Categories Capital efficiency, investment and innovation

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

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Top Venture Capitalist

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…

Categories investment and innovation

How VCs create value

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Venture Capitalists create value

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…

Categories investment and innovation

Introducing the Venture Capital Business

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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…

Categories Financing Innovation

Jeff Bezos is investing $10 billion in a Green fund

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Green Fund - France 24

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…

Categories Capital efficiency, investment and innovation

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

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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…

Categories Financing Innovation

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

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Emmanuel Macron - France Digital Day - courtesy of Sputnik

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?…

Categories investment and innovation, Theories of innovation

Competitive strategies for investing in innovation and agility

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Claus Hirzmann - Competitive Strategies for investing in innovation and agility

What are the strategies for investing in innovation? How to provide access to opportunity while managing risks carefully? I used to think that the Net Present Value (NPV) metric was the best to enable value generation while minimizing risks. But, innovation investment expert, Claus Hirzmann thinks otherwise. He told me why in a recent conversation at Vivatech. It’s all here ! Please introduce yourself…

Categories Digital Transformation

From Startups to Scale-ups

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Maxime Baffert - VivaTech

How to create scale-ups in Europe? What should Europe do to foster a promising technology ecosystem? How to evolve the blossoming startup ecosystem in France to one of Scale-ups? Which current startup stands the highest change of turning into a scale-up ? Why is it that Europe has, so far, failed to generate numerous unicorns while Silicon Valley—a small area of only 2.7 million…

Categories Digital Transformation

Why create a GAFA Tax?

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Bruno Le Maire - GAFA Tax - copyright - Le Parisien

Why has France embarked upon the project of taxing Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple and devised a tax that is a specific to digital players also known as the GAFA Tax? And why has France decided to go it alone, despite its long-held belief in European cohesion and unity? I addressed this and more with France 24 journalist, Julia Sieger. I/ Why is there…

Categories Digital Transformation, In english

Corporate innovation is changing in form and process

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How to innovate in large companies? This simple question turns out to be much more complex than expected, as global players are focused on executing a proven business model rather than searching for a new one whose profitability is untested. These are some of the issues that Andreas Page, Senior Manager in charge of Digital Business Development at Swisscom and myself discussed recently. Presentation…