Drift Signal

The Agenda 👇* I spoke with Emily de La Bruyère about industrial policy in China—and how it’s a challenge for the West 🎧* My Sifted column this week is about Tiger Global and the many deals they’re doing in Europe these days* Thumbs up/down for last week, as well as recent news.I first discovered Emily de La Bruyère, a US-based analyst focused on industrial policy in China, through Jordan Schneider’s ChinaTalk podcast. What she had to share was so enlightening I even dedicated an entire edition to it, Industrial Policy: China Gets It, We Don't (now accessible for all).The key idea that stood out in Emily and Jordan’s conversation was the following:What matters today is the applications of science and technology––the sort of networks you build with it.For example, your ability to deploy telecommunications. It’s not that you got the patent; it’s that you’ve got its application internationally.To do that, what matters is capturing scale and being able to build and deploy. If that’s what you’re going for, it’s okay to have a slight lag in when you get the patent and when you get the really cutting edge, as long as you can apply it to scale to the most people efficiently.The Chinese orientation appears to be focusing on that rather than on basic R&D, which creates this tremendous asymmetry vis-à-vis the U.S. and really vis-à-vis the entire global system because there’s just a different competition underway.And that absolutely changes how the U.S. can or should respond to the extent that this is a scientific and technological contest because it’s not a matter of just pouring resources into basic research: it’s about competing for applications.Emily and I are following up on that in this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast. I was especially interested in her idea that the current industrial competition between nation states at the global level is happening in two dimensions:* One is about securing control of essential resources, especially energy sources, which fosters a traditional zero-sum competition from a geopolitical perspective.* But then there’s another dimension, which is about controlling networks and the data that flows  through them—which gives rise to a very different kind of competition globally.I find that there’s no better lens to understand the current rivalry between the US and China in the tech space and beyond. In addition to these, Emily and I discuss the following points:* How she ended up focusing on industrial policy in China, and what it’s like to study China from a distance, all based on open source material.* Why international standards matter from an industrial policy perspective, and why it’s about much more than a spy game between great powers.* What advice Emily would give if she joined the Biden administration to advise the US President on America’s competitiveness on the global stage.* Why the West remains a thing, and why the US is better off counting on Europe as a strong ally as networks and data redraw the global map of power.* Why we shouldn't rely on a Cold War framework when reflecting on the state of the world, and why all of this matters for entrepreneurs building companies on the ground in Europe.👉 Listen to my conversation with Emily de La Bruyère in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.⚠️ My column today in Sifted asks a few million (billion?) dollar questions: How is hedge fund Tiger Global’s blazing arrival on the EU tech scene going, and what will happen to the companies it’s investing in when today’s macroeconomic context of enormous amounts of capital reverses?* It’s a fascinating example of how venture capital is being upended by the arrival of major players from other financial realms. I’m very curious to see how VCs that are active in Europe, especially tier-1 firms, react to this kind of unconventional investor, both now and in the future. 👉 Read it all in Tiger Global: What happens when ‘normal’ returns? 📈📉😀 Nathan Benaich of Air Street Capital is at it again! After an op-ed in the FT about European universities’ bad practices when it comes to spinning out startups (which in turn prompted my own Sifted column on the topic), he just shared the longer, more detailed version on his firm’s blog: * Related: Bessemer Ventures’s Gaby Goldberg’s thoughts about Stanford University and its relationship with the VC industry: After a decade of VC influence at Stanford, what’s next?🙂 About that, an account of my previous writing on deep tech startups, a common friend recently introduced me to Massimo Portincaso, the chairman of Hello Tomorrow and a co-author of this recent report: The Deep Tech Investment Paradox: a call to redesign the investor model (highly recommend).😏 My colleagues at The Family and I have long been convinced that European founders should focus on ‘hybrid’ startups bringing technology to traditional industries. Well, Roy Bahat and James Cham of Bloomberg Beta came up with a name for exactly that: “hot-swap startups”.😐 Cryptos: there are booms, and then there are busts. But beyond  that, as I’ve argued many times in the past, there’s a dynamic that’s bringing about many innovations when it comes to network protocols, software architecture, and the financial system. My colleague Younès Rharbaoui, CFO at The Family, wrote about the implications in the realm of corporate finance: The DeFi Frontier.😒 Corporate venture capital is a tough nut to crack, between the conflicting goals and the bad practices when it comes to leading investments and rewarding those who are in charge. Here are some nuances in Institutional Investor: Families Make Corporate VC Investments Better, Research Shows.* Related: Check out this article about tech companies such as Stripe, Netflix, and Carta setting up their own CVC funds: Complements and Constraints. 😖 Trump did a lot of bad things, and some of the things he broke may be beyond repair. But a positive aspect of his legacy is his ability to inspire engagement on the liberal side, be it on climate change, racial justice, or building liberal institutions in general (via Byrne Hobart): 2016: The Turning Point.😴 I didn’t contribute to The Family’s daily newsletter this week, but make sure to check out my colleagues’ posts: Employee-friendly fundraising (by Balthazar de Lavergne) and 399 ideas that didn't work (by Oussama Ammar).🇫🇷 Nouveau Départ (in 🇫🇷): yesterday’s edition was on Warren Buffett : une introduction🤑 and last Thursday’s was on Écriture : nos histoires & nos conseils📝 Also give a listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Fabienne Broucaret: Télétravail : le bon environnement💻.From Industrial Policy: China Gets It, We Don't (October 2020): I don’t think you can understand China’s industrial policy if you don’t realize that it’s all pulled forward by the impressive growth of the Chinese tech giants. First, you need the downstream companies discovering new models and new usages and exploring new markets; then you can invest up the stream so as to ensure your nation’s competitive advantage in cutting-edge technology.This doesn’t necessarily have to be consumer-facing companies. Back in the 1960s in the US, it was the military and the goal was to prevail over the Soviet Union. More recently, in the case of Huawei in China, we’re talking about a company that needs technological assets to deploy telecommunication networks rather than serving consumers. But whatever it is (public or private, consumer or enterprise), you need that direction provided from down the stream.Sign up to European Straits if you don’t want to miss the next issues 🤗(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)From Normandy, France 🇫🇷 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* Laetitia spoke with historian Anton Howes about innovation and the Royal Society of Arts 🎧* My essay published last week about the categories of ‘Diffracted Venture Capital’* A Twitter thread lamenting politicians botching the vaccination campaigns* Thumbs up/down for last week: female VC partners, university spinouts, the Paris ecosystem* Five of my tips about how you can become more productiveThere are a few institutions in London that no one interested in innovation can afford to miss, and one of them is the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). I’m not sure how my wife Laetitia and I first crossed paths with the many great people working there, but at some point we were quite engaged with the community.