I’m at the Colombo Hackathon. It’s pretty great, I can barely get a blog out. The amount and quality of startup ideas is impressive, and now people are working on realifying those ideas in teams. It’s quite inspiring really. There’s also an exit, ie, you can cash out, theoretically. Venture Engine is looking for business proposals which get polished and put in front of actual investors, including the Indian Angel Network.

IPS did a survey on how Sri Lankans think we can create more jobs. The results are out now. Check the link for some of their ideas. These are my own.

In two words, the Central Bank. Out of fear of money laundering or whatever, they aren’t taking the simple steps to enable Sri Lankan businesses to compete online. Seriously, there is no efficient or simple payment gateway. The ones the banks do are all closed, ugly and actually insecure. Other international suppliers like 2Checkout or MoneyBookers are not nearly as simple. I’m not saying PayPal is great, but it’s good. The Central Bank really needs to get it together.

They’ve been building this thing on Duplication Road called the Colombo Courtyard. I thought it was a mall, but turns out its a boutique city hotel. I wandered in there and both the staff and the place are very nice. This fellow Gihan kindly showed me around. Here are some photos.

Minister Bandula Gunawardena has said that a family can live on Rs. 7,500 a month if they don’t eat out so much. This is madness. He’s taken two random data points from his meanderings when there’s an actual Household Income And Expenditure Survey that tells you what the average family spends. It’s Rs. 13,000 a month on food, which isn’t even eating that well.

MarketWatch’s William Spain has filed some pretty comprehensive reports from Sri Lanka, including this one on the general business climate. This month has been the yearly war-acid flashback in the international media, but the overall reality is that the war is over. He’s travelled around and got some damn good quotes/stories. I’m including a few here.

This is my Sunday column for the Nation. The new layout is actually nice, you can buy the physical and have some comparative advantage. Anyways. As follows: The economy is looking kinda bubbly. I’ve talked to people from the top to the middle and their basic complaint is that some people are making out like bandits while everybody else is getting robbed. That’s kinda definition of a bubble. It’s also a recipe for collapse.

The IPS, which I know mainly through Anushka Wijesinha, is holding a thing tomorrow on how Sri Lanka can create more jobs. Or even what that means. Everybody wants a job, to move out of the house, to fix the house, to expand it. Maybe get a motorbike, a van, a car. No matter how much infrastructure you build, if people don’t have jobs they can’t use it. So jobs are important.

Trishaw drivers being pissed off is not news. Connected businessmen pissed off, however, is. Lately I’ve been hearing the same thing from across the social spectrum, even from people working with the government. Mahinda’s catchers and cronies are messing stuff up and they can’t move. Be it daily bread or 10-year investments, the government has messed everything up, and people are pissed.

This Week In Startups is a show about startups, presumably weekly. They’re going to be in Colombo (either physically or metaphysically, not quite sure) and are looking for five startups to pitch on their show. I’ve previously written about startup culture (or the lack thereof), but it’s obviously developing. So who’s going to pitch?