Beaches in Rio: Grumari, Macumba, Prainha, Pepê, Ipanema, Leblon, Copacabana

Beaches in Niterói: Itacoatiara, Camboinhas, Itaipu, Piratininga

Flying: Hang-gliding in Pedra Bonita; Experimental Ultra Light in CEU, Barra

Trekking: into Floresta da Tijuca and up to Pedra Bonita and Pedra da Gávea

Lunch in Pedra da Guaratiba in Tia Palmira

Best place to stay in your 1st time in Rio: Leblon or Ipanema

Shopping: Ipanema, Leblon, Sao Conrado, Barra

Rent a bike around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas

Visit close cities like Petrópolis, Teresópolis, Itaipava, Araras, Penedo, Búzios, Cabo Frio, Arraial do Cabo, Angra dos Reis (if you like boating), Parati

Boat ride in the Guanabara Bay (many choices)

Sailing – any time, anywhere in Rio or Niterói

Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MAC) in Boa Viagem, Niterói

Fishermen village in Jurujuba, Niterói

Sugar Loaf (Pão de Açúcar)

Cristo Redentor in Corcovado

Lapa at early night (walk and visit some bars like Rio Scenarium)

Downtown Rio in the morning (Saturday perferably with an official tour guide)

Visit one or more favelas – during daytime – among Vidigal [at the entrance is OK], Rio das Pedras, Dona Marta

RESULT BRAZIL

Result, Europe’s leading growth partner for entrepreneurial companies within Internet, Telecom and new media, today in a press conference in Beijing launched a Joint Venture with Symbio, a leading Chinese innovation partner with 1200 employees in 7 offices in Asia and 6 offices in the US with clients like IBM, Microsoft, HP and Dell. Result Symbio will focus on helping European companies enter Asia by building a bridge between Result’s 14 European and South American offices and Symbio’s asian operations.

- Together we will be able to offer [Swedish] and European companies a Chinese market entry with everything from strategy to finance, technology development, local adaptation and also operational teams to drive local operations, says founder and CEO of Result, Ola Ahlvarsson.

- There are several European companies that have proved their business model in Europe that could take the step into the Chinese market, but to get the best conditions to succeed you need a strong local partner, continues Ahlvarsson.

About Symbio

Symbio leverages China outsourcing teams to help companies become global leaders. It helps organizations accelerate their software development and testing cycles by optimal application of its global resources and delivery models. Symbio also localizes and supports technology products for any language or locale. Founded in 1994 by a group of engineers from IBM’s international research and development labs in Asia, Symbio now functions as a cost-effective and highly efficient extension of an organization’s development, testing and globalization teams. Symbio’s clients include AOL, BMC, CA, Citigroup, EMC, FileNet, BIM and more. For further information on Symbio, visit www.symbio-group.com

Result is the European leader in helping companies expand internationally and has during the last 9 years helped over 130 companies to expand internationally. Result’s clients range from giants like Google to hot start-up companies including Xing, Fon, Rebtel and Web Power. Result also owns the SIME conference, norther Europe’s largest conference on digital possibilities.

Betting the fazenda: a different kind of risk-taking

The Economist

SETTLE down at one of São Paulo’s sushi bars and before long you will overhear a discussion about a start-up business making energy from obscure weeds, or some other bright idea for relieving members of the country’s growing middle class of their disposable income. A field study of this kind displays a strong sample bias, but the point is clear: Brazil does not lack go-getters. Yet according to a more thorough survey backed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a sister organisation of the World Bank, Brazilian entrepreneurs are a strikingly different breed to their peers in Russia and China.

Overall, some 82% of entrepreneurs in all three countries came from families with at least one other entrepreneur. They also tended to be taller than the average. But there the similarities end. In particular, Brazilian entrepreneurs seem to have a much lower appetite for risk.

The researchers measured this by offering interviewees hypothetical bets of varying risk and reward, and offering a choice between cash now or more money at a later date. The entrepreneurs in the sample were no more risk-taking than other Brazilians, and were also more likely to retire if offered a windfall than their peers elsewhere.

Perhaps this lack of staying power is because there are many more pleasant things to do in Brazil than work. But why should Brazilians be so risk-averse? Simeon Djankov, one of the study’s authors, hypothesises that in real life Brazilian entrepreneurs run bigger risks than those elsewhere. Starting a business takes 152 days and requires 18 different procedures, according to the IFC’s annual worldwide “Doing Business” study. It takes 2,600 hours for a medium-sized business to keep up with its taxes each year. The same hypothetical business would pay 69% of its second-year profits in tax, if it played by the rules and did not receive special tax breaks.

Brazilian entrepreneurs show an unsurprising willingness to bend the law. “Essentially what determines good entrepreneurship in Brazil is the ability to navigate around the bureaucracy,” suggests Mr Djankov. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, an economist, concurs: “If Bill Gates had started Microsoft in a garage in Brazil, it would still be in the garage.” Harder to explain than why Brazil’s entrepreneurs are as they are is why they exist at all.

