I am reading a new book on Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley entitled The Apple Revolution. I will come back on what I think when I am finished reading it. I discovered in the first pages of this book that famous author Tom Wolfe had written in 1983 another article about Silicon Valley centered around […]
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 […]
I end 2012 with two posts related to my beloved Silicon Valley. This one is about the two great Venture Capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. The next one will be about Palo Alto-based author of thrillers, Keith Raffel. I have already said a lot about these two firms. You can […]
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 […]
Another fo my recent reading from old Red gerring magazines. The analysis and predictions are great and provide good lessons for our days… In the same feature, October 98, I found small articles about companies we backed at Index. These three companies went public later on… so a small additional piece for nostalgia. Prepare for […]
As I wrote in my previous post on a few Indian tech start-ups, I just read The Startup Game by Bill Draper. In general, that kind of books is of average quality, this one is much above the average, though this is just my personal feeling. I like what is written and here my summary. […]
Silicon Valley is well known for its immigrants, particularly those from Asia (India, China, Taiwan, Korea, etc). AnnaLee Saxenian is famous for her books on the topic. The European migrants are lesser known and I think it is a little unfair. Let me first illustrate it with famous examples and then with statistical data. I […]
“What Have VCs Really Done for Innovation?” This is the title of a post by Vivek Wadhwa dated September 20. You can find the full account on Techcrunch. I have to admit I was not happy with the content. Instead of saying immediatly why, I will let you read comments made by others as I […]
Students from the Ecole Hôteliere de Lausanne who naturally have a taste for good food asked me the question recently. I took inspiration from Paul Graham and Steve Jobs to provide the ingredients. The text is available in pdf. Here is the full answer… Is there a recipe for entrepreneurship? “Launching a start-up is not […]
The content in pdf (english version) Le contenu en pdf (version française) Is the world of start-ups misunderstood? This economic phenomenon of major importance, which appeared fifty years ago in Silicon Valley near San Francisco, seems to face scepticism and even suspicion. It may still suffer from the consequences of the excesses of the Internet […]