'venture capital' Category
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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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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. […]
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Happy 2014
January 7, 2014. . . . . Happy new year to all the readers of this blog. May 2014 be full of enjoyment and enlightenment ! I was recently solicited for my 2014 wishes for the French tech ecosystem. Here’s the answer I gave, and I encourage to read many other insightful and incisive new year’s wishes […]
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2013 landing on a good note
December 17, 2013Various topics have been tumbling around my brain about which to write in this last post of 2013 on France’s startup ecosystem. There’s the alarming passage of a wide-reaching French surveillance law, or yet another French fiscal flap like the Eckert proposal, and of course the depressing pronouncements by Arnaud Montebourg at LeWeb last week. […]
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Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em
December 10, 2013During a panel at a tech conference several years back, a seasoned and respected French early-stage VC that I will not name boasted about how he (of course it’s a ‘he’) had never had a portfolio company go bankrupt. Needless to say, this remark was an eyebrow-raiser for me about France’s venture capital sector. My […]
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Investing in competing firms
November 26, 2013The other day my partner received a fundraising teaser from an intermediary which contained a section on the project’s competitive landscape. The competition mapping followed the common quadrant format, yet to my partner’s astonishment, included one of our existing portfolio companies smack in the sweet spot of this project’s competition. To solicit us for fundraising […]
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The latest local example of how business model can go from sweet to bitter
November 19, 2013It seems that almost on a weekly basis these days an emblematic French company falls into financial distress. The most recent which caught my attention is Hédiard. It’s impossible to wander through a chic quartier of Paris without seeing a Hédiard store. The venerable French brand synonymous with French gourmet foodstuffs counts nearly 200 years […]
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Disruption here, there, everywhere
November 12, 2013So with the announcement of PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ acquisition of Booz & Co. (formerly Booz Allen & Hamilton) the other day, another strategy consulting firm joins one of the Big 4 accounting firms. This announcement spurred me to think about the indisputable trend of the Big 4 scooping up strategic advisories. In 2010 PWC purchased Diamond Management […]
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Maybe Local matters after all
November 6, 2013Two years ago I wrote a short blurb entitled, “Does Local Matter?” in which I provocatively questioned the future relevance of the Local network component in the overhyped buzzwords of Social / Local / Mobile. We even jumped on the bandwagon by launching a tax-optimizing holding vehicle called SoLoMoCo to focus on this fad. So […]
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Don’t shoot the messenger (app)
October 29, 2013In continuity of last week’s piece on the arrival the Japanese mobile game models to Europe, I thought it appropriate to discuss another tech trend in Asia which makes me enthusiastic for potential investment opportunities, even here on the old continent: the next-generation of mobile messaging apps. Most Europeans are familiar with WhatsApp, Viber, Kik, […]