* My first encounter, I think, was when I met Anthony Painter within a Fellowship we both participated in at the Oxford Internet Institute. Then on several occasions Laetitia and I were invited to contribute to the RSA’s Center for the Future of Work: see one of my contributions here, and Laetitia is now a member of the RSA Future of Work Advisory Board. Finally, following a co-optation by the late Miranda Bertram (who was my public speaking coach at the time), Laetitia and I both became Fellows of the RSA sometime in early 2018.These are all the reasons I was amazed to discover that Anton Howes, the author of the newsletter Age of Invention, which I had been following with great interest from the beginning, was in fact the RSA’s ‘historian in residence’, and working on a book that has since been published: Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation. Needless to say, when Anton and I recently interacted over Zoom (via the Entrepreneurs Network), I immediately followed up to ask him if he would be a guest on our Building Bridges podcast.* He graciously agreed, and Laetitia interviewed him a few weeks later. Below is what she wrote on the Building Bridges website 👇Anton Howes is fascinated with the process of invention and what fuels it. I recommend his Substack newsletter, Age of Invention, which is full of interesting pieces about “the origin of patents”, “the birth of the business corporation”, and the maritime technology of the late 16th century.His current research focuses on why innovation accelerated in Britain in the 18th century, i.e. why the Industrial Revolution happened there and not elsewhere:One of my key findings is that innovation is a practice that spreads from person to person. I argue that people became innovators because they adopted an improving mentality - and that Britain experienced an acceleration of innovation because its innovators were committed to evangelising that mentality further.I asked Anton why Britain became the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, if it could have happened elsewhere, who were the entrepreneurs of that time, what motivated them, and what Britain’s institutional recipe was. And of course he talked about the RSA, this “extraordinary society that has touched all aspects of British life”:From its beginnings in a coffee house in the mid-eighteenth century, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way imaginable. It has sought to influence how Britons work, how they are educated, the music they listen to, the food they eat, the items in their homes, and even how they remember their own history.If Britain prospered the way it did, it’s because it developed powerful institutions—norms, best practices & organisations like the RSA—to sustain that prosperity. That history is full of lessons for today as it helps us to understand how innovation works and how we can encourage it.👉 Listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Anton in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.💸 Diffracted Venture Capital: The CategoriesThe shift to the Entrepreneurial Age means many positions are being shuffled around, some moves being made earlier in the cycle, some later. One of the industries in which the ongoing shuffle has become quite evident lately is investing, as we’re seeing what used to be a relatively straightforward activity (‘venture capital’) become quite diffracted: VCs expand the scope of their operations and non-VCs push into areas where previously they would have never dared roam.In a changing environment it’s a good idea to have a map to understand the lay of the land. But before that map can be made, we need accurate categories to describe the ways in which VC is being diffracted; to that end, I used last Thursday’s essay to begin listing the categories I’ve been noticing lately.These categories are quite diverse, ranging from large-scale indexing (similar to what is being done on the stock market) to revenue-based financing that has emerged with the maturation of the SaaS model. That diversity is also reflected in the types of players involved, from traditional private equity firms to solo capitalists. All in all, it’s a signal that we really are in a world where startups can tackle virtually any industry, especially those that were previously seen as too difficult to break into. And it’s also a signal that there’s a growing need for ‘digestive pills’ that can help software continue eating the world 😋👉 Read the whole Diffracted VC: The Categories (unlocked for everyone 🤗)😀 The lack of female VCs in Europe was already pointed out in my What I Learned Curating 32 Editions of Capital Call, and Willy Braun and Vincent Touati-Tomas and I have built a Twitter list to try and have a more comprehensive view. Sifted is now adding firepower to the effort!🙂 I once wrote that we needed more controversies if we ever wanted Europe to make progress on the tech front. Well, we just had a good one—on university spinouts! Check out Air Street Capital’s Nathan Benaich’s initial op-ed in the FT, my own contribution in Sifted, and this follow-up by Nathan, responding to Alice Gast, President of Imperial College London:😏 In my essay on The Future of Wealth Management (April 2019), I was wondering if innovation in helping rich people staying rich would contribute to ending upward social mobility. As written by Chris Giles in the FT, we’re very far from it: Relax: trust fund kids are not taking over the world.😐 In these times of botched vaccination campaigns in continental Europe, there’s a lot of talk about how startups could help governments deliver better public services. I liked this a lot—by Chris Yiu, of the Tony Blair Institute. Also, there’s this in Fortune: Investing where the government is falling short.😒 Dragos Novac of the (excellent) Sunday CET wrote a whole section on the French entrepreneurial ecosystem and the fact that repeat founders tend to stay as far from it as possible. I couldn’t help but send him my views on the matter, which he quoted (with my permission) in his latest edition:I think the most critical issue is the cultural and political inward-lookingness (for lack of a better word).The key to early success in France is to pay tribute to the powers that be: bad angel investors, bad VCs, Bpifrance (the government's investing arm), corporates, even cabinet members (they'll invite you for dinner or events if there's local buzz about your startup), and of course Macron himself. At this point, you may have the impression that your startup is successful but:* your cap table is a nightmare* everyone in the company speaks French* you're failing at international expansion* in general, you're resting on your laurelsThere are very few French founders who are aware of this trap. And those who are are in for a lot of pain, because France will make you pay for your desire to escape and look beyond its borders 😞 (and it'll be impossible to attract international talent anyway, so succeeding at outgrowing France usually means relocating elsewhere, typically the US).😖 You may have noticed the recent controversy about Antonio García Martínez being abruptly fired from Apple because (?) of a few paragraphs in his (highly praised) semi-fictional book Chaos Monkeys. I don’t know Antonio well (we merely have friends in common), but I feel very sorry for what just happened to him—see my previous writings on related matters: cancel culture and workplace politics.🏋🏻‍♀️ In my latest contribution to The Family’s daily newsletter, I reveal all my secrets for getting better at what I do everyday 😉 How to be more productive. 