Five Questions with Rita Ferrandino, MD, ARC Capital Development

Rita Ferrandino, Managing Director, ARC Capital Development, will be teaching a Master Class on March 9, 2009 at the 10th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum at the Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona. She will be joined by her business partner Kevin Custer, currently the CEO of Kinderstreet Operation, LLC.

You can join Ferrandino and Custer by registering now: by clicking on the link to our registration page.

Rita Ferrandino and Kevin Custer Answer Questions about the Future of Education Investment

EIIF: What act of strategic investment in the education industry by any player in the past five years do you admire most, and what was its outcome?

Rita Ferrandino & Kevin CusterStudent Information Systems (SIS) - Pearson bought the two largest players in the student information system market which were PowerSchool and Chancery to add to the Pearson portfolio of SIS offerings.

Thus, Pearson bought their largest competitors and now owns the entire SIS marketplace.

EIIFWhat industry genre will have the most influence in the future of education over the next five years?


RF & KCPreK Education Market Segment

We believe the amount of investment into the PreK education segment will produce results quickly. The traditional school day is finite. The introduction or addition of PreK education is a unique opportunity for upside.

EIIF: If you could name any industry within education that requires the most change, what industry is it and what changes do you think it needs?

RF & KC
Teacher Education

Our future depends on our ability to develop of the next generation of teachers. We need to proactively recruit the best and brightest teachers.

As an industry, we need to improve teacher compensation, training, and keeping highly qualified teachers engaged.

EIIF: What inspirational idea outside of education has had a dominant effect on how you do business?

RF & KC

Web 2.0 technology
The barriers of entry to starting and launching a new business are dropping due to Web 2.0 technology

EIIF:
For an education company or for profit school that is looking to grow, what is the one thing they need to be prepared to do before meeting investors or before launching their product or service into the marketplace?

RF & KC:
Know your customer.
Understand intimately what that customer will pay for.

Details on the Ferrandino-Custer Master Class, 9.00AM March 2, 2009 at the Biltmore Resort & Spa

Maximize Distribution and Ensure Returns on Capital Investment by Utilizing Effective Political and Commercial Marketing Solutions

• Fine tune government interactions by learning political marketing strategies and incorporating their resources into a business plan to ensure rapid uptake of products and ideas in school districts
• Calibrate investment strategies for K12 by leveraging networks, employing best practice in marketing to decision-makers
• Familiarize yourself with technologies that deepen your level of investment and commercial involvement with end users and end practitioners in public schools
• Employ social media and web 2.0 to radically boost investment return and leverage soft-power relationships to further your company and investment house’s interests

Rita Ferrandino, Managing Director, ARC Capital Development
Kevin Custer, Partner, ARC Capital Development

Download the EIIF brochure and register early.

Future Leaders Institute Auction

For the rest of the day you can bid on items up for sale. The auction is put on by The Future Leaders Institute of New York City.

Why China is not Holding the American Economy for Ransom

Many people fear the immense amount of US debt held by foriegn countries. But Richard Spencer makes a case why this is not necessary:

Peston I think is falling into a common trap here of thinking that because China holds 1.9 trillion dollars of foreign exchange reserves, including more than 600 billion dollars in US treasury bonds, it holds all the cards, and America should do what China tells it to. But as I have argued before, this is a symbiotic relationship, in which both sides were caught in a trap - China couldn't stop overproducing, and through its currency interventions ensured that America could happily go on buying. That's what led to the US trade deficit. Both sides failed to bring this imbalance to an end on time, and both sides will now suffer. This goes for Britain too, of course.

Chinese officials themselves are now going around and saying of America that it should be nice to people who lend it money.

But in some ways this is an old saw: it has been common enough for people to talk about the inevitable transfer of power from America to China in the coming years as being the result of China becoming "America's bank".

Yet China is not America's bank. America is China's bank. This is pretty obvious when you think about it. You don't need to be an economist; you just need to think about your own bank accounts.

Why Robert Peston is Wrong.

Student Loan Corporation to Cut 91 Jobs

Saw this on Thomson Financial wire and now on Forbes today: Student Loan Corporation to cut 91 jobs.

Shift Happens

Looking at the web today:

this wonderful collection of insights and facts that is viral by nature. I don't know the original author, but I found it at Chris Knudsen's blog.

* If you are one in a million in China, there are 1,300 people just like you
* The smartest top 25% of people in China represent a population greater than all of North America
* China will soon have more English speakers in its population than any other country in the world
* In the next eight minutes, 60 babies will be born in America. 351 will be born in India
* By the age of 38 you will have had between 10 and 14 jobs
* 1 in 4 Americans are working in the first year of their current job
* The U.S. ranks 20th in the world for broadband penetration.
* In 2002Â Nintendo invested more in R&D than the federal government (excludes military R&D)
* 1 in 8 married U.S. couples met online
* There are 2.7 billion searches on Google each month. Where were these questions addressed to before Google?
* There are more than 6 billion sms messages sent everyday
* There are 540,000 words in the English language -- five times more than there were in 1800
* 3,000 books are published daily
* More knowledge exists in one week of the New York Times than a person was able to access in their entire lifetime in the 1800’s
* 1.5 exabytes of information will be created this year -- that’s more than was created in the previous 5,000 years
* What a college freshman learns this year will be outdated by his junior year of college
* Fiber optics capacity is tripling every six months
* The $100 laptop project will ship 50 to 100 million laptops per year to people in underdeveloped countries. There were 47 million laptops shipped world wide last year
* By 2023 a $1000 computer will exceed the capacity of the human brain
* By 2047 a $1000 computer will exceed the capacity of the human race