployment / career anxiety in Italy. I was told 1 in 3 young people are unemployed in Italy right now. Young people are feeling like they need to break into the “digital economy,” not work in a legacy manufacturing industry. Meanwhile, a lot of the historic craft businesses are struggling, and the entrepreneurs there are trying to figure out how to survive in a global economy. Apparently, many entrepreneurs in the north have been committing suicide for fear their businesses were going under.

Crisis? What crisis?! There was much talk in Italy about the economic crisis. But the effects of the crisis were not visible to this tourist. By contrast, when I was in Greece, people in Athens would tell me about the economic crisis and then I would look around and see trash piled up on the sidewalk corner because the garbage men were striking. I’d see taxis all parked in a parking lot because the taxi drivers were striking. I’d see government workers all congregated on the main square because the government workers were striking…so yes, there was indeed a crisis. There are serious economic challenges throughout the Europe and in Italy, per the previous point, but if you just look around, Milan seemed positively tranquil. People seemed happy. Society was functioning fine. This is not a scientific way to assess an economic situation, but the “look around” litmus test should not be dismissed as irrelevant, either.

Culture matters. A surprising number of Italians proactively told me that Italian culture hinders entrepreneurial thinking. For example, the mindset that gets fostered when kids live at home with their parents into their early 30’s. Or the overall view on failure. Essentially, the themes of my post Culture Matters to Entrepreneurship. It’s striking how universal these cultural challenges seem to be around the world.

Buffalo mozzarella. Especially in Naples, the bufalo mozzarella blew my mind. Again. So good.

Thanks to our very energetic publisher Egea for hosting my visit!

It was my first time to the region and my time in Doha was all too brief, but I will share a splattering of thoughts:

• The people of Qatar I met were friendly, hospitable, ambitious, and keen on continuing to improve their country. The world cup arrives in 2022. That event creates a natural timeline by which they want to achieve big things before they enjoy the global spotlight.
• The talking point within Qatar that I heard a lot is that the country needs to become a “service economy.” They are also looking to foster entrepreneurship in order to diversify their economic base.
• By day, the Doha skyscrapers juxtaposed next to the desert landscape looks bizarre. And because of the heat, no one is walking on any sidewalk…anywhere. By night, with the buildings lit up, the landscape takes on an alluring, Vegas-like quality. And with the cooler evening breezes, the foot traffic on sidewalks picks up to a normal pace.
• When I sat down to lunch with some local businesspeople from the region, I asked where everyone was from. I should have known better. Apparently, it’s easy to tell someone’s home country by how they wear their hijab (headscarf). As it was explained to me, Saudis wear a red patterned hijab. Omanis wear a hat, no scarf. Qataris fold their hijab a certain way; folks from the UAE fold it a different way. Walk down the street of Doha, and you’ll see all kinds of hijabs.
• Doha’s critics say the city is trying too hard to be like Dubai: too many sky scrappers, too many five star western hotel brands, a national airline in Qatar Airways too hell bent on being more luxurious than Emirates. Doha strives to be better than Dubai on these fronts but isn’t, they say. By forcing an apples-to-apples comparison, Doha gets relegated to second class, instead of a place like Muscat which aspires to be something different. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with this view — I’ve never been to Dubai nor spent serious time in Doha. I’m simply repeating it because I found it interesting in terms of how a city’s identity gets constructed vis-a-vis another city’s.
• When women are covered up except for their face, it makes the face the singular signal of beauty. There’s nothing else to go by. I saw many beautiful faces.
• I flew Emirates, SFO-Dubai and then Dubai-Doha. I loved that the ceiling of the plane turned into a star-filled sky during sleep hours. Also, the window shades opened/closed electronically, and they were all shut automatically during sleep hours. (It’s annoying when someone leaves the window shade open and sun creeps in when you’re trying to sleep.) The weakness of Emirates (in my brief experience) was around staff friendliness. The flight crew just didn’t seem as uniformly professional and friendly as a Cathay Pacific or Japan Airways crew, for example. I wonder if the diversity of the flight crew on Emirates matters in this regard. The four Emirates flights I took were multi-ethnic to an extreme degree; when they announced the languages spoken by the crew, I truly had never heard of a couple of the languages. I love diversity generally, but for within crew maybe the cultural differences translate into inconsistent hospitality styles. The person serving food approaches the relationship with the passenger differently than the person handing out customs forms. On a 16 hour non-stop flight, these little things become a little noticeable.

All in all, big thanks to my hosts in Qatar for the opportunity to meet and share ideas, and I look forward to getting back to the region soon to spend a more significant chunk of time.

I spent last week in Athens, Greece. It was my first time to the country. I didn't have time to make it to the islands, but I did have time to meet many students, NGO leaders, and businesspeople in Athens. Some assorted impressions and lessons.

1. History. Seeing the stadium that hosted the first Olympic games; seeing the place where Socrates was forced to commit suicide; seeing where a stage play was first performed; learning about the numerous English words and images (like the logo/insignia of pharmacies) that have their origin in a Greek god or Greek word…Athens really is the birthplace of western civilization and western democracy. 

