Mutterings on Tech, Finance and ...

So proud of South Africa… First country in Africa and the fifth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.

Gigaom has great coverage of our recent investment in SingleHop - an IaaS and dedicated server provider. In their summation this is a tough space that many investors thought was already commoditized. We agree, and hence spent years trying to find who we solidly think can be a leader in the next wave of IaaS providers. We sincerely believe that SingleHop will be one of those leaders through their great combination of innovative technology, and methodical execution, to bring an extremely high level of customer service and satisfaction.

A good IaaS provider should be like your electricity or water utility - you shouldn’t ever have to think about them if they do their job correctly. A great IaaS provider should partner with you to actually make your job easier, and your company better at what it does. We think SingleHop is a great IaaS provider.

It’s always great to see South Africans (even ones now living in Singapore) getting some good international tech coverage. It’s even better when it’s for what looks like a great idea.

There are a ton of companies trying to help the Print Magazine world smoothly move into the table era, but this is one of the slicker solutions I’ve seen. Bravo.

Here’s a quick brain-teaser - see the list below and decide how many of these outcomes are concurrently possible:

1. US educated citizens earn the top US jobs
2. The US remains the top technological / economic powerhouse
3. The US allows religious education in the science classroom

The astute in the audience will note that this is a 3-legged stool. 3 options, but you can only ever pick two.

It astounds me at how short-sighted it is to undermine Science and Mathematical education, in any country, let alone one where the majority of the wealth-creation over the last half century was created directly by being a leader in scientific endeavours. 

The most dumbfounding part of it, is that it’s the same Christian right fundamentalists who simultaneously undermine science education, and then complain that their US educated children aren’t getting ‘merican jobs. 

I’m fine with people having any religious beliefs they like, but keep them out of the science classroom, and hence keep them from destroying your country’s primary competitive advantage. 

It’s tough to see any country staying ranked No 1 economically when its youth consistently rank well below 20th in the world on basic tests of educational proficiency. That is, unless you start importing the rest of the world’s most educated to make up for the shortfall.