Today a new kind of venture capital firm was launched, called Prototype Invest. It’s an early stage investor that doesn’t provide money in exchange for equity, like usual venture capitalists. Prototype supplies technology and guidance in exchange for equity. The company was founded by Michael Christensen and can count on a very experienced team.

People with a good idea but no programming or design skills will access a network of developers and designers that will help them create prototypes or full products. Entrepreneurs won’t have to pay anything for the service, but will give equity in their start up in exchange for it.

On their website they state “think of us as a Venture Capital firm providing software, web applications and guidance, instead of money”. This is really clever, as too many great ideas and brilliant entrepreneurs get stuck, unable to get capital from venture capitalists because they lack the competences and resources to make their ideas into proper products or prototypes, that make it much easier to get financing from a VC.

More then a new kind of VC, Prototype’s activity is complementary to traditional venture capital, as will help people with the best ideas building prototypes, pitching investors and finally raise capital.

Yes, I know, this not only happens in Spain, but as the following chart shows in order for somebody to take 1250 euros in cash home per month companies have to spend almost twice as much, 2,446.92.

In other countries in Europe this is also true, but not on such a low pay scale. What´s unusual about Spain is the enormous amount of taxes that the Spanish government collects from people who only take home 1250 euros per month. And after they are home with the cash they have to pay VAT when they purchase goods or services and many other indirect taxes. So even on a person who takes home a real net of around 1100 euros per month, his real earnings are 2,446.92 per month for an effective tax rate of 55%. What is interesting is that employees who take home a real net pay of 5000 euros per month, 10,000 euros per month and 15,000 euros per month also take home around half of what the company pays them. But the take is slightly less in percentage which makes socialist Spain quite regressive. The solution in my view is of course to lower taxes on the low income brackets and have the Spanish government be more effective in rendering its services.

I just read that WWII killed 60 million people and cost less than 1 trillion 1944 dollars. This amount, that translates to 5 trillion of today´s dollars, compares poorly to the current Middle East War involving Iraq and Afghanistan costing USA already around 3 trillion 2008 dollars, but with casualties of less than 200,000 on the “enemy” side (hard to know who the enemy is though) and only 4520 on the American side.

This is what Joseph Stieglitz has to say about this.

These costs (of the current war) are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that’s $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today’s dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

Now considering that Joseph Stieglitz is a Nobel Prize Economist, I am not surprised that he focused his analysis on cost. But all of us can agree that it is actually positive that wars are getting to be, in comparison, so expensive “per death”. This, and not moral or religion, may turn out to be the best deterrent policy for avoiding future armed conflict.

It is sad to think that peace may be achieved by parties being unable to afford war but then….so be it. It is a similar situation to a US finally getting to have clean air thanks to very, very expensive oil or global recession. Who knows, maybe God does exist… and he is one stingy banker.

I know that most people who read my blog are not Jewish and that makes sense since us Jews we are only one person in 500 in this planet. Still I want to wish all my Jewish readers a Happy Passover.

I know it´s hard to believe that a country could be at war and not know who his enemy is but this is the case with US in the Iraqi war. In this video I comment an article in the New York Times that details how presidential candidate McCain is confused about this crucial issue.

You can also watch this video in Youtube.

This South Park episode shows the mood I was in going around Paris in late 05 trying to connect to WiFi and was not successful. It was this anxiety that led to the idea that resulted in Fon. Necessity is the mother of invention as they say.

Cyloop is a music portal that is having significant success in the Spanish speaking world that is making inroads into English and soon other languages. Today I met and spent 90 minutes with Demian Bellumio, the founder of Cyloop who came to see me at my office. During that meeting I saw the first potentially sustainable future of the record label. As it is very late here in Spain and I have to catch a flight to NYC tomorrow to give a speech at Columbia University my alma mater I will make a few comments and not an in depth analysis.

First of all Demian is a very unlikely entrepreneur to come up with such a hit as Cyloop. His background is not in music. But in the short time I spent with Demian I could see that he has a natural ability to learn a new sector, that he has extremely developed entrepreneurial instincts even though he mostly worked for others til now and that there must be something especially harmonious in the trio who started Cyloop. This trio consists of three Argentines friends from childhood living in Miami, Demian is the CEO/biz dev type, his brother is the designer and his best friend the “musician” in Cyloop.

Now what is the proof that Cyloop is on to something radical in the music world? That in countries where all you need to do if you want music is go to The Pirate Bay and download it for free without breaking the law (yes, to download music for personal use is legal in Spain), Cyloop is growing faster than piracy. How do they do it? Well first they teamed up with Spain´s largest portal, Terra to become their music channel. Secondly they got all the record labels in the States and Uk to give them most of their music, and thirdly they created a MEDIA experience out of listening to music. This is what in my view distinguishes Cyloop from say, Last.fm who now also has access to all the music from the record labels. The difference is that Cyloop is not about loading your MP3 player which in any case you can´t do there unless you use software to divert streamed audio into your hard drive. Cyloop is about musicians and their fans meeting in a site with a My Space spirit but with more editorial control and with their music included. What will the post Cyloop world look like? Kind of like now but with more money to those making music. A world in which consumers see ads as they enjoy music, buy merchandising, build an emotional bond with the musician that leads to concert ticket sales and the overall experience ressembles interactive TV more than radio. Cyloop is also the music portal of Warner Music and many other sites.