'venture capital' Category
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Will Japan ban ICOs ? Constructive regulation more likely.
October 14, 2017A lot of people have been asking my opinion on whether Japan will ban ICOs. China and South Korea have essentially implemented full-on bans of cryptocurrency and ICOs. A Siberian winter for cryptocurrencies also appears imminent in Russia. So will Japan follow suit ? The short answer is: I really don’t know, but I think […]
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Japan: Bitcoin #1
October 7, 2017Despite Japan’s accounting for half of the worldwide bitcoin trading volume daily (yes, half !), I could not locate any substantial research on this fascinating phenomenon. Frustrated by this absence, I decided to write a book about it. A primer on the world’s leading country for bitcoin and blockchain adoption Japan, the world’s third largest […]
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Station F is real, and it’s spectacular
September 30, 2017On a brief trip to Paris last week I finally found an opportunity to visit the freshly opened Station F. In a former railway depot which spans the entire length of Tokyo Tower* on its side, Station F bills itself as the world’s largest startup campus. The facility opened its doors in July. Many people […]
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Japan fintech startup infographic
September 19, 2017Eighteen months ago I wrote about how bullish I was for venture investment in Japan’s fintech sector. Since then, a proliferation of new fintech startups have emerged, in parallel with Japanese VCs becoming much more active. An investor friend of mine even joked that we might now be approaching “peak fintech” here. He said this […]
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The board meeting question that consistently confounds
September 15, 2017And I don’t know where you wanna go, but I’m willing to take you there. — Chronixx, Somewhere (Perfect Key riddim) There is one question that consistently seems to stump startup management teams the first time I ask it in board meetings. I don’t ask it to deliberately throw management off balance. Rather, my goal […]
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Interview from Japan’s Cryptocurrency Conference
September 8, 2017Here’s the English version of the interview I gave at this week’s Japan Cryptocurrency Conference in Tokyo. You mentioned that you believe Japan is taking a leadership role in cryptocurrency. What did you mean by that? I was referring to both the government and the consumer. As another speaker explained, earlier this year the Japanese […]
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Exciting job opportunities
September 1, 2017With September marking the return from summer holidays in most countries, it’s a good time to reflect on a new professional challenge. To spur the creative juices, here are some current job openings within my current investment portfolio. There are a ton of incredible opportunities here in exciting locales, so take a look ! Amsterdam: […]
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Five takeaways from Japan’s AI Tech Leaders Summit
August 26, 2017Some of the Asia’s leading experts in artificial intelligence mingled yesterday with a small group of corporate acquirers, startups, and investors at the first ever Japan AI Summit. Here are my five takeaways from the interactions: 5. The sovereign gap is widening In advanced AI research, the U.S. still has the lead, but China has […]
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Yet another signal of how far France’s startup ecosystem has come
August 17, 2017I recall how when I first moved permanently to Paris over 16 years ago, finding people in the office during the month of August was highly unusual. It seemed that after the long weekend of July 14th, one couldn’t count on scheduling a meeting again before September 1st. This shutdown extended to the startup sector […]
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An inconvenient sequel about startup subsidies
August 6, 2017Last week’s piece about my contention that government subsidies for startups tend to be anti-lean in nature generated two almost diametrically opposed reactions. So here are some final thoughts about Lean Startup and subsidies, and then I’ll put the topic to rest for now. On one end, a couple readers became defensive, questioning how I […]
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The Lean Startup, Anti-lean subsidies, and other ramblings
July 31, 2017This year’s RudeVC summer reading list post generated an unexpected mini-debate in the comments section (LinkedIn version, can’t figure out how to link to it). The debate did not center on the 5 novels I recommended but rather focused on an afterthought recommendation I made at the end of the post for Eric Ries’ 2011 […]
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Summer reading list 2017
July 21, 2017Time for the RudeVC summer reading list again. Here are my picks for the summer of ’17. The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Mukherjee has a talent for crafting an engaging, page-turning narrative out of complex scientific topics. His first book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, won the […]