🇫🇷 Nouveau Départ (in 🇫🇷): yesterday’s edition was on Qu'est-ce que la culture d'entreprise ? and last Thursday’s was on Taiwan : nouvelle ligne de front ? Also give a listen to my conversation with Thibauld Favre, CEO of our portfolio company Fairmint, about everything crypto: Tout sur les cryptos. From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* I spoke with The Diff’s Byrne Hobart about basically everything 🎧* My latest Sifted column is about university spinouts—and Europe lagging behind* Yahoo is slowly disappearing from sight. I wrote a new episode in my ‘11 Notes’ series* As software eats the world, founders have to tackle tangible stuff: a few ideas on the matter* Do you think journalists depict tech as the bad guy? What if we have the context to blame?Today’s episode of Building Bridges is my conversation with Byrne Hobart, a hedge fund alumnus and investor who now writes the popular newsletter The Diff.I have Eugene Wei to thank for recommending Byrne Hobart’s newsletter The Diff early during the lockdown in 2020. Byrne was already on my radar somewhat, so I jumped on the occasion and immediately subscribed to the extraordinary, dense, 5-email a week product that is The Diff.I’m still enjoying it almost one year later because it spans the many different topics I’m interested in, from finance to economic development to industry deep dives to country focuses—with a few powerful recurring ideas and all the depth & breadth we should be looking for in our everyday reading. Should I mention that Byrne’s has become one of the most popular paying newsletters on Substack?Before you go and explore The Diff, however, listen to the podcast 🎧 My contribution is just a few short questions, with Byrne sharing his thoughts at length on the following topics:* Why he moved from New York to Austin, Texas during the pandemic, and what it’s like to homeschool your kids like he and his wife have been doing for months.* His professional journey, what led him to write a newsletter, and whether writing on a regular basis makes him a better investor.* Why he thinks The Social Network by David Fincher is the most important movie of all time—regardless of accuracy.* The difference between hedge fund managers and venture capitalists, and what the latter could learn from the former.* Why America’s financial system makes the country so strong and resilient, including from a global perspective.* Why there are many things in common between a country that’s developing and a company that’s growing—and what happens at the end of that process.👉 Listen to my conversation with Byrne Hobart in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.The spark for my Sifted column this week was an op-ed in the Financial Times by Airstreet Capital’s Nathan Benaich centered on the poor performance of European universities when it comes to spinning out successful startups. Nathan’s opinion dovetails with my own, which is that European universities create too many administrative frictions, slow entrepreneurs down rather than speeding them up, and generally have the wrong idea of how startups can benefit the university and its researchers. This is a mentality problem, but perhaps one that can be rectified with a bit of history and a desire to do better.👉 Read my column here: Universities should serve startups, not the other way around.😢 11 Notes on Yahoo News came last week that what’s left of Yahoo is being sold to a private equity firm. Although it’s certainly not much of a household name anymore, Yahoo was one of the Internet’s early tech powerhouses, and there are many interesting aspects of its history that can illuminate both where we’ve been and where we’re headed. So many, indeed, that I dedicated this ‘11 Notes’ edition to the company.For example, the different approaches taken by Yahoo and Google show the stakes in increasing quality in the face of increasing scale, as Yahoo’s emphasis on curation led to their being left behind at an exponential rate as the number of web pages exploded. Then there is Yahoo’s relationship with Asia, from an early expansion to a complicated situation in which its investment in Alibaba ended up being worth more than Yahoo itself (creating some awkwardness in terms of the company’s tax burden).In the end, Yahoo may also become notable as being one of the last of those born in the dotcom era to disappear–with the others either long gone (Myspace, Netscape) or in no danger of leaving the stage anytime soon (Google, Facebook). Whether due to failures in leadership, missteps in international expansion, a missing connection with end users, or simply a large combination of factors, Yahoo’s presence over the past 30 years certainly merits reflection on its legacy in the Entrepreneurial Age.👉 I went through it all in 11 Notes on Yahoo.🛠 All About Stuff That’s TangibleAs software eats the world, it’s needing to digest industries that are more and more heavily marked by tangible goods. I was reminded of this recently as one of tech’s latest success stories, Peloton, was hit hard by the need to recall a large number of their connected treadmills. Peloton’s stumble shows how producing hardware impacts a company’s strategic positioning and its returns on invested capital.My longtime readers know that one of the key elements guiding my thinking on this topic has been Amazon, as it bucked the trend of the early Internet era by going directly into the highly tangible, low-margin world of retail. Now, with online commerce having become firmly entrenched, much attention has been turned to manufacturing, where there is an entirely different equation to solve regarding building a business and making profits.All in all, the need to confront the world of tangible things led me to my conviction that, as software eats the world, it’ll be needing help–digestive pills, if you will, to help it along. I believe that there are many opportunities for startups to grow in that field, and am excited to see how it will change the field of what many refer to as ‘deep tech’.👉 Dig into the abundant food for thought in All About Stuff That’s Tangible.🌬 The Media and the ContextFor the past few years, there has been a growing sense (especially in the US) that tech has become the bad guy. But as a European, I’d sheepishly note that this seems to be one field in which our tech scene has the lead over the Americans: in Europe startups have long been characterized by many, including journalists, as threatening incumbents, destroying jobs, and not complying with regulations.We at The Family have always had to work within this kind of antagonistic framework, whether directed at the startups in our portfolio or our firm itself. I myself ended up being sued for libel after saying the owner of the most powerful taxi company in Paris (G7) was a “gravedigger of innovation” (I did, however, win the case 😉). Thus having a different perspective than many in the US, I believe a bit of startup wisdom can be applied here. Namely, we know that finding product/market fit is a key inflection point, because literally everything in the startup changes: what was true before is no longer true, and what was useless or even damaging before can become a very smart move. Many in the tech world need to grapple with the fact that startups, and the tech world in general, have passed that inflection point, and as such their relationship with the media must be reinvented.👉 My Tuesday thread notes some other key changes in The Media and the Context.Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!🔥 Next Tuesday, The Family is hosting the First-Time Entrepreneur Summit, as founders tell the real story of what happens when you take the leap and start building. The full program and free tickets are available right here.👀 In my latest contribution to The Family’s daily newsletter, I suggest founders be cautious as they seek advice from sources across the Atlantic: Read the context.🇫🇷 More podcasts with Laetitia on Nouveau Départ (in 🇫🇷)! Yesterday’s edition was on Basecamp et la politique au travail, and then there’s last week’s episode on Les hunters et les settlers : nomadisme, 2ème partie. Don’t forget to give a listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Patricia Wendling about remote working: Télétravail : a-t-on tiré les leçons de la pandémie ?From How Fred Terman Turned Stanford Into an Entrepreneurial Powerhouse (July 2020):As pointed out by Steve Blank, Frederick Terman inspired the entire Stanford startup community with an obsession for building what customers want (echoing Paul Graham’s famous words). This is why, as stated by this great article in Scientific American,  to this day “Silicon Valley is [still] dominated by what we call the “need seekers,” companies that focus on discerning their users’ actual needs, both spoken and unspoken; figuring out how to meet those needs; and then getting the necessary product or service to market as fast as possible.”And Terman designed and operated a self-sustaining system, with a flywheel turning so fast and churning out successful tech companies at such a high rate that it became a perpetual entrepreneurial machine, supporting the rise of many generations of highly successful tech companies—from Fairchild Semiconductor in the late 1950s to Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore’s Intel in the 1970s, Apple and Atari in the 1980s, Netscape in the 1990s, Google in the early 2000s, and then the likes of Facebook, Airbnb and Uber.All recent editions:* The Media and the Context—for subscribers only.