Why it is wrong to worry about Robotics and AI
Sutton Trust releases report showing robotics and AI will worsen social mobility What it said and why it’s wrong by Luke Chambers One of the most repeated terms in relation to robotics is ‘Robotics will lead to significant job losses’ and ‘robots are replacing our workers’. So much so that it now competes […]
$0.10 ETH Flash Crash Aftermath and Moving Forward
Ether for only $0.10?! Sign me up! This was one side of the sentiment for traders when ETH prices fell sharply on June 21, 2017. The other side of the coin shows a significant concern and significant losses as more than 800 stop-loss orders were liquidated, or triggered, resulting in significant amounts of ETH being […]
Kik Announces Kin: Cryptocurrency on Ethereum
What would you do with a $1 billion valuation? For Kik, the answer is setting up and launching their own cryptocurrency. In 2015, Kik received funding to the tune of $50 million from Tencent Holdings, which put them into the Unicorn Club (inclusive only to startups with a billion dollar valuation or more). Now, in 2017, they […]
Consumer Tech: Empowering and Protecting the Vulnerable
Consumer technology is frequently thought of as a way to improve lives, from making online shopping easier to providing accurate and effortless climate control for vehicles and homes. Those innovations are commonly perceived to be a first world luxury, a way to improve what is already a relatively high quality of life. In some cases, the use of new technology […]
Betting Big on Robotic Prosthetics
Last month, a man in the Netherlands was among the first people in the world to receive a new type of click-on robotic arm. This new, rare kind of robotic prosthetic clicks directly into the bone and is able to be controlled by the patient’s thoughts, meaning that it opens up a whole new range […]
Artificial Synapses for Artificial Brains
Creating an artificial intelligence similar to the structure of the human brain carries a range of benefits that drastically outweigh any potential drawbacks. Apart from copying a human’s ability to think creatively, learn rapidly from inconsistent data, and utilise the evolutionary benefits that many traditional artificial intelligences lack, artificial copies of human brains will also […]
The Growth of Cloud Infrastructure in Europe
2017 is seeing cloud infrastructure rise to a new prominence, all across the world but especially in Europe. At a keynote event in Barcelona, Atlassian CEO Scot Farquhar announced a wave of new investments in cloud infrastructure across Europe and noted the motivations behind these developments: “Our European cloud customers will experience improved performance and reduced latency. […]
Microsoft’s BizSpark Offers A Helping Hand to the Startup Community
What started out as two young men working in a garage in Albuquerque in 1975, turned into a Fortune 500 company. Fast forward to today and Microsoft is offering guidance and new technology to young startups, just like they once were. Over the past few years, Microsoft has been moving into a new realm of […]
My personal crib sheet for equity incentive instruments in French startups
As 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 […]
Name-dropping
Although 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 […]