The Parthenon and related antiquities are well-kept outside, and an architectural wonder of the world, obviously. Inside, the new Acropolis museum shows off many other sculptures and art. Christopher Hitchen wrote a piece in Vanity Fair a couple years back (which I happened to read in the Best American Travel Writing of 2010 that I brought along on my trip) about the musuem. He covers the dispute over the British Museum holding various Greek art that ought to be in Athens. Hitchens thinks it's an outrage–though, to be fair, issues of national sovereignty over long-ago stolen art is a tricky one. Missing pieces notwithstanding, Hitchens raves about the new Acropolis museum. I generally don't like museums, but I'm with Hitchens on this one — the facility does a splendid job at showing off the millenia-old history of the country.

2. Athens beyond antiquities. Besides the Acropolis, there isn't a ton to do or see in Athens. There's plenty of traffic and pollution, meanwhile. While the Acropolis sitting up high is always a sight to behold from wherever you are in the city (especially at night when it's lit up), I wouldn't say the city built for Athena is especially stunning in the 21st century.

3. Motivated students. I wasn't dealing with a representative sample of the population, that's for sure, but the several hundred students who I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking to seemed driven to take control of their future, innovate, and overcome the massive economic challenges facing their country. With youth employment soaring (40% according to some numbers), the savvy students are aggressively trying to build a career without relying on the usual industries (e.g. government) or strategies. That's the good news.

4. Brain drain risk. But the potentially bad news is that these savvy students might not stay. I gained no great insight into the macroeconomic situation in Greece — and I didn't have much insight to begin with. But an observation I did have is around a long-term risk more significant than the country's debts: the possible population brain drain of the students mentioned in point #3. Many smart young people are thinking about leaving the country; they told me so themselves. There's a self-fulling dynamic here. If the smart people perceive there's no future for them in Greece, then they leave, and when the smart people leave, there really is no future for the country. It needs to find a way to keep them. 

The common approach elders take to keeping talented youth in a country is appealing to notions of civic duty and national pride. That's one approach. But a grittier entrepreneurial approach is to focus on the business opportunities that are the flip side of societal problems. If taxi drivers strike constantly, why not start Ubercab for the businesspeople of Athens? Maybe not a great business idea, but it's an example of emphasizing practical self-interest over high-minded ideals when urging the best and brightest to stay.

5. Labor strikes. There are strikes every day in Athens thanks to the severe government cuts that are part of the austerity measures. Garbage men were on strike–so garbage was piled high on every street corner. Public transit and taxi drivers went on strike–so nobody could get around. Archaeologists and museum security guards went on strike–so nobody could go to museums. Tax collectors and government officials went on strike–so nobody could use basic government services. Apparently, daily strikes have been going on for about two years, and are now a certain occurrence. There's a web site in Greek that each day shows who is striking and for how long–it's become a must-read in Athens. Everyone I spoke to about the strikes agreed that the protesters were against the austerity measures, but were not for any specific alternative approach.

6. U.S. Diplomats and local staff. Once again, I was super impressed with the quality of the U.S. diplomats (who helped host me in Athens). The foreign service officers and the local staff they hire are truly a cut above your average federal government employee. I was also honored to spend some time with the American Ambassador to Greece and participate in a reception at his residence. What a challenging and exciting post right now. Again, just impressive all around.

7. Building entrepreneurial communities. A question we were batting around at dinner one night was how certain places (like Athens) might become hotbeds of entrepreneurship. I've thought a lot about this question over the years, particularly when I wrote an article on how Boulder, CO became a start-up hub. One point I make in the article–it's really Brad Feld's point, as he is a thought leader on the topic–is the need for leadership from individuals within the community. Not government officials, but private citizens who step up and try to galvanize the community to support the entrepreneurial process.

But the leadership or entrepreneurial push can't be momentary in response to a crisis. It has to be enduring. In Boulder, Brad's been there for more than a decade, and it's only in the last couple years that the city has emerged on the national map as a viable place to do a company. Leadership is needed over a long period of time; as Brad says, it's a 20-year journey. Government programs are prone to lose patience with programs that don't produce immediate gain; start-ups rarely produce immediate gain no matter how you measure it. It's another reason why governments cannot provide the long-term leadership necessary to drive entrepreneurial activity. (I'm fascinated to watch for how long the Chilean government funds Start-Up Chile.) In any event, for a local entrepreneur to be a true leader in the entrepreneurial community, it does seem like s/he needs to commit to leading/organizing/rallying the troops for decades, not years.

8. Being abroad. I hadn't traveled outside the U.S. for more than a year. It was great to get back out there. Though I had to camp out in my hotel room for a majority of the time, being out and about for meals, walking through Munich and Frankfurt airports, seeing the International Herald Tribune on Athens newsstands–these little things were enough to trigger the high one gets from being in a new place. And it's an energy that endures even when you return home…