* All About Stuff That’s Tangible—for subscribers only.* 11 Notes on Yahoo—for subscribers only.* Economic Insecurity w/ Deborah Copaken. Productive Fragmentation. Multi-Asset. Talent.—for everyone.* Attracting Talent in Europe—for subscribers only.* All About Multi-Asset Allocation—for subscribers only.* Productive Fragmentation—for subscribers only.* Chinese Tech w/ Lillian Li. Founder Control w/ Bill Janeway. Daniel Ek, Arsenal & the Super League.—for everyone.European Straits is a 4-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* My wife Laetitia spoke with author Deborah Copaken about healthcare in America 🎧* Fragmentation has long been a downside for Europe. Can it make us more productive?* There’s a lot to learn from institutional investors and how they allocate capital* There are many problems to solve before Europe can attract foreign talentToday’s episode of Building Bridges is my wife Laetitia Vitaud’s conversation with Deborah Copaken, a best-selling author and screenwriter who shared her experience with the healthcare system in America.I’ve been writing about economic security almost forever, insisting on the importance of providing a well-functioning safety net to foster a more entrepreneurial society. For more on that, see my book Hedge as well as this compilation of related essays: All About the Gig Economy.Indeed, the idea of widespread instability is an integral part of what the Entrepreneurial Age is about. The lifespan of companies is getting shorter and shorter due to the acceleration of technological change; corporations have less ability to provide their employees with stability; in turn, these employees decide to break free and go on the hunt, enjoying the upside of flexibility from a worker’s perspective.What Deborah Copaken reminds me in her conversation with Laetitia is that this kind of instability determined many of her career choices as a woman working in the media industry in the US. Because the US provides affordable healthcare only to those who are employed in a steady job, at many times in her life she had to give up on what she really wanted to secure access to proper healthcare coverage. And because she’s a woman, she’s also experienced the sexism of the healthcare system at every turn.Deborah’s story is the perfect illustration of the point I make in Hedge: creators, like innovators, need a better safety net to work their magic! In a world of instability, this net is what makes risk-taking possible.Deborah and Laetitia’s conversation is a must-listen. In addition to just how critical economic security is so that people can move forward and take more risks, you will also hear about:* Being part of the writing team of the popular Netflix series Emily in Paris, and drawing on Deborah’s own experience of cross-cultural issues to enrich the script.* What it was like for Deborah to live in Paris for a time when she began her career as a photojournalist—and the sexism she has had to fight ever since in the media industry.* What it’s like to have to deal with the US healthcare system when your life's in danger and you need thorough examinations and emergency procedures.* The reality of a life on the edge and having to deal with multiple risks and constraints at every turn—as is too often the case for people who embrace creativity as a career.👉 Listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Deborah Copaken in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.🇪🇺 Productive Fragmentation Here’s an idea that matters in Europe: creating spaces where people can come together, regardless of their ‘native’ culture and language, in no way negates the individual experiences of any given country. Nor does the idea of pooling resources mean ending in-group competition; indeed, finding the right balance among these various needs is key to what we can think of as ‘productive fragmentation’.I’ve been reminded of this quite often lately, in contexts ranging from Netflix’s excellent Drive to Survive series about Formula One to my recent podcast discussion with economist Noah Smith. While Europe certainly has the fragmentation part of the equation down, it hasn’t found the proper way to use that fragmentation to encourage value creation in the Entrepreneurial Age.That doesn’t have to remain the case, however. When I spoke with Chinese Characteristics writer Lillian Li about the situation in China, she noted the high degree of internal competition and decentralized autonomy there, with Beijing competing against Shanghai and Shenzhen and more for talent and results. That competition, however, tends to end with one proven winner, suggesting that fragmentation is an advantage when starting businesses, before eventually being reined in during the scaling up phase. Could Europe find a new configuration in which that is possible?👉 I try to bring a complicated and broad topic into better focus in Productive Fragmentation.⏳ All About Multi-Asset AllocationWhile retail investors grab the headlines (as we saw with the Gamestop saga, for example), institutional investors are a better indicator of where things are headed over the long term. Indeed, their job is allocating vast amounts of money across various asset classes, including stocks, bonds, commodities, foreign currencies, real estate, hedge funds, private equity—and, yes, venture capital. Therefore it’s a very good idea to keep an eye on how they’re directing those capital flows.Today, there are several levers that can be pulled, especially in Europe, in order to facilitate the growth of venture capital by making it a more attractive part of a multi-asset strategy from an institutional perspective. Israel’s Yozma program is a good example of how to do it well, while numerous Asian countries have had their own approach. One key, no matter what a given country decides, is to remember that it is critical to provide viable ways to show that liquidity is coming.👉 Delve into the history of the subject as well as the current state of affairs in All About Multi-Asset Allocation.🧲 Attracting Talent in EuropeIn our times of transition, it’s only natural for people to move about in search of opportunity. Yet for all the talk about how nomadism is growing as a viable option, moving from one place to another is still very difficult, particularly for anyone who isn’t all on their own.And so while many, including policymakers, recognize the potential benefits that can come from having talent choose their city or country as a new place to live, very little attention is paid to the real issues that block people from moving. These aren’t just related to administrative technicalities such as a visa; instead, the most difficult ones are related to very practical needs such as finding a home, opening a bank account, even getting a cellphone.In Europe, there is also the language issue, since there are very few places where speaking English in the workplace is the norm, to say nothing of one’s daily life dealing with schools, shopping, interactions with neighbors, etc. While none of these problems are insurmountable, they are all critical and they all build upon one another. Solving the question of how to attract more talent will mean going far beyond quick administrative fixes, and towards a much broader buy-in on the part of society at large.👉 My Tuesday thread this week sprang from a podcast discussion with Laetitia, resulting in Attracting Talent in Europe.Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!🛠 In my latest contribution to The Family’s daily newsletter, I highlight an overlooked discipline in the startup world: product management. Check out A key part of your startup team.