Drift Signal Growing Your Network w/ Kelly Hoey. Europe. Stripe. Accelerators vs. Seed Funds.
The Agenda đ
* Author Kelly Hoey on what becomes of personal networks in the digital age
* Apply to On Deck Catalyst ten-week remote program
* Europe is sliding behind. Here are 10 potential reasons as to why.
* Stripe continues to impress: a curation of all Iâve written about them
* Can seed funds and accelerators work together? Views differ
Iâve long called the current period âthe age of computing and networksâ:
* The âage of computingâ because we are all equipped with a growing number of digital devices whose computing power is increasing exponentially.
* And âthe age of networksâ because we use these devices (our computers, our smartphones) mostly to connect with one another.
Many online connections with other individuals are implicit and invisible. For example, weâre connected to one another when we read reviews posted by other customers before buying a product on Amazon. Or take our daily habit of asking Google questions, which are then analyzed to suggest, in real time, better ways to pose those questions. This is possible because we are connected in a network whereby each individualâs contribution helps to improve the Google search engine for all.
What happens to personal networksâwhich, contrary to the examples above, are formed consciously and explicitlyâin a world where interconnectivity is the norm? Things change on various fronts.
* First, the ability to connect everyone together tends to devalue individual connections. In the past, having someoneâs business card had a lot of value. It indicated that you had met that person and that they had judged you to be trustworthy enough to share their contact information. Today, however, that same information is available to everyone via LinkedIn. The business card has thus lost its economic value, as well as its symbolic value. It takes much more than a business card to indicate that someone has entered the inner circle.
At the same time, developing a relationship with another person no longer implies that youâve met that person âin real lifeâ. Twitter has gotten us used to the idea of having interesting conversations with people weâve never actually met. And for the past year, the pandemic and the difficulties in moving around have further anchored the idea of getting to know one another from a distance.
What will happen to all these long-distance relationships once the pandemic is over? Will we go back to how things were, returning to our old network of acquaintances who all live nearby? Or will we continue developing these relationships regardless of physical distance, using more and more apps that let us connect more and more easily with others? Itâs not just Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter anymore, but also TikTok, Discord, Clubhouseâand others that we havenât discovered or even invented yet.
This latter hypothesis is what Balaji S. Srinivasan foresaw in his 2013 article Software is Reorganizing the World (in Wired). For him, the Internet is less about nourishing relationships that initially developed in the real world, and more about developing new relationships with people that we may eventually meet IRL later, only then perhaps deciding to live near one another. Balaji gives the example of Silicon Valley: a location where people (entrepreneurs, investors, operators) go to live because they first connected with one another via the Internet and then later decided to use the San Francisco Bay Area as the place to meet up and work together at building tech companies.
* In that regard, itâs clear that the pandemic has changed things. With it, weâve learned how to build companies remotely, a shift that devalues the idea of collecting everyone together in Silicon Valley in order to succeed. But that, of course, wonât impede individuals who connect with one another from deciding to move to a given area based upon other shared affinities.
All in all, the economy of personal networks was upended by both the digital transition and the pandemic. Kelly Hoey, author of the book Build Your Dream Network: Forging Powerful Relationships in a Hyper-Connected World, discusses the new state of networks with my wife Laetitia Vitaud in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast.
đ Listen to Laetitiaâs conversation with Kelly using the player above đ or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
â ïž On Deck Catalyst is a ten-week remote program for young leaders who want to solve the worldâs most pressing problems and take an unconventional path to building their career. The curriculum includes:
* Deep dives on how startups work: what core positions look like day-to-day and why that role is important to the business.
* Learning the ins and outs of founding and investing in companies alongside the best in the industry.
* Speaker sessions from Keith Rabois, Aileen Lee, Jack Altman, and others as part of the Leaders and Protégés track, an in-depth look into mentor and mentee relationships, and a launchpad for eventual success.
* How to create your own opportunitiesâmake roles that previously didnât exist at any startup you join, launch a startup from scratch, or break into the world of venture capital.
â° Their next cohort kicks off on June 5. You can apply here before May 4th. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
đ 10 Hypotheses As To Why Europe Is Lagging Behind
For all the debates about Europe and how itâs doing, one indicator certainly shows that things arenât going swimmingly: GDP per capita, which is going in the wrong direction in multiple key European countries. But why is this happening? How is it that in the last 20 years, the average French, English, Italian citizen is getting noticeably worse off than many of their global counterparts?
