Reef Chiu and Rafn Benediktsson both wrote about Warren Buffet, and I found his investment strategies in different situations very interesting. Reef wrote about his $11 Billion purchase in IBM stocks, an investment unusual as he had previously always avoided tech companies. Reef has mentioned how he believes Buffet is mainly in it for the company’s well-known services business, and that although it is a tech company, it represents one of long term stability. It is not the most talked about tech company, but it is the 7th most profitable firm in the US, a very surprising fact for me personally.

While Reef wrote about Buffet’s strategy of investing in stable companies for long term gains, Rafn wrote about some of his risky investments, investing in disasters. Buffet recently bought European retail giant Tesco, amidst the Euro Crisis, a crisis in which Buffet does not exactly seem optimistic about. This fear however, has lead to a huge drop in prices. In a similar manner, Buffet has travelled near the Fukushima power plant to buy a 71.5% share in Tungaloy, a company that makes manufacturing tools for car production.

These seemingly opposing strategies, of seeking long term stability, while also putting huge amounts of money into a situation most are panicking about show Buffet’s bold yet insightful ways of investment. As Rafn said, he is also keeping the market going and aiding in it overcoming the crisis it is in.

Adrian Fung made a post entitled “Are they lack of business ethics or just acting slowly?” in which he criticised Toyota’s response to its acceleration problems in changing the design of its new cars and possible lack of care for its users.

I have personally heard many people say they would never buy a Toyota again, and I think it is unfair to the company, especially considering Federal highway safety officials have “absolved Toyota, and said driver error was to blame for most of the incidents”. Initial news travels much more than clarifications of it afterwards however. Many more people heard Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood suggest that consumers should stop driving their Toyotas than when he said “We feel that Toyotas are safe to drive”. The impact on Toyota’s reputation was enough for profit to fall 39% in the December-ended quarter.

Even after this hit to their reputation and having to deal with the earthquakes and tsunami however, Toyota is coming back and ready to handle the competition with 20 new or heavily updated Toyota/Lexus products coming over the next 18 months.

Bryant Hsiao recently commented on a post by Maddie Erjavec on advertising unhealthy foods to children. Maddie posed the question as to whether it is right for companies to advertise unhealthy foods to an audience who is not yet capable of making good judgements. Bryant said he believed it was not wrong because companies are not doing it with bad intentions, but only as a marketing strategy used to help the business succeed in accomplishing their main priority (ie profit). He further stated that children still have buyer power and that they have the ability to filter information and make good choices.

The incredible influence media can have on adults however, makes me believe children don’t really stand a chance. Insulin resistance doesn’t concern children when they see a magical rabbit showing the wonders of a colourful, sweet cereal. Maddie said among other countries, the Australian Food and Grocery Council “declared that they stopped using promotional characters that advertise unhealthy foods to children under 12”, and I believe Canada should do the same.

Having a little brother myself I see how much of an influence TV has on him everyday. Children aren’t just not smart enough not to know better however, advertising influences us all regardless of whether or not we would like to admit it.

Don’t you want some?

Robert Himler has purchased his fourth Lamborghini now. What makes him exceptional however, is the fact that he isn’t legally old enough to drink alcohol yet. A 20 year old self taught programmer, Robert is a true entrepreneur.

His latest project is razzi.me, a photo sharing website similar to flickr. Robert thought it was wrong that he was getting thousands of views on his photos, and yet was making no profit from it. He saw an opportunity. In a similar way youtube pays members, razzi.me uses Google adsense in order for members to receive payment.

It wasn’t so simple however. Robert spent 12 months of hard work to create it. He uses his youtube videos of his Lamborghinis to attract attention to his site, and has a “10 second signup” allowing him to gain users quickly. His business can scale to any size, has very low maintenance and overhead costs, very little risk, and his year of hard work contains the side effect of a high barrier of entry. Someone cannot just recreate his work overnight, or simply copy and past some code. The only risk is in relying on Google not changing their payment policy for his model.

read more: http://razzi.me/about, http://www.secretentourage.com/success-stories/robert-himler/

When I thought of an entrepreneurial company, Evernote was the first that came to mind. Evernote is a web service that allows users to store notes and data online and across almost all devices.

It is innovative because of its compatibility, ease of access, and especially because of its text recognition within images (allows you to search for text that appears in your pictures) that gives it its competitive advantage. Evernote has also been the first app on the iPad 2 that used the new smart cover as a tool in its program to ‘peek’ at notes or flashcards.

The main reason it is entrepreneurial however, is because of its initial risk and the speed and amount of wealth creation is has involved. Evernote initially started 4 years ago with 9 million dollars in angel investments. As of this date Evernote has now raised 95.5 million dollars in funding, and is only continuing to grow and become more well known, showing a very successful example of what an entrepreneurial company is capable of.

Read more at: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/evernote#src3