The worst innovation of our day ?
I have this ongoing contest with a childhood friend on identifying the most impactful contributions to society’s moral decay. Potential winning candidates reflect more than mere kooky inventions: they genuinely qualify as innovations because they witness widescale adoption, for better or (in this case) for worse. I had won the last battle when I cited […]
Content is King; Distribution is King Kong
I love the expression by which I titled this post, though I cannot take credit for it. That goes to Laurens Rutten, CEO of our portfolio company BoosterMedia, a leading network for cross-platform mobile games. The importance of digital distribution has been on my mind a lot lately, and bubbled up again last week as […]
Capital inefficiency in hardware startups is a myth, period
When I joined my partners at the Hardware Club to re-focus myself on investments in hardware startups, my former boss at my previous VC firm warned me, out of concerns about my career, that hardware startups were capital inefficient and would not be able to generate the investment returns as well as lean startups. At […]
France has its tech Unicorn. Next it needs its Unicorpse.
France allegedly crowned its first unicorn last week when BlaBlaCar raised a new funding round led by Insight Venture Partners of $160 million at a post-money valuation of $1.2 billion. Actually, there is some debate on whether BlaBlaCar represents France’s very first unicorn (some argue that Vente-Privée should hold that title, but that’s beside the […]
"My Venereal Disease" (and other startup naming blunders)
{Note: This post is meant to provoke but is not intended to offend. Most of the startups I mention, and I’ve met a lot of them, have pretty good products. Moreover, I credit their founders for their creativity and daring in a language that is not their native tongue: important traits of successful entrepreneurs.} Over […]
France24 plans partnership with Mashable and raises questions of unfair competition
Recently, the news of a joint project to be realised between French public information channel France24 and US private digital media website Mashable has created a big buzz. Indeed, both companies plan to launch an online media website covering tech and international news in French. France24 is since 2008 wholly owned by the French government […]
HAïKU, the connected bike GPS, lands on Kickstarter
HAïKU, a connected GPS designed for your bike, just announced its first Kickstarter campaign. Closing its first day at €12,873 with a goal of €55,000 (reaching ≈25%), HAïKU, has a promising future. Like a smartwatch, HAïKU is powered by your smartphone, which can remain safely in your pocket, and gives you a simple and safe access to all the information […]
France clears the track to enhance the development of autonomous cars
Experiments have been conducted on automating vehicles since the 1920s, but no doubt recent technological innovations in the automobile industry are going to have a revolutionary impact on our way of using cars. And France wants its industry to play a major role in this. If hexagonal constructors and equipment manufacturers have already performed tests […]
Should I accept an unpaid internship?
From time to time people ask my opinion on whether they should accept an unpaid internship offer. My answer to the question usually involves more questions: Is the job with a startup that is hard-pressed for cash, or rather with an established company, investment bank, or VC fund? Is the uncompensated period clearly delimited in […]
Manufacturing for Hardware Startups Hinges on Long-Term Interest Alignment
Today it’s a foregone conclusion that hardware startups are on the rise. Not only are there more and more exciting hardware startups springing up almost from everywhere in the world, notable exits such as Nest (acquired by Google) and Fitbit (IPO on NYSE in June 2015) have also proved that hardware startups could generate just […]