I had not contributed to Entreprise Romande for a while, which might be the reason of my somehow tiredness about the never ending flow of (virtual?) innovations. Here is my translation of my latest contribution… When the editor of your favorite magazine asked me for a new contribution about innovation, offering me to write about […]
I had read a few years ago the great The Man Behind the Microchip by Leslie Berlin. After the biography of Robert Noyce, one of Intel’s cofounders, Berlin comes now with Troublemakers, a description of “How Generation of Silicon Valley Upstarts Invented the Future”. The title is a reference to a famous Apple advertisement: The […]
Or should it be called the Tesla Index? In the book The Rainforest that I am currently reading, the authors write about Role Models that “a common phenomenon of university-based startup companies in the United States is what is sometimes jokingly called the Porsche principle. This principle holds that one of the greatest motivators for […]
I have to admit episode 10 was full of s…- I have never seen a VC stealing ideas neither a major corporation suing a start-up. Whatever SV is fun. So when you have the choice between sell or die, should you choose? or maybe do neither. – “You should pursue your dream, not for profit, […]
I have already recently discussed the difficulty Silicon Valley has in talking about or dealing with politics, for example in The promise of technology. Disappointing? and even more in Silicon Valley and (a)politics – Change the World. I was referring to two articles (which I considered as exceptionally great) written by George Packer in the […]
This is a short text I wrote in 2012, and my friend Will from Finland had made comments about it which I added. Thanks! I read it again this morning and thought it might be worth publishing it now… Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Genentech, Cisco, Google, Facebook, Skype. You probably know these companies. They were […]
Not many people ever heard of Georges Doriot. I knew his name because I know a little about VC (you can always check my visual history of VC). But I did not know much about him. Now that I read Creative Capital by Spencer Ante, I know much more. As usual, when I comment books, […]
I just watched Something Ventured and I loved it. Loved it so much I plan to have it shown to as many EPFL students as possible in the spring! It is a movie about passion, enthusiasm, energy, changing the world and yes… about money. When asked about their hope about the movie, producers Molly Davis […]
Venture Capitalists are always proud to mention which companies they successfully backed. It is because of their success stories that Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins are so famous in this industry. But the deals the VCs decline are much less famous. In my book, I had mentioned some examples by some pioneers of venture capital: Investor […]
Biotech is a strange world for me. I am an IT guy and I have never really understood much about biology. The biotech start-ups are also very different from IT companies. It is well-known that it takes them years to reach revenues with products (not R&D revenue), not to say profitability (just like the semiconductor […]