Brazil has evolved in many areas in the last 10 years, since 1998. The numbers below give us a better vision.

Subject            1998  ==> 2008

Population      141,3 M   191,8 M

Voting POP    75,8 M     127,5 M

GDP (R$)       1,55 Tri    2,63 Tri

GDP/capita     10.973      13.718

Poverty           20.9%       11.4%

Gini index       0.62          0.57

Export(US$)   33,8 Bi    182,8 Bi

Inflation          980%        4,5%

Result is working together with Datadistic Holdings to expand it worldwide. Datadistic is a company founded in Argentina in 2003, expanding into several other markets with its network platform which provides accurate information for decision makers in the business of football: coaches, clubs, agents, investors, speakers, media companies and professionals in general.

The company provides statistics on games, personal and professional data of the players and referees in order to support the whole industry, including media companies, to enhance their business related to football. It also displays video images of some of the plays of the public games, to assure its information is the reality of the facts.

From 2006 to 2007 most of the largest exporting Brazilian companies faced high growth selling to international markets. The 6 biggest exporters were:

Company        2007 Export Sales      Growth from 2006     Sector

Petrobras         US$ 13.6 bi                +23%                    energy/oil

Vale                US$ 7.9 bi                  +32%                    mining

Embraer          US$ 4.7 bi                  +45%                    aircraft

BUNGE             US$ 3 bi                     +35%                    food

VW                 US$ 2.1 bi                  – 7%                   automobiles

Sadia               US$ 2 bi                    +19%                    food

As we can see, most of them faced double digits growth mostly driven by their sales to emerging markets (Asia and East Europe). During 2008 growth rate shall continue, but not as high due to smaller activity in the USA (with impact to emerging markets).

Our team is committed to find great opportunities to help the South American markets to evolve, and also to help Brazilian and Argentinean companies to better understand what is likely to be ahead of us.

This time Marcos J. Sousa and Fernando G. Martinez are invited to participate at the excellent SIME Innovation Day on February 7 in Stockholm on behalf of Result and Datadistic. Please visit www.sime.nu

Sponsored by Google, Ericsson and Telenor, SIME Innovation Day connects 100+ top selected companies to cooperate in their future business. CEOs and leading executives of the sponsors and participant companies work together to enhance and share their vision, to learn about what is trendy in the market, and perhaps to set up strategic partnerships.

Visit www.sime.nu to learn more about SIME Scandinavian Interactive Media Event and why we believe this is important to your future digital initiatives. If you like to consider going to SIME 2008, please contact us.

A Wi-Fi Alliance, entidade certificadora de aparelhos compatí­veis com esta tecnologia, obteve recorde de pedidos de autenticação de novos dispositivos em 2006, e identificou uma tendências do Wi-Fi para além dos tradicionais laptops, com grande número de pedidos de certificação de câmeras digitais, PDAs, e, especialmente, telefones móveis.

A Alliance certificou mais de mil novos dispositivos nos ultimos 15 meses, tres vezes mais que a taxa de certificacoes obtida nos ulltimos 3 meses. Destes mil dispositivos, cerca de 20% se referiam a aparelhos nao-tradicionais, ou seja, nao eram dispositivos padrao para a conexao de laptops com roteadores Wi-Fi. Ao contrario, muitos eram servidores de mi­dia, como set top boxes da Sony, Philips e Apple; video-games moveis como o Play Station Portatil da Sony; grande numero de cameras digitais e tocadores de musica portateis, e mais de 100 diferentes celulares dual-mode, que congregam Wi-Fi com outra tecnologia, como GSM, por exemplo.

A ABI Research estima que em 2012 mais de 1,2 bilhao de chipsets Wi-Fi serao vendidos, e destes, cerca de 500 milhoes estarao embutidos em celulares moveis. Os 700 milhoes restantes estarao divididos quase igualmente entre outros aparelhos eletronicos e os tradicionais equipamentos de redes para computadores. O segmento de telefones tem recebido atencao particular das operadoras dos EUA e Uniao Europeia, que lancaram comercialmente suas redes em frequencias moveis nao licenciadas (UMA, na sigla em ingles), que dependem de Wi-Fi e de uma conexao banda larga caseira para rotear as chamadas de volta para o nucleo de voz das operadoras.

A great video taken at TechTalk Menorca (via Loic Le Meur) with Ola Ahlvarsson, CEO of Result. He talks about issues when a small growing company goes international.
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/2007/05/how_to_take_you.html

If you take a look at Ola’s right, you will see Martin Varsavsky, CEO of FON http://www.fon.com and Tarik Krim, CEO of Netvibes http://www.netvibes.com . Two great entrepreneurs often helped by Result and vice versa, as we all grow our businesses internationally.