Cyprus - Travel Update (1/2): New Office

It has been a very hectic three months and I had promised some of you pictures from some of my recent trips: Cyprus, Phillipines, Belize. I am going to try, over the next 3 weeks, to give an update on each of these. I am starting with Cyprus

New Office

I was in Cyprus for eight weeks in December and January primarily to manage the opening of our new office for Global Learning Semesters and Ledra Capital.

We have been growing pretty rapidly at Global Learning Semesters and had outgrown our space at Intercollege which had been letting us camp out, as needed.

So in August we signed a lease in a commercial building within 500 feet on the Intercollege campus. The office had not been finished, so the ensuing months where spent on the landlord putting in floors, etc.

We made two decisions early on:

a) We would build US-grade office infrastructure in terms of structured cable, raised floors, dropped ceilings, server rooms, etc

b) We would give ourselves room to grow, both for Global Learning Semesters and other Ledra Capital initiatives.

I think both those decisions were correct.

Part A impacts daily productivity.

Part B was a reflection of our expectation that moving in and out of an office would be a complete nuisance which was also the case. It is remarkable how many decisions are needed to move into an office, to say nothing of trying to track down Cypriot sub-contractors which is the equivalent of herding cats. It took pretty much our whole senior team in Cyprus to make this happen and was definitely a learning experience.

We initially planned to move in in October. We did not actually move in until January 15th. Below are a couple of illustrative pictures...

Unpacking

The office is primarily open-space but we did close off 3 offices, a conference room and a student resource center. Most days there are about 10 folks working in the office, but we could easily fit 30 as we grow.

The Backroom (for future use)

My conclusions so far:

a) Offices are a nuisance (and expensive) to build out

b) Despite all the virtual tools we have, offices are still very helpful for most people in promoting collabroration and increasing productivity. Our productivity has soared since we opened the office.

c) Open space is a hit in terms of building a firm culture.

Apollo Getting Serious About International Expansion?

Apollo, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, has made a relatively senior hire to head up their international efforts.

Though Apollo has a presence in Mexico and has dabbled in the Netherlands, for the most part it has left Doug Becker and Laureate free to roam the world building a massive university network.

Kaplan (part of the Washington Post) is the only other firm to have made some meaningful efforts internationally. Devry owns Ross down in the Caribbean but overall neither firm comes close to matching Laureate's international focus.

I think what has happened is that the US higher education market (adult and online) was so good for so long for the major firms that they did not feel much urgency to go international where capital investment costs are higher and private universities still tend to cater to traditional, campus-based 18-24 year students.

Astute observers will remember that Laureate is in the process of being taken private by KKR, SAC and others.

A Wall Street analyst who is a well-known commentator of the for-profit higher-education industry has jumped ship to work for one of the companies he has long been following for clients, the Apollo Group Inc.

Apollo, which is the parent company of the University of Phoenix, announced that effective today, Gregory Cappelli, an analyst with Credit Suisse, will become executive vice president for global strategy, and an assistant to John G. Sperling, the company’s founder and executive chairman.

Full but short post is on the Chronicle of Higher Education Blog.

Nearly $2B per year in self-improvement

"Americans will spend $750 million on self-help books this year and more than $1 billion on motivational speakers." cnn.com

my initial reaction is to say, "wow, that is a lot", but is 0.02% of US GDP in the attempt to improve a ridiculous figure? if it was viewed as subset training and adult education, it would seem perfectly normal...

Impressive Stats on Indian Americans

Asian Indians have outperformed all other minority and majority groups in most measures of socioeconomic achievement[2].According to the 2000 U.S. Census Indian Americans have the highest median income of any national origin group in the United States. ($60,093), and Merrill Lynch recently revealed that there are nearly 200,000 Indian American millionaires. One in every nine Indians in the United States is a millionaire, comprising 10% of U.S. millionaires. (Source: 2003 Merrill Lynch SA Market Study).

According to the 2000 census, about 64% of Asian Indians in the U.S. have attained a Bachelor's degree or more.[4](compared to 28% nationally). Almost 40% of all Indians have a master’s, doctorate or other professional degree, which is five times the national average. (Source: The Indian American Centre for Political Awareness.)

Indians own 50% of all economy lodges and 35% of all hotels in the United States, which have a combined market value of almost $40 billion. (Source: Little India Magazine).

A University of California, Berkeley, study reported that one-third of the engineers in Silicon Valley are of Indian descent, while 7% of valley hi-tech firms are led by Indian CEOs. (Source: Silicon India Readership Survey)

From Wikipedia