In venture capital, returns on investments is the ultimate metric and although it is not very difficult to understand, there are many little tricks worth knowing about! The reason of this short post is a recent article my friend Fuad advised me to read from the Financial Times : The parallel universe of private equity […]
As a follow-up to my recent post on (updated) data on 600 (former) startups, here is a first post about (what I think) are interesting or intriguing results. Without doing too much self-promotion, let me add that I have in the past already dealt with the topic as I mentionin the document or through the […]
I must thank my friend and colleague Fuad for pointing to me a remarkable research article entitled Talent vs Luck: the role of randomness in success and failure. You can find the paper on Arxiv in pdf format. I must say this resonates with research I did in the past on serial entrepreneurs, where I […]
This is one of the best books about innovation I have read in years. The importance of crazy ideas, not the recipe on how to make them successful, but the attitude to make them less crazy. And more importanly, crazy ideas have much more impact on our lives than we may think. A must read. […]
Rarely have I read two articles giving a vision as close apparently of the challenges and issues of the future of the planet as I’ll mention in a moment. I say apparently, because behind some consistencies about a confident vision of the future, lie fairly fundamental differences about the challenges. But I will allow myself […]
I am still not sure how Thiel’s class notes on start-ups will finish, but they are more and more fascinating, class after class. At least his vision of this world is. Class 14 is about cleantech and energy. “Alternative energy and cleantech have attracted an enormous amount of investment capital and attention over the last […]
Thiel’s classes 9 to 12 leave the pure field of start-ups to the higher levels of economy, business and innovation. Thiel gives general advice such that customers are important and more important than competitors with the recurring “obsession” that peace and correlated monopoly are better than war and deadly competition. Class 9 is about customers […]
Part 3 of my series of comments about Thiel’s class notes at Stanford mainly cover his Class 5-8. But first I should add that Thiel invited a “honor class” of innovators during his 19 classes. Quite fascinating! 1st row: Stephen Cohen, co-founder and Executive VP of Palantir Technologies, Max Levchin, co-founder PayPal and Slide, Roelof […]
“Thought is only a flash in the middle of a long night. But this flash means everything.” Henri Poincaré* When I talked to friends and colleagues about The Black Swan (“BS”), they were surprised about my interest in the movie with Natalie Portman. I cannot say, I have not watched it. I was talking about […]
I mentioned in a recent post – Birth and Death of Silicon Valley ? – the book Making Silicon Valley – Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 by Christophe Lécuyer. I had bought that book many years ago and had only read some parts of it. Because Olivier Alexandre (see my posts about […]