Subject: RE: Snowflake Update
From: "Neil Callahan" <[email-masked]>
To: "'Hunter Biden'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:18:22 -0400

Thanks – I wanted to make sure we had that call to keep pushing.

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Neil Callahan

Rosemont Seneca

401 Greenwich Street, Suite 400 | New York NY 10013 | 212-933-9965 | 212-796-4037

1010 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 705 | Washington DC 20007 | 202-333-1880

917-945-9516 (mobile) 

866-749-8879  (fax) 

From: Hunter Biden [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 11:47 AM
To: <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Snowflake Update

I was joking

R. Hunter Biden

202-333-1880

On Sep 24, 2010, at 11:33 AM, "Neil Callahan" <[email-masked]> wrote:

I think so.  You know him better than me.

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Neil Callahan

Rosemont Seneca

401 Greenwich Street, Suite 400 | New York NY 10013 | 212-933-9965 | 212-796-4037

1010 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 705 | Washington DC 20007 | 202-333-1880

917-945-9516 (mobile) 

866-749-8879  (fax) 

From: Hunter Biden [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 11:12 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Snowflake Update

Are we talking about the same Jay???

R. Hunter Biden

Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC

202-333-1880

212-933-9965

 

On Sep 24, 2010, at 10:50 AM, Neil Callahan wrote:

I think Jay could lead our “editorial/analysis” team and build a bull pen of folks from GT or GW and train how to read our weather tools and write reports according to a methodology.  He has the gravitas to stand up in front of the CEO of Chevron and discuss Nigeria – respectfully, more so than any of us.

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Neil Callahan

Rosemont Seneca

401 Greenwich Street, Suite 400 | New York NY 10013 | 212-933-9965 | 212-796-4037

1010 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 705 | Washington DC 20007 | 202-333-1880

917-945-9516 (mobile)

866-749-8879  (fax)

From: Hunter Biden [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 10:08 AM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: 'Chris Heinz'; 'Eric Schwerin'; 'Devon Archer'
Subject: Re: Snowflake Update

I'd like to hear more on the "influence program" and how we all see that playing out.  Also, who besides Thad (outside IPS team) will be contributing to the Editorial leg of the stool.  i think that is a critical question.  There needs to be someone smart enough and knowledgable enough about any given subject matter that can present in both the theoretical deep thinking of Thad and simple enough for me to understand.  Finally, where are we on beginning to think about the "heat map" idea--- is that what you refer to as "weather report" under building blocks?

Thanks for the update it seems like things are moving along.  Should I call Mike about getting agreement signed?

R. Hunter Biden

Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC

202-333-1880

212-933-9965

 

On Sep 23, 2010, at 10:58 PM, Neil Callahan wrote:

Hi guys,

I had a very good working session with Curt today.  He reviewed all of the country reports we sent over from DB and Eurasia group.  His commentary was good and at times amusing.  He said the “Ian Bremmer, Welcome back from Summer” report, was in essence not worth the time to even read it.  So the bar is extremely low, and the flip side, the market’s propensity to “pay a lot” is also undeveloped.

Curt also said that all the issues addressed by the reports were essentially low risk issues that would have a minimal impact no matter what the outcome.  None of the reports addressed any difficult issues.  So by design, they cannot really add significant value.

Within IPS there has been quite a bit of discussion, an in academic fashion, Curt, Ronnie and Thad are independently drafting their own “sections” if you will of what the offering should look like building off of our progress last week.  Essentially Curt is responsible for the building blocks and core tools/elements, Thad is responsible for the editorial and Ronnie is taking a shot at the big picture/positioning.

We worked through each quite well.  And this all builds on out 3 step approach we laid out – country report, key political debates, and client specific questions.

1.        Building Blocks

a.       Think of the vernacular about the weather report – temperature, dew point, barometric pressure and at times hurricane, blizzard, type language, gauges, markers.  So our “weather system” will have the building blocks that will be consistent for each Country report (and lend themselves to being automated. . .) and how we look at elites and individual political actors. 

b.      This will also allow us to “teach” clients how to use the tools and to anticipate how to interpret.

c.       Today’s political risk reports in the market are interesting, but completely inconsistent and mostly a meandering random walk of information. 

d.      Curt is driving this piece

2.       Editorial

a.       Thad is driving how we “assess” the data and identify the possible outcomes and start to “handicap” which outcomes are likely in the context of all the other relevant political issues. 

b.      We talked a lot of “saliency” (how important is an issues really) and the sequence of how political issues are addressed.  As in the US – sequencing Healthcare, then Fin Reg then Climate Change caused the Democrats to run out of time and political will – what if Fin Reg went first, would all 3 have gotten done this year? 

c.       So “scenario” analysis would be a part of this.

3.       Positioning

a.       Ronnie is driving this and I think his ideas are very interesting and could get the whole world interested in talking to us.  The basic idea is, we have a perfect understanding of what occurred surrounding a particular event 2-3 years after it happened.  Look at all the books, documentaries, research, etc. on 9/11, the Financial Crisis, etc. – 2-3 years out we have an incredible understanding of what happened and why and what all the after effects were.  So this is T + 24-36 months for perfect understanding

b.      What if we were able to have a capability to provide T + 2 weeks for perfect understanding of an event?  So 2 weeks after 9/11 or 2 weeks after the Fall of Lehman Brothers – we’d have an accurate view into why it happened, what led up to it and what are the likely outcomes already in the systems that will/could work their way through over the next time period.  If we had this capability, we’d literally rule the world.

c.       So I think this is brilliant positioning, because the promise is so enticing and simply explained, that someone managing risk would be a fool not to try it out.

We also talked about an additional capability of putting and action plan in place to address / influence events – so more of an implementation of an influence program to drive and outcome and then using our tools to measure the impact and effectiveness.  IPS does this today, and we could have a sister capability to created influence recommendations and to go into the field and try implemented the drive outcomes.

We discussed Nigeria and Chevron.  He was very excited and thought the complexities of Nigeria would allow us to create a very compelling country report.  He said it would take him (personally, working alone) about 6-10 weeks to do a Nigeria report.  So Nigeria could be country #2.

I encourage him to ask Thad to send the Term Sheet back.  He said that us being persistent with Thad with follow up is a good thing and encouraged us to continue doing it.

So good progress.  More to come.

Best,

Neil

 

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Neil Callahan

Rosemont Seneca

401 Greenwich Street, Suite 400 | New York NY 10013 | 212-933-9965 | 212-796-4037

1010 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 705 | Washington DC 20007 | 202-333-1880

917-945-9516 (mobile)

866-749-8879  (fax)