Search results for: tax

This week’s announcements of Blablacar’s $200 Million Series D fundraising, as well as the continued developments around Uber’s sordid relationship with the French Government, are just the latest sharing economy news to come out of France. Airbnb,too, announced last month an agreement with the Paris Government that will see it extending the same ‘tourist tax’ to airbnb-ers that Hotels have […]

The Internet has always taken a certain pleasure in removing the middleman – or at least, drastically changing how they think about their role in a sector. Travel advisors, ad agencies, taxi dispatchers – if your job was more or less an ‘operator’ or a go-between between two parties, there will be an Internet startup […]

This week it was learned that Uber will not be re-opening its UberPOP service, its peer-to-peer service that launched February of 2014, and received subsequent attention earlier this year when drivers were taken hostage by taxi drivers, ultimately resulting in the French government putting the squeeze on UberPop in the form of arresting Uber’s country manager for […]

Back in my economics classes, I was always fascinated on how theories from books could be related to real life events. I read about Kondratieff’s cycles, Smith’s invisible hand, Keynes’s supply and demand. But my favorite was Schumpeter’s creative destruction, and now after six years in the world of startups, it’s fascinating to see it […]

France’s public investment bank BPIfrance has its hands in many pots. They invest in more than 50% of seed and growth funds, and invest directly in larger rounds of companies deemed ‘national treasures’ of sorts  – Withings & Sigfox, for example. Beyond being responsible for an estimated two-thirds of investment capital made available by French […]

Photo: Uber protests earlier this year in Madrid. Once again I find myself face-to-face with a digital culture clash. It’s nearly impossible to imagine that Rude Baguette readers haven’t been following as images, videos, news reports, and responses concerning the taxi protest against Uber have reached a new peak. 18 months ago, I wrote about […]

Uber rolled out in even more cities in France this week – among those cities, Marseille, where gang violence is common due to drug trafficking. Within 24 hours of Uber’s launch, a video has surfaced on Facebook showing an UberPop driver being stopped by a group of men – we learn later in the video that […]

Another day, another new technology, service, website, or app that is somehow destroying our lives as we know it. When I was a kid, video games melted your brain (except they don’t), and up until it wasn’t ‘cool’ anymore, Facebook was making us less social (which may actually be true). Uberization is bad if your sector is […]