Monthly Archives: May 2009

Belgium and Start-Ups

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After Finland, Sweden, here comes Belgium. A recent study has been published: “Le financement des spin-offs universitaires en Belgique” by Fabrice Pirnay (HEC-ULg) & Sarah Van Cauwenbergh (CeFiP) – May 2009. It is about spin-offs from universities in the French and Dutch-speaking parts of belgium. I am not sure it is available online though.

Because it is not a marketing tool, it may not make everyone happy as it shows once again that there are weaknesses in our innovation systems and that we are also far behind the USA. I participated to a workshop to discuss the study and the lessons I want to remember are that if we want to favor growth, we need ambition, i.e. high quality teams, resources and an international strategy. Because tehre is a chicken and egg issue between money and people, I remain convinced that international exposure is a good initial bet, I mean sending people abroad as well as inviting people to come where we live. We also need mot role models, mentors so that we should use our diaspora and our alumni.

Now instead of going any further in a complex analysis, here are the advice of an unusual roel model: Jacques Brel. My colleague Bernard Surlemont (qui m’avait invité à ce workshop) showed me this great document where the Belgian singer talks about passion, fear of failing and work vs. talent. They are in French only…

Passion

Fear

Work

Index Ventures, Minsh, Poken and others

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Last Friday, I organized “venture ideas @ EPFL” with Jordi Montserrat from venturelab. We had the opportunity to have great entrepreneurs from Minsh, Poken, Basisnote and the 20 winners of the ventureleaders program.

Last but not least, Neil Rimer, founder and general partner of Index Ventures shared his thoughts about Thinking Bigger.

More on the EPFL’s venture ideas page and the past events.

Sweden and start-ups

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As I mentioned in a recent post, I have spent a few days in Sweden where I discovered some features of the Swedish start-up scene. I was invited by Anders Gezelius who has a very interesting profile: a graduate of KTH – Stockholm with an MBA from Wharton, he worked Californie for Intel and then co-founded a startup which was selling accounting software. After the M&A of the start-up, he has gone back to Sweden where he runs Mentor4Research and Coach & Capital.

Here are the talks I made for:
– Stockholm Innovation & Growth: why do start-ups succeed or fail?
– Mentor4research: What we may still learn from Silicon Valley

If there is one interesting lesson that I also learnt from my recent trip to Boston (cf the MIT venture mentoring service), it is that the combination of mentoring and investing as a business angel may become more and more critical. Both are very much needed. Mentors may be seen as friends of entrepreneurs and give advice based on their experience. They may or may not become business angels who invest at an early stage in start-ups.

One of the best illustration of mentoring is given by the encounter of Steve Jobs and Bob Noyce when the Apple founder needed advice…

Entrepreneurs and Revolutions

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Nicolas Hayek, founder of Swatch, was yesterday at the Forum des 100.

He talked about the Economic crisis and called for an “International of Entrepreneurs”! His talk was in French and can be found here.

Ironically, in my book , I had quoted Pitch Johnson on a similar topic: “Entrepreneurs are the revolutionaries of our time.” And he had added: “Democracy works best when there is this kind of turbulence in the society, when those not well-off have a chance to climb the economic ladder by using brains, energy and skills to create new markets or serve existing markets better then their old competitors”

So should I conclude with “Entrepreneurs of the World, Unite!”

The question was also discussed in a very interesting debate between Emmanuel Todd and Pascal Couchepin (in French again).

Three Things Every Startup Should Do

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Xconomy is becoming one of my favorite web sites. Here is a short post about three things every startup should do

—Focus on one thing. Whether you make a location-based tracking device, an energy-efficient motor, or a social network for job-seekers, carve out the specific market you’re going after. And then make your product a must-have for that market, using every possible competitive advantage you have. Do what you do better than anyone else, but don’t try to do it all.
—Work on what you’re passionate about. Every successful startup has a story about why it does what it does. That story should ring true with the founders’ backgrounds and expertise. Investors (and customers) can tell right away if a company representative is going through the motions.
—Cut to the chase. What is your company doing that’s special? How is it different from your competitors? People will decide whether your company sounds promising in the first 30 seconds of your pitch, so make sure you answer those questions upfront.

I will be in Stockholm next week delivering 2 talks on start-ups, one being about success and failure (Stockholm Innovation), the other one about what we still have to learn from the USA (Avslutningskonferens 2009). I certainly could have used these 3 points.