'venture capital' Category
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My personal crib sheet for equity incentive instruments in French startups
June 2, 2016As venture investors, we favor equity compensation in our portfolio companies for two primary reasons: i) improved alignment between employees and shareholders toward company success; and ii) the affordability of employing strong, driven people without an unwieldy up-front cash outlay. For investors unfamiliar with the intricacies of French regulation, granting equity in a French startup […]
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Longevity of the firm and zombie corporations
May 20, 2016In stark contrast to say, The Netherlands, France bemoans the moment one of its home-grown emerging champions gets acquired by a foreign company. [I have a whole blog post in my head on just this topic alone]. Corporations are viewed in France as containers of jobs, with the obligation to provide secure employment to its […]
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Name-dropping
May 11, 2016Although the proportion of startup pitches employing a technique of name-dropping may well have remained more or less constant over the past several years, I notice that this animal of pretension has evolved. When I first moved to France in 2001, the most common variation of name-dropping from startups involved citing one’s university (inevitably, une […]
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Musings on hardware investing in France
May 3, 2016Since May is hardware month in Paris, I’ve been reflecting lately on venture capital investing in French hardware startups. I’m far from an expert on hardware investing — only a small fraction of my VC portfolio over the years has been in hardware. Despite this, I’ve noticed an order-of-magnitude leap in incoming deal flow from […]
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Mobile Gaming: Is it Gotcha time for Gacha ?
April 16, 2016Four years ago almost exactly to the day, I mused about this period of disruption and renewal signified by sakura (cherry blossoms). The blooming of the sakura in Japan marks the arrival of spring, representing not only a renewal of the seasons but also a rebirth of many facets of life: the start of a […]
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A European perspective on Japan Fintech
April 7, 2016Yesterday I was unexpectedly invited to join a live broadcast at the Tokyo Bankers Association discussing Fintech. It appears that many of the market dynamics affecting the financial sector in Europe are similar in Japan, so I touched on these. While one could argue that the landscape for European Fintech startups has reached saturation levels […]
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There’s a new « mot de buzz » in town
March 24, 2016Maybe it’s because I was out of France for 8 of the past 11 weeks, but it feels like there’s a new buzzword in the air: Ubérisation It’s difficult to open a French website without the seeing the word in a headline; journalists cannot get enough of it. One would be forgiven for thinking that […]
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The France Japan Year of Innovation is more than mere words
March 1, 2016Government-sponsored initiatives involving startups and innovation often meet skepticism. I understand because I often tend to be one of the skeptics. It’s a familiar drill. A group of politicians announce with great fanfare some theme of cross-border collaboration, accompanied by numerous platitudes extolling the virtues of entrepreneurship, job creation, etc. The official framework here dates […]
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The lifecycle of a Fintech startup
February 5, 2016I couldn’t resist re-publishing this Financial Times characterization of the Lifecycle of a Fintech Startup (If you pitch my Fintech partner, be prepared to respond to a question about which phase you’re in !):
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Words I never expected to hear from a founder
February 2, 2016The Founder/CEO of a tech startup I’ve been following for a while caught me off guard the other day. This is not a company in which I’ve invested, mainly because its activity falls outside our fund’s investment sweet spot. Yet it’s a compelling venture for VC backing given its robust and defensible technology that offers […]
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FrenchTech: One step forward, three steps back
January 26, 2016For entrepreneurs and investors in the French tech ecosystem (and even potentially for outsiders looking in), it has been a discouraging couple of weeks for us. While I still believe that 2016 will be the year of the European entrepreneur, I sincerely hope that politicians do not thwart France’s momentum in innovation when we’re just […]
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5 smart European VC predictions for 2016
January 13, 2016Last year’s Predictions on the State of VC in Europe 2015 proved so popular that I decided to do it again. Here are some insightful predictions for 2016 from five of my more prophetic peers. Dmitry Chikhachev, Runa Capital, Russia I would predict 2 trends for VC in Europe in 2016: 1) a growing number […]