🇫🇷 More podcasts with Laetitia on Nouveau Départ (in 🇫🇷)! Check out yesterday’s edition on Économie du football : la transition ? ⚽ as well as last week’s episode on Nomadisme en famille : pas si facile ! Also make sure to give a listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Marylène Patou-Mathis about the prehistory of women: La femme préhistorique gagne à être connue. From The Bright Future of Craftsmanship (September 2018): What does the future hold? If the key to individual happiness is no longer a work contract, then we must reinvent what work is about, and Laetitia thinks it should revolve around the values and principles of craftsmanship—autonomy, responsibility, and creativity. Hence the title of the book: Du Labeur (“From Labor...”, which denotes routine, alienation, and pain)... à l’ouvrage (“...to Craftsmanship”, which is all about self-determination, fulfillment, connections...and uncertainty). The norm used to be about being alienated along assembly lines while enjoying “the bundle”. Tomorrow, the norm might be about working on our own, just like craftsmen, yet being connected to others through networks.All recent editions:* Attracting Talent in Europe—for subscribers only.* All About Multi-Asset Allocation—for subscribers only.* Productive Fragmentation—for subscribers only.* Chinese Tech w/ Lillian Li. Founder Control w/ Bill Janeway. Daniel Ek, Arsenal & the Super League.—for everyone.* A Thread on the Super League—for subscribers only.* All About Founders Being in Control—for subscribers only.* Bill Janeway on Who Should Be in Control—for everyone.* Productive Disagreements w/ Ian Leslie. Restructuring. Taxation. Velocity in VC.—for everyone. European Straits is a 4-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* I spoke with Lillian Li, writer at Chinese Characteristics, about everything Chinese tech 🎧* What if Daniel Ek buys Arsenal? My latest column in Sifted* Bill Janeway’s insights about balancing power between founders and investors* Curating a comprehensive reading list about founder control in a company* We all have something to say about the football Super League. A thread.Today’s episode ofBuilding Bridges is my conversation with Lillian Li, a former venture capitalist in Europe who now writes the highly successful newsletter Chinese Characteristics.I’m not really sure how our paths initially crossed, but I discovered Lillian’s work about technology in China in the course of last year—first on Twitter, and then through the insightful and enlightening essays on Chinese tech companies published on her acclaimed newsletter Chinese Characteristics.* I had all the reasons to dive in. I think China is a critical area on the global map, one that none of us can afford to ignore. And I think that tech entrepreneurship is one of the things that make China matter even more. On the other hand, we Westerners have to be humble when it comes to China: it’s a very large and diverse country, with a culture that’s very different from ours, and where people speak a language that’s extremely difficult for most of us to master.Needless to say I had to have Lillian on the podcast: as someone who grew up and worked in Europe, she can relate to the kinds of questions we’re facing on this side of the world; but as a native of China who went back there last year, she has the unique ability to share the details and nuances that elude most of us who are seeking to understand how China is positioning in the Entrepreneurial Age.Here are the topics Lillian and I covered in our 45-min. conversation:* Why she decided to go back to China, how life in China compares to that in the UK in the context of the pandemic, and her assessment of China’s economic prospects.* What makes tech entrepreneurship in China different from that in the US or Europe, and what European entrepreneurs can learn from their Chinese counterparts.* Why Westerners should focus less on powerful Chinese individuals and more on systems and institutions if they really want to understand what’s happening in China.* What really happened in the runup to Ant Financial’s interrupted IPO and her explanation of the setbacks encountered by Jack Ma following the fateful speech he made in October 2020.* The sources she recommends for all who want to learn more, including Rui Ma’s podcast Tech Buzz China and the book China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know by Arthur R. Kroeber. 👉 Listen to my conversation with Lillian in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🎧⚠️ In my latest Sifted column, I’m taking on a story that many people have commented on during the past week or so: the football Super League.* The angle I explore is an interesting development following the disastrous announcement and ditching of the plan after only 48 hours: the fact that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is now looking to buy the famed Arsenal club in London (which I’m familiar with because I used to live not far from there in the Borough of Islington).It’s a development that, in my eyes, could signal European tech having reached a new level. It could also contribute to several positive developments in the European tech ecosystem over the coming years.👉 Read it all in Sifted: Would Daniel Ek buying Arsenal be a game changer for European tech?⚖️ Bill Janeway on Who Should Be in Control One of the joys of writing this newsletter is that it gives many occasions to hear feedback and enter discussions with people whom I greatly admire. And Bill Janeway certainly fits into that category, which is why I was happy to have his pushback on my position that it’s a good thing when founders can keep control over their companies. Even better: he agreed to let me share his thoughts with you.So this edition, which I sent for free to everyone, is simply the text of Bill’s responses during the conversation that we recently had. It’s well worth your time: not only does it provide a crystal-clear understanding of how a venture capital investor can evaluate the developments and various risks occurring in their portfolio, it’s also rich in sources and examples that go deeper into the subject.I’d also note, before sending you to read the whole piece, that Bill is a great example of the insight one can get from an investor who has developed clear theses on the world in which they’re living. The mantras that he’s developed, such as “corporate happiness is positive cash flow” and “all entrepreneurs lie”, are direct and revealing, serving as useful signposts while evaluating a given situation.👉 I stepped back to give Bill’s thoughts center stage in Bill Janeway on Who Should Be in Control.💪 All About Founders Being in ControlMy conversation with Bill has obviously been at the top of my mind, and so for the week’s curated readings I went back into everything related to founder control. As Bill also pointed out, there’s nothing particularly new in this debate, as evidenced by one of my earliest writings on the topic (in 2016), which focused on the case of young entrepreneurs back in the 1950s.And perhaps the continued existence of the debate is simply an indication of how complicated the question is. Indeed, it’s a topic that touches on a wide variety of issues, ranging from the search for product-market fit to crossing the chasm to building a company in the face of both risk and uncertainty.For entrepreneurs who are still in the early stages of building their company, it’s critical to be aware of the tradeoffs that can come with accepting investors into your cap table, and the terms that will govern the involvement of those investors. This is especially true for anyone looking to build a startup across borders, as choices made early on can have outsized impacts on your options further down the road.  👉 Refine your view on the topic using the sources in All About Founders Being in Control.