Mark Bivens
5 Ineffective approaches to VC funding in France
Although there are no guaranteed methods to successful VC funding in France, some approaches are doomed from the start. Here are five such missteps I’ve witnessed, all from just the past few months, and of course kept anonymous because I believe in second chances. Send me a blind teaser, aka Project X, containing such a […]
Rude VC: Losing Our Religion
Your Rude VC returns following a week off the grid with family. Part of my travels took me through New York, during which I indulged on two of my favorite weaknesses: authentic New York bagels, and pastrami on rye from a Brooklyn deli. Of course, nowadays I don’t have to travel all the way to […]
Rude VC: Givers, Matchers, and Takers
An interesting conversation I enjoyed last week directed me toward some research by Adam Grant, a tenured professor of organizational psychology at Wharton. Grant’s research, on which he elaborates in his upcoming book, Give and Take, (and encapsulated in a great article by Susan Dominus in the NY Times Magazine), espouses the notion of how […]
Quaero: Sorry No Results Found
“Seek and ye shall find,” thundered Ed Harris from behind bars in a pitiful 1995 film called Just Cause that was a knock-off of Silence of the Lambs and In the Heat of the Night. Harris’ character, a wanna-be Hannibal Lecter, causing the whole movie theater to burst out laughing in ridicule at the over-the-top […]
Rude VC: Regional incubators
Friday I had the pleasure of spending the day at Cap Omega, the Montpellier-based incubator of startups sponsored by the region of Languedoc-Roussillon. In conjunction with OSEO, many regions of France organize such events in order to enable the most promising tech startups of the particular region to meet investors and business angels from all […]
Rude VC: Silicon Valley’s secret sauce
Over the past few weeks in this space, inspired by Fleur Pellerin’s current government initiative to replicate Silicon Valley, I’ve recapped some of the history of the region and reconsidered the wisdom of attempts to reproduce the Silicon Valley model elsewhere. I submit that trying to imitate Silicon Valley is futile. However, France’s government and […]
Voulez-vous Yahoo ?
A worrying phenomenon is brewing among a handful of French companies that are using the brouhaha at Yahoo! as an excuse to forbid working from home. Unless you’ve miraculously escaped the tireless media coverage, you’re aware that Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer announced last month that she was abolishing the firm’s work-from-home policy, saying that to […]
Rude VC: Copying Silicon Valley
A couple weeks ago I provided a very succinct recap of the Silicon Valley narrative. For a more in-depth review, A History of Silicon Valley by Piero Scaruffi and Arun Rao might well be the most comprehensive, and Robert Cringely’s Accidental Empires focuses on the pc industry empire-building during the pre-web era. Understanding the Silicon […]
Rude VC: Why I’m enthusiastic about HTML5
I find that my best venture investing tends to happen when I structure my thinking around investment themes or theses. One current thesis I hold is that HTML5 will usher in a democratizing force comparable to the advent of web itself. It almost sounds like I’m overstating the obvious when I think about it like […]
Rude VC: The Valley of Heart’s Delight
Spot quiz: What region is formerly known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight ? Here’s a hint: it’s not Blackstone Valley in Massachusetts, nor is it Berlin, East London, and especially not Saclay, France. A swathe of apple orchards and orange groves spanning Santa Clara County in Northern California is what gave Silicon Valley this […]