Guillaume Villon de Benveniste, Auteur à The Innovation and Strategy Blog

On generating a steady 68% IRR in seed investment : advice from the world’s top investor (3/3)

April 28, 2020May 25, 2020

In previous post, showed that Fabrice Grinda is generating handsome returns for several reasons : wise time allocation going for a high potential business model efficient risk mitigation unit economics Today, I’m going to look at a few other principles. Sixth principle to securing handsome returns : Fabrice is assessing a team’s relevance based on 2 distinct abilities 1/ Do we like the team?…

Artificial Intelligence, Start-ups

Process automation leads to productivity gains

April 21, 2020April 22, 2020

How to improve on current operations in established companies? How to bring greater efficiency in production chains that have been along for many years? What role do novel technologies such as artificial intelligence play in process automation and productivity gains? CEO and founder of Zappy.ai, Ambuj Agrawal, and myself addressed this and more in a recent conversation. Introducing Ambug Agrawal, a startup founder and…

Digital Transformation

Innovations in the Hospitality industry

April 14, 2020April 10, 2020

How has the hospitality industry involved in the last few years? In what way has digital innovation improved the customer experience while redefining the nature of competitive advantage? And does any of this change the way we work and live? If so, how? I talk about this, and more, with Javier Cedillo Espin, who’s gained much experience working with hospitality world leader Accor and operating…

Capital efficiency, investment and innovation

On generating a steady 68% IRR in seed investment : advice from the world’s top investor (2/3)

April 10, 2020May 19, 2020

In a previous post, I discussed how the world’s top seed-investor, the Franco-American Fabrice Grinda is generating superior returns in seed investment. I discussed 2 of his 8 principles, including wise time allocation and going for startups operating on platform-based business model. Today, I talk about several other principles related to platforms and funding positioning. Third principle on generating superior returns in seed investment…

Capital efficiency, investment and innovation

On generating a steady 68% IRR in seed investment : advice from the world’s top investor (1/3)

March 31, 2020May 19, 2020

In a previous post, I discussed how Venture Capital creates value. The Venture Capital business consists in investing in money-losing companies offering superior growth rates and the prospect of 100x returns in 5 to 7 years. But, in truth, many VCs don’t return the capital to their Limited Partners, as Private Equity and advisor to the Kauffman Institute, Diane Mulcahy has shown in an…

investment and innovation

How VCs create value

March 24, 2020May 19, 2020

VCs are in risky business as mentioned in a recent article where I talked about how the Venture Capital business operates. Yet the world’s top seed investor, Fabrice Grinda is developing a systemic approach to generating a steady 68% realized Internet Rate of Return. I’ll talk about my conversation with Fabrice in an upcoming article. In this article, I’ll talk about how VCs create…

investment and innovation

Introducing the Venture Capital Business

March 17, 2020May 19, 2020

How does the Venture Capital Business operate? Most would agree that innovation investments come with high risks especially compared other asset classes like real estate and publicly traded indexes. Yet, in a recent conversation with the world’s top seed investor, Fabrice Grinda, I learned of his systemic approach generating a steady 68% realized Internet Rate of Return across 540 deals since 2009. I’ll get…

Financing Innovation

Jeff Bezos is investing $10 billion in a Green fund

February 25, 2020September 8, 2020

A few weeks ago Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder announced a 10 billion dollar investment fund geared towards transitioning our economy into a greener one. But, how does 10 billion dollars measure up to capital needs required to building a green economy? What could Amazon bring to the green transition? And finally, is there any kind of contradiction between Amazon current operating model and building…

Capital efficiency, investment and innovation

Building 25 unicorns by 2025… and disclosing the secret to turning 5 Billion Euros to 15 – (2/2)

October 22, 2019October 21, 2019

Yes, adding capacity is a must, but minimizing risks proves crucial too Building additional capacity is only addressing part of the issue. The ecosystem here in France would surely benefit from boosting capital efficiency ; that’s the value created per dollar invested. Turning 5 billion euros to 15 billion euros starts with making each dollar count and mitigate risks. According to Crunchbase and the Journal of Empirical…

Financing Innovation

Building 25 unicorns by 2025… and disclosing the secret to turning 5 Billion Euros to 15 – (1/2)

October 15, 2019November 7, 2019

Building unicorns: sure! But why? How is the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, planning on creating an innovation ecosystem conducive to giving birth to 25 unicorns by 2025? What is it about the existing French economy that must be overhauled? And why is it important for France to be producing unicorns in the first place? How does this tie into value creation and jobs?…