⚽️ A Thread on the Super LeagueIt’s rare to see such a rapid, high-profile explosion as that which occurred with the ill-fated announcement of a new football “Super League”. There have been numerous articles looking in detail at what happened, but I wanted to put things into a particular perspective that I believe is fundamental to the Entrepreneurial Age: namely, how the people behind the Super League forgot that football was one of the first industries to truly shine a light on the power of the multitude, thanks to the implicit contract clubs form with their fans.Football clubs have long been able to translate the power of their local fan base into benefits for the club and its owners. What was lost in the planning of the Super League was that those fans also can turn their power against the club itself, particularly in a situation where there seems to be a significant downside for them, given that the existence of the Super League would have rendered meaningless the outcomes of its elite clubs’ matches against their many historic national rivals.Still, despite football having been early in sealing a compact with its multitude of fans, the sport itself has in many ways remained in the old paradigm of mass production, especially in its fascination for live TV audiences. That’s proving all well and good for now, but I wonder where the tipping point in the football value chain is, and how owners and investors will make money when technology has displaced many of the players upon which the sport relies?👉 I put my two cents into one of the big business stories lately in A Thread on the Super League.Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!🏎 Matthias Hilpert, a seasoned tech investor based in Berlin, just launched a book titled Fast Forward to help founders master the discipline of B2B sales. It includes testimonials from two of our portfolio founders, Nicolas Dessaigne of Algolia and Firmin Zocchetto of PayFit. Discover the book here: Fast Forward: Accelerating B2B sales for startups.🔍 In my latest contribution to The Family’s daily newsletter, I share a few pieces of advice to help founders identify good investors—ones that are decisive and supportive: Only deal with good investors.🇫🇷 More podcasts with Laetitia on Nouveau Départ (in 🇫🇷)! Check out yesterday’s edition on Après Merkel : une chancelière verte ? as well as last week’s episode on Travailleurs / entreprises : la distance se creuse. Also make sure to give a listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Denis Pennel about the competing interests of consumers and workers: Le consommateur, ennemi du travailleur ?From Europe Is a Developing Economy (October 2019):The most interesting trend in global tech these past few years isn’t anything that’s been happening in the US. Rather, it’s the rise of tech companies in China. Like many Westerners, I had long been uninterested in what was happening in Mainland China. I thought it was too far away, too different, and all happening in the impenetrable language that is Mandarin.But I changed my mind following Alibaba’s IPO in 2014. That moment triggered my interest, leading me to watch The Crocodile in the Yangtze, a movie that tells the story of Alibaba beating eBay on the Chinese market. I then read many books and articles, met many experts, and even had the opportunity to travel there twice: to Shanghai in 2017 and then to Beijing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou earlier this year with my colleague Emilie Maret. Today, I’d say that the idea of China as a tech superpower has become widely acknowledged. But that doesn’t make the country any less interesting.All recent editions:* A Thread on the Super League—for subscribers only.* All About Founders Being in Control—for subscribers only.* Bill Janeway on Who Should Be in Control—for everyone.* Productive Disagreements w/ Ian Leslie. Restructuring. Taxation. Velocity in VC.—for everyone.* Velocity in Venture Capital—for subscribers only.* All About Taxation in the Digital Economy—for subscribers only.* Restructuring The Family—for subscribers only.* Around Europe w/ Tyler Cowen. Lobbying. Startups Across Borders. Biden's Global Tax Reform.—for everyone.European Straits is a 4-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* My wife Laetitia Vitaud spoke with author Ian Leslie about conflicts and disagreements 🎧* Apply to On Deck Angels, an eight-week fellowship for top angel investors* Sharing my experience restructuring my firm The Family during the pandemic* I’ve been writing about corporate taxation in the digital economy since...forever* Everyone’s obsessed with Tiger Global. My take on a key feature of their model: velocityToday’s episode of Building Bridges is Laetitia’s conversation with Ian Leslie, a former ad man and author of the recently published Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes.Ian first emerged on my radar three years ago when I read an inspiring article he wrote about the future of advertising and brands in a more digital economy. I started to follow him on Twitter and then signed up to his excellent newsletter The Ruffian. When he tweeted that he was spending a few days in Paris, I had my colleague Kyle Hall interview him on stage at our then-flagship office in Paris.And when he more recently announced that he was about to publish a new book, I told Laetitia she had to have him as a guest on the podcast and ask him about why he thinks conflicts can be a good thing.* I hope you’ll enjoy Laetitia and Ian’s conversation on conflicts, disagreements, and how they can lead to better outcomes. A rather timely topic!Here’s what Laetitia wrote on the Building Bridges website:Like a lot of other animals we humans respond to threat with two tactics: fight or flight. Either we become very hostile or we do everything we can to avoid any kind of argument. But both these reactions are completely dysfunctional. The internet isn’t helping: social media are designed to turn what could be productive exchanges into useless cockfights in a public arena.The counterintuitive truth is that we need conflicts to move forward and live and work together more happily. Conflicts can bring us closer. “Couples and teams are happier when they are in the habit of passionate disagreement. Conflict can draw people together.” That’s why the author devotes the second half of the book to his 10 “rules of productive argument” to help us get better at disagreeing with others.Establish a relationship of trust with the other person, accept them for who they are, try and make them feel good about themselves, consider that you might be perceived as “weird” by the other person, be curious about their point of view and actually listen to what they have to say...and above all else be real and honest when you interact with them.The stories told in the book and the insights shared show this guide to productive disagreement is indispensable reading.👉 Listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Ian in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🎧⚠️ On Deck Angels (ODA) is an eight-week fellowship for top angel investors looking to hone their investing craft through community, tactical workshops and deal flow. * ODA addresses topics such as: mental models and investing frameworks, establishing a track record, adding value post-investment, and learning how to build an angel brand.Some of the founding fellows include Dan Romero, VP of Coinbase; Michael Vaughan, COO of Venmo; and Ann Ferracane, founder of Patch Ventures.Interested in joining ODA? Learn more and apply here.🏗 Restructuring The Family As I’m sure you know, writing this newsletter isn’t my only job at The Family (or at least, I hope you assumed that! 😉) Over the past year, a large part of my time has been taken up by a major restructuring of our firm—one that, although not prompted by COVID-19, was immediately and drastically affected by the broader economic context of the pandemic.It has been a rather complicated operation. Restructuring a business is something that’s relatively simple in theory and even in the steps to be taken, but quite difficult to actually execute. In no small part that’s because each step requires you to remain absolutely faithful to the plan, even when faced with difficult and/or deteriorating relationships with creditors, suppliers, employees that are let go, etc.When done well, though, restructuring is a real opportunity to not only get the business onto more solid ground, but also to double down on everything that works well in your organization. You get a better view of which outsider providers are doing a great job (and which ones aren’t), your team can make faster decisions, and your management can refocus on the big picture. In doing so, remember that none of it is simply an end in itself: your goal isn’t survival, it’s to make sure the business can thrive, positioning itself to execute on a sound strategy over the coming years.👉 I gave subscribers a peek behind the curtain in Restructuring The Family.