Tweet The Norwegian media group Schibsted now aggressively invests in startups. The goal: digital dominance, one market at a time. France is in next in line. Here is a look at their strategy. This thought haunts most media executives’ sleepless nights: “My legacy business is taking a hit from the internet; my digital conversion is [...]
October 7, 2012 – 8:55 pm
Tweet Not against their VC overlords, mind you. No, calling themselves “Pigeons” (The Fleeced) they staged a highly visible protest (Google translation) against their government’s latest stroke of the money pump. In a nutshell, the new Socialist administration proposed to tax an entrepreneur’s capital gains as ordinary income. In very rough numbers, the tax rate [...]
TweetA forgettable election campaign just wrapped up: François Hollande is now the President of the French Republic. Time spent on foreign issues during last week’s one-on-one television debate mirrored the rest of the campaign: less than fifteen minutes in a 2hrs 50 minutes bout, one that left most viewers yawning. This campaign was petty, gallic-centered, [...]
February 7, 2011 – 12:33 pm
TweetApologies in advance: If you’re fluent in the language of accounting, please skip to the bonus Verizon iPhone feature at the end. What I’m about to describe will strike you as oversimplified and could bruise your professional sensitivities. Companies sometimes (often?) manipulate their numbers. Today, we’ll look at a few examples of accounting sophistry and [...]
January 24, 2010 – 6:21 pm
TweetLast week’s note on Apple licensing generated a good flow of comments, all appreciated. I’ll respond, but not before we get Apple earnings and the putative Jesus Tablet out of the way. I’ll approach today’s topic, mobile payments, using an Apple Store moment. Some cables keep disappearing. In particular, the ones that connect MacBooks of [...]
December 20, 2009 – 8:17 pm
Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée As promised last week, let’s dig into a venture fund’s key numbers. Limited Partners, LP, institutions or individuals put money into the fund. We, the General Partners, GP, make and manage the investments and we split the profits with the LP as the sole compensation for our services. Over time, the split [...]
December 13, 2009 – 4:11 pm
TweetTwo weeks ago, I discussed what I called The Other French Paradox, that is how French taxpayers and French companies are at a (curable) disadvantage in Silicon Valley. Last week, I “shared” (we’re in California) my own plans to deal with the twin problems: a venture fund whose profits reverse the flow of money back [...]
December 7, 2009 – 9:00 am
TweetLast week, we looked at the two components of the “other” French Paradox. First, the Valley aura helps a tiny Palo Alto start-up sell its technology in France. But it doesn’t work the other way around: a Lyons high-tech company will get a polite reception but no orders from the likes of HP, Google or [...]
November 29, 2009 – 12:56 pm
Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée Foie gras, crême fraîche, butter, red wine — and lots of it! All these excesses leading to a higher life expectancy, to say nothing of the joys of sinning. That’s the legendary now official French Paradox. Scientists strain to explain the phenomenon: ‘It’s the phenolic compounds in the red wine’, they say. [...]
September 20, 2009 – 11:07 am
TweetIn an “Entrepreneurial Thought Leader” lecture given at Stanford University earlier this year, Tom Siebel argues that all of the great technological advances and development of great companies are behind us – and the growth rate for the tech sector is just on par with the rate of current economic growth. The previous sentence introduces [...]