Observers posit various hypotheses, some of which I find more convincing than others. For example, I donât think that Europe is necessarily slow in adopting technology, and I also donât think that the problem comes down to an excess of regulations.
Still, itâs undeniable that somethingâs going on, and identifying the proper hypotheses as to why itâs happening is critical to turning things around. Europe would certainly benefit from taking a more outward-looking view on business, using the entire world as its stage rather than remaining within the borders of the EU. And given the current repositioning that the US is undertaking, not least because of the chaos that grew out of the Trump White House, there could be an opening for Europe to rediscover industrial policy leversâso long as those levers match the requirements of the Entrepreneurial Age.
đ Read on in 10 Hypotheses As To Why Europe Is Lagging Behind.
đ° All About Stripe
The big news in the startup world last week was Stripeâs new fundraising round which brought the tech giantâs valuation to $95B. The companyâs rapid rise since its founding back in 2010 by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison is part of the process of constructing the foundations of the digital economy, in Stripeâs case by focusing on payments.
But beyond the eye-popping valuation and inevitable musings about when the IPO could occur, Stripe is definitely worth knowing more about, quite simply because of what it reveals about that ongoing digital construction process. Namely, the Entrepreneurial Age is showing just how much larger markets can be when theyâre truly digital, with returns on invested capital getting much, much higher than ever was the case in the 20th century.
So while companies such as Visa or Mastercard did quite well for themselves in processing payments, their reach was necessarily restricted by physical constraints (credit cards, payment terminals, phone lines, etc.). In shrugging off those constraints thanks to digital tools, Stripe, on the other hand, is playing a different game indeed.
đ Dive further into fintech with All About Stripe.
đ Accelerators vs. Seed Funds
As entrepreneurship spreads throughout the globe, more pressure builds throughout the system. One of the places where that is most felt lately is early-stage investing. More and more money is flowing as investors attempt to back startups that might turn into tomorrowâs tech giants.
That led London- and Tel Aviv-based investor Gil Dibner to recently question whether the accelerator model was doomed, given the multiplication and increased sophistication of seed funds like his Angular Ventures. Indeed, this new generation of seed funds now competes for some of those same early percentage points in a startupâs cap table, with a proven ability to add as much (if not more) value than accelerators.
I think that Gilâs idea of conflicting interests between seed funds and accelerators is accurate, although I donât think the conclusion is necessarily that accelerators donât have a part to play. For one, accelerators still have some advantages that seed funds donât, including one that we at The Family treasure: the ability to work with many more founders since their entry into The Family doesnât involve us signing a hefty check. Another important nuance is whether itâs about a mature entrepreneurial ecosystem or one that is still in its infancyâand where the toxicity requires as much help as possible at the pre-seed stage.
đ Think more about the ongoing shift in Accelerators vs. Seed Funds.
Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!
đ«đ· The latest podcasts (in French) with my wife Laetitia Vitaud on our family media operation Nouveau DĂ©part: Le piĂšge du couple Ă deux carriĂšres đ« Singapour, cette citĂ©-Ătat Ă©rigĂ©e en modĂšle đžđŹ
đ My latest contribution to my firm The Familyâs newsletter is a tribute to Jeff Bezos (and Kevin Kwok): Learn to draw flywheels.
đ§ I was invited by Odin for a one-hour conversation with their founder Patrick Ryan. You can listen to it, and read the transcript, here: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.
From Fixing Today's Economy Is About Humans, Not Technology (November 2018):
Todayâs power is vested in the mighty âmultitudeââthe billions of individuals who are now equipped with powerful computing devices and connected with one another through networks. And it inspires a lesson in strategy and management that every corporate executive needs to keep in mind: the businesses that succeed in the digital economy are the ones that realize how power has been redistributed outside of their organizations. The winners are not the companies who use the most technology. Rather, they are the companies that best use technology to harness human power, which in turn fuels growth and generates profits.
All recent editions:
* 10 Hypotheses As To Why Europe Is Lagging Behindâfor subscribers only.
* All About Stripeâfor subscribers only.
* Accelerators vs. Seed Fundsâfor subscribers only.
* Investing Across the World w/ Chris Schroeder. Stripe. Consulting. IPOs. Digital Government.âfor everyone.
* Government in the Entrepreneurial Ageâfor subscribers only.
* Moneyball in Consulting Servicesâfor everyone.
* All About Companies Going Publicâfor subscribers only.
* Playing Video Games w/ Rachel Kowert. Consumption. Delivery. Profitability.âfor everyone.
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From Munich, Germany đ©đȘ
Nicolas
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