🚪 All About Taxation in the Digital EconomyAs noted last week, the Biden administration’s push for international coordination on corporate taxation could finally produce results in a field that has been slow to adapt to the digital age. The lack of results certainly hasn’t been due to a lack of interest, however, and there is a rich bibliography for anyone wanting to dive further into the topic of how corporate taxation is and could be structured.My own writings on this specific topic date back to a report that the French government commissioned from me and Pierre Collin, a respected tax judge, back in 2013 (my participation in that report came following the publication of L’Âge de la multitude with my friend Henri Verdier in 2012). The report was then followed with many (more accessible) articles on the topic, in outlets ranging from Forbes to Politico EU to The Family’s own publication on Medium.More recently, I’ve directed my attention specifically at how corporate taxation impacts startups and startup ecosystems. Indeed, these aren’t simply questions about how to tax profits; corporate taxation is also critical in subjects such as rewarding employees for value creation through equity sharing, enabling a remote workforce, and generally building startups across borders.👉 Go further on a topic that I really do find quite fascinating in All About Taxation in the Digital Economy.🌐 Velocity in Venture CapitalMuch talk in the VC world lately has been about hedge fund Tiger Global’s move into venture, with Founders Fund’s Everett Randle’s in-depth article on the topic serving as an excellent base for discussion. For me, this discussion is related to several recurring themes in this newsletter: the diffraction of venture capital, the fact that returns go down as predictability goes up, and new quantitative/indexing methods for deploying capital in venture.In yesterday’s edition, I concentrated on one characteristic that has its role to play in each of those trends: the velocity with which money flows in the venture space. To keep it short, the idea is that by increasing the speed at which money moves from one hand to another, you can create more value in the economy, even without increasing the quantity of money in the system.Now, in today’s low-interest-rate world, we know that there is in fact an increasing amount of money in the system. Nonetheless, the lesson remains: by not having money locked up for long periods of time (for example, in the decade that can easily mark the time between a startup’s founding and an IPO) and utilizing methods such as secondary sales from Series B and beyond, startup ecosystems can avoid stagnation and create more value through faster positive feedback loops.👉 I went deeper into how to use money efficiently in Velocity in Venture Capital.Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!🌤 A while ago I mentioned my involvement in the project to create a new moral political economy by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.I haven’t been there for a while for obvious reasons, but the pandemic hasn’t slowed down Margaret Levi and her colleagues in advancing the cause. They’ve just published a new website, Fairer Tomorrow, which I highly recommend visiting so as to have a glimpse of all that it takes to make the most out of the current shift:The COVID pandemic continues to disrupt almost everything that enables us to learn, work, play, and thrive. It also magnifies numerous vulnerabilities and deficiencies that affected governments, economies, and societies well before its onset.As we envision and, eventually, forge together our lives after the pandemic, we do ourselves a lasting disservice by returning to the pre-pandemic status quo. Instead, we can move toward a new political economic framework that serves a more prosperous, equitable, and human-centered society. A good way to start is through exploring lessons we already have learned and ideas we have generated during the pandemic.That is the core concept motivating Fairer Tomorrow: Solutions to the Issues Highlighted by COVID, a website presented by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University. Specifically, it is a product of the Center’s flagship program, “Creating a New Moral Political Economy,” led by CASBS director Margaret Levi.⎈ In my latest contribution to The Family’s daily newsletter, I share a few pieces of advice for founders about the unique position they’re in: You're the one in control.🇫🇷 More podcasts with Laetitia on Nouveau Départ (in 🇫🇷)! Check out yesterday’s edition on Faillites d'entreprises : une tempête à venir ?  as well as last week’s episode on La solitude : l'autre pandémie. Also make sure to give a listen to my conversation with Rogervoice founder Olivier Jeannel about making the world a better place for people with a hearing disability: Rendre le monde plus accessible. From Cancel Culture: A Systemic Explanation (July 2020): It’s a matter of scale. If it’s me that’s caught in a public controversy regarding tech in Europe or French politics, I can write conciliatory DMs to the three people who are my most fervent contradictors and find some room for agreement.On the other hand, a “famous and powerful” person such as Andrew Sullivan simply can’t deal with the thousands of Twitter users who are shouting insults at him—not only because he’s not used to being on an equal footing with the rest of us, but also because it’s practically impossible to exchange 1-on-1 messages with literally thousands of angry people on the Internet.In this case, what choice do such personalities have (apart from reflection and contrition, which doesn’t really fit their character) except to wage an all-out war and risk cancellation?All recent editions:* Velocity in Venture Capital—for subscribers only.* All About Taxation in the Digital Economy—for subscribers only.* Restructuring The Family—for subscribers only.* Around Europe w/ Tyler Cowen. Lobbying. Startups Across Borders. Biden's Global Tax Reform.—for everyone.* A New Corporate Tax—for subscribers only.* All About Crossing Borders—for subscribers only.* Building Startups Across Borders—for everyone.* Reinventing Housing w/ Diana Lind. Amazon's Politics. The Gig Economy. Centralization.—for everyone.European Straits is a 4-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* Economist and blogger Tyler Cowen on everything Europe 🎧* Founders, investors, and governments: all can contribute to upgrading regulations—in Sifted* We need to learn to solve ‘hard’ problems when building startups across borders* I’ve written so much over the years about the difficulty of crossing borders: here’s an overview* Joe Biden is about to bring the reform of corporate taxation to the finish lineToday’s episode of the Building Bridges podcast is my conversation with Tyler Cowen, an economist, director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, blogger at Marginal Revolution, and host of the podcast Conversations with Tyler.I first met Tyler back in 2019 when my colleague Zineb Mekouar and I spent a few days in Washington, DC to promote my book Hedge and to connect with John Dearie’s Center for American Entrepreneurship. We had lunch with Tyler and his colleague and co-author Alex Tabarrok in a Chinese restaurant near George Mason University. Most of our conversation that day was about exchanging ideas and impressions about the relative situation of America, Europe, and the rest of the world.Since then I’ve kept reading everything I could find about the political situation in the US, the state of the transatlantic relationship, and recently how COVID-19 was impacting the distribution of power and wealth across the world. Then last year, I realized something: Americans are, by far, the most inspiring contributors to this conversation—yet alas they’re mostly speaking about America, leaving the rest of the world untouched, uncommented on, almost undocumented!In this context, how about launching a podcast series in which I’d interview American thinkers, but having them focus the conversation on Europe?Fast forward to today: my 2020 idea has morphed into the Building Bridges podcast which I’m co-hosting with my wife Laetitia Vitaud. The value proposition of our podcast is to provide a platform for anyone who has interesting ideas to share with our vast community of “unapologetic globalists” (to quote my recent guest Chris Schroeder). * Not everyone that’s part of this roster has much to say about Europe. But whenever I catch one who does, I make sure to focus our conversation on that very subject—and I must say Tyler is one of our recent guests who has the most to say and to share about the Old Continent!And so if you’re interested in Europe, economics, libertarianism, or the prospects of various other regions in the world, I urge you to give my conversation with Tyler a listen. Here’s what you’ll hear:* What Tyler likes and dislikes about Europe, and the various countries he’s lived in or traveled to here (which is most of them!).