Mark Bivens
An ode to the expat
I spent a fair bit of my childhood in a very comfortable expatriate life overseas, but once I entered the workforce I never really felt inclined to become a proper expat in the original sense of the term. Growing up as an expat kid couldn’t be more cozy. Generally, the parent’s multinational company, at least […]
A global, dream team workforce that doesn't cost a cent
Fans of Elon Musk know that in addition to his primary projects of Tesla and SpaceX, the seemingly tireless Musk has also espoused the construction of a hyperloop. The hyperloop is a vacuum-like transportation pod that if successful, could whisk passengers from say, San Francisco to Los Angeles in just over half an hour. Pretty […]
Is France prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to foster the innovation ecosystem it claims to want?
Open Innovation, the Year of Innovation, Young Innovative Enterprises, etc. we cannot stop talking about innovation. But we also should acknowledge that innovation comes with certain demands. For example, innovation requires flexibility. For companies to be innovative, they must be agile. Lack of agility is one of the reasons large established firms are caught flat-footed […]
Imagining the future of food
What will the future of food look like ? On the one hand, the world is facing a food crisis. Roughly 1 in 9 people lack enough food to eat, while pressures are mounting from population growth to climate change. At the other end of the spectrum, the developed world’s expectations are growing increasingly sophisticated. […]
My two favorite perks in the Macron Law for French startups
Following much debate and anticipation, France’s Loi Macron was finally adopted into effect in early August, during a period when many people weren’t paying too much attention. The Macron Law (inheriting not coincidentally the namesake of the Economy Minister whose ideas inspired it) is technically called the law “for growth, activity and equality of economic […]
Beyond Robots, France and Japan Launch Year of Innovation
It was an honor to participate in France’s governmental delegation to Japan to launch the Year of Innovation between the two countries. Seriously, I’m not being sarcastic. It’s true that I like to mock government initiatives in innovation, and my first reaction to the ministerial invitation to serve in the official kick-off of FrenchTechTokyo was […]
Another chance to Go East, Young Startup
For the third consecutive year, I’ve been granted some coveted spots to bring a delegation of five privileged French startups to the prestigious Dash Camp retreat in Japan. Dash Camp represents one of Asia’s exclusive tech conferences (they have a lot of exclusives there) whose objective is to foster cross-pollination between innovative entrepreneurs and leaders […]
The worst innovation of our day ?
I have this ongoing contest with a childhood friend on identifying the most impactful contributions to society’s moral decay. Potential winning candidates reflect more than mere kooky inventions: they genuinely qualify as innovations because they witness widescale adoption, for better or (in this case) for worse. I had won the last battle when I cited […]
Content is King; Distribution is King Kong
I love the expression by which I titled this post, though I cannot take credit for it. That goes to Laurens Rutten, CEO of our portfolio company BoosterMedia, a leading network for cross-platform mobile games. The importance of digital distribution has been on my mind a lot lately, and bubbled up again last week as […]
France has its tech Unicorn. Next it needs its Unicorpse.
France allegedly crowned its first unicorn last week when BlaBlaCar raised a new funding round led by Insight Venture Partners of $160 million at a post-money valuation of $1.2 billion. Actually, there is some debate on whether BlaBlaCar represents France’s very first unicorn (some argue that Vente-Privée should hold that title, but that’s beside the […]