'technology' Category
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France’s “Paypal-killer” Paylib forgets to secure its dot-com
April 30, 2014In the past I’ve written about the importance of owning the dot-com domain extension. Even my grandmother grasped this notion.. Paylib, unfortunately for them, did not heed my grandmother’s advice. . . France’s attempt to create a Paypal-killer, the Paylib payment solution created by a consortium of three of France’s largest banks — BNP Paribas, […]
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Stickers-as-a-Service is the new SaaS
April 22, 2014LINE’s creators market finally opened up last week allowing third parties and independent illustrators to submit their sticker collections for distribution on the Line’s messenger app. In case you haven’t heard yet, there’s a sticker revolution going on. A recent article in Le Figaro deems the business still-as-yet unrecognized, but entrepreneurs know better. With all […]
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KO for the mobile web ?
April 15, 2014In a widely circulated piece last week entitled The Decline of the Mobile Web, Chris Dixon touches on a fashionable debate that suggests that the mobile web is in, well, decline, at the hands of the new walled gardens known as the app stores. In other words, that universal cycle of life that has been […]
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There’s a party goin’ on [not] here
March 25, 2014. There’s a party goin’ on right here A celebration to last throughout the years So bring your good times, and your laughter too We gonna celebrate your party with you Kool & The Gang probably did not have the stock market in mind when their hit song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 […]
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Can eBay’s failure in China teach us something in Europe ?
March 18, 2014Most of us in the West have never shopped on Tmall or Jingdong. Yet these two firms represent the leaders of the imminently largest e-commerce market in the world: China. Although JD (formerly 360Buy) is a distant second to Alibaba’s Tmall platform, the firm still served a cool $16 billion worth of goods to 140 […]
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How to create a monopoly for your app in 2014
March 4, 2014Pop quiz: what do Klyqme, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Line have in common? Answer: they all enjoy quasi-monopolies in certain markets for their apps. Klyqme is the pre-eminent sms-based social network in Indonesia (which is rapidly threatening to displace India among the elite group of BRICs in my opinion, but that’s fodder for another blog post) […]
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MWC 2014 – Embracing the fringe
February 26, 2014Two years ago I penned a piece in this very space entitled Europe still has a winner in Barça, in the form of the Mobile World Congress, and I believed it. The center of gravity has clearly been shifting away from the mobile operators and toward the handset vendors and content creators. In correlation with […]
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Time to party like it’s… ?
February 12, 2014A conversation with a particularly insightful investment banker (yes, such a breed does exist) inspired me to do a little research over the weekend. His observation was that 2013 reminded him a lot about 1998 in the tech sector. In 1998 I was an entrepreneur so consumed with my second startup that I rarely came […]
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Don’t judge every regulation by its cover
February 4, 2014Last month the French parliament voted in favor of a new law regulating the discounts allowed by book merchants. Sponsored by French Minister of Culture, Aurélie Filippetti, the “anti-Amazon law” is aptly nick-named as it set its sights directly on the $150 billion e-commerce giant by prohibiting its practice of combining a 5% price discount […]
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More 2014 predictions from local thought leaders
January 28, 2014Some of you may have reached the point of saturation on predictions for 2014, and I can empathize. Even here in this very space two weeks ago, I shared some forecasts of thought leaders I respect within Europe’s tech ecosystem. But I’m going to give you some more, for three reasons: i) I had promised […]
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The flaw in Uber’s surge-pricing algorithm
January 21, 2014Last week witnessed a lot of excitement around chauffered car services in France. On Monday Paris taxi drivers held a general strike, blocking airports and roads with their idle cars and in several incidents allegedly attacking competitive private car services. This comes on the heels of France’s introduction of its ’15-minute law’ designed to thwart […]
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Predictions for 2014 from smart people I know
January 14, 2014Good news: I’m not going to bore you with my own uninformed predictions this year. Even better news: the best visionaries I know have agreed to share their insight for 2014. These brilliant individuals, all within my portfolio and board network, represent that rare breed of visionary that also possess lucidity on the short-term, i.e. […]