* Why he thinks Europe is one of the least fragmented regions in the world—which is the exact opposite of how I view Europe!* Why Americans should be present and invest in India if they want to retain some influence in the future.* What advice he would give to young Europeans and young Americans who want to prepare themselves for our coming world.* Why he expects Europe to remain a wealthy and prosperous region, despite, well, everything. And many, many more interesting topics and ideas.👉 Listen to my conversation with Tyler in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🎧⚠️ In Sifted this week, I take up a problem that most startup founders find extremely difficult to navigate: regulatory barriers and how to lobby regulators for updated standards that take our now-digital economy into account.* As more startups move into industries such as finance and healthcare that are (for good reason!) quite highly regulated, founders and investors both need to step up their game in terms of effectively interacting with regulators. And on the other side, regulators—especially in Europe—need to realize that upgrading the regulatory framework can be a competitive economic advantage that boosts value creation.Read it all in my column: Lobbying: it’s high time startups up their game.🏗 Building Startups Across Borders Last Thursday, I took on a topic that I consider critical for everyone interested in European tech: how startups can build their business across borders. It’s a subject that my firm The Family is interested in both for our startups (since our reason for existing is to help ambitious entrepreneurs grow the best companies possible) and for ourselves (since we knew from very early on that in order to achieve that goal, we ourselves needed to expand beyond our beginnings in Paris).So from experience, both that of our firm and that of our startups, I can tell you that it’s not easy. And it’s made even harder by the general lack of good information available on the topic. It made me realize something: despite our perception of the economy being global, not many companies have actually succeeded in being truly multi-geography. In turn, that means that the number of people who have been on the ground doing it successfully is quite low.Yet such hands-on experience is critical when it comes to the “hard” problems which companies face when trying to do business across borders: corporate structuring, employee equity, work contracts, proper accounting, etc. There is a real dearth of open source knowledge on these topics, and this essay serves to open a new stream of content that we at The Family want to produce for founders facing these problems. By the way, the essay is free for everyone!👉 I do hope you’ll read the whole thing (and welcome any thoughts you may have) in Building Startups Across Borders.🚪 All About Crossing BordersMy own writings on startups’ attempts to grow across borders and the issues they run up against have mainly discussed the “soft” problems relating to culture, language and the like. These were the subjects of some of the earliest long-form essays that I wrote when The Family switched to producing all of its content in English back in 2015.More recently, these topics have focused on fragmentation, both in Europe and around the world in general. As I’ve become more familiar with different ecosystems around the world, it’s striking just how many founders, whether they’re in India, Spain, or wherever else (that isn’t the US or China), are facing very similar problems.My real question now is which countries are going to step forward and make things easier for their local champions to expand across borders? This obviously becomes a question of industrial policy, and so perhaps it is no surprise that the most enterprising countries so far seem to be smaller ones that recognize the opportunity presented in the shift to the Entrepreneurial Age: Estonia, South Korea, and Israel, for example.👉 The potential reading list was quite long this week in All About Crossing Borders.🌐 A New Corporate TaxFor several decades, the global tax structure (or lack thereof) has been the cause of many grumblings in many places, with the associated noise only getting louder as software has continued to eat the world. But for all the talk about “double Irish with a Dutch sandwich” and headlines about corporations paying no taxes on their profits, there has been very little actual change in corporate tax codes.That may be ending, however, with a new proposal for a global minimum tax coming from the Biden administration. Following on the heels of a Trump administration attempt to have companies repatriate profits via a lower corporate tax rate, the Biden administration’s proposal benefits from a multilateral approach (as opposed to a change affecting the US only) and a context in which corporations, including many tech companies, are facing mounting PR problems over their lack of tax contributions despite soaring profits.Of course, as always, the road is long and nothing is finalized yet. And in terms of the outlook for Europe, such changes likely won’t put more tax dollars into the coffers–unless European companies, and specifically startups, can start to create and realize more value right here on the continent.👉 I put together a quick 30-point outline of the situation in A New Corporate Tax.Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!😓 In my latest contribution to The Family’s daily newsletter, I share a few pieces of advice for founders about how to raise funds for their startup: Fundraising is hard.🇫🇷 We’re resuming our bi-weekly podcasts with Laetitia on Nouveau Départ (in French) for paying subscribers: check out yesterday’s edition on Suppression de l'ENA : une mesure populiste ?From A Founder's Handbook for Lobbying the Government (January 2021):Many founders have a naive view of government, thinking that a 10-minute meeting with some cabinet minister will help them see the light, letting the problem be solved once and for all. After all, how can any government official be against progress?In reality dealing with regulators is hard, and there’s no magic bullet. But I now have a lot of experience dealing with startups in The Family’s portfolio, and after hundreds of hours spent advising them on the best approach, I realized there are recurring themes and approaches that have all been validated in action. I’ve tried to organize them all into a coherent 10-point list.All recent editions:* A New Corporate Tax—for subscribers only.* All About Crossing Borders—for subscribers only.* Building Startups Across Borders—for everyone.* Reinventing Housing w/ Diana Lind. Amazon's Politics. The Gig Economy. Centralization.—for everyone.* What Should Be Centralized?—for subscribers only.* All About the Gig Economy—for subscribers only.* Amazon’s Strange Politics—for subscribers only.* Discussing Europe (& Rabbits 🐰) w/ Noah Smith. Deliveroo. Delaware. Defensibility. Software Digesting the World.—for everyone.European Straits is a 4-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* Author Diana Lind on the future of housing 🎧* Is Amazon left-wing or right-wing? Actually, it’s a bit of both* Will the gig economy get its social contract? I’ve written so much on that topic* As proven by successful vaccination campaigns, you shouldn’t centralize everythingToday’s episode of the Building Bridges podcast is a conversation between my wife Laetitia Vitaud and Diana Lind, author of the remarkable Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing.We all sense how housing is a cornerstone of our social contract. In most countries, a house is many things at the same time: a shelter for one’s family, but also an investment for old age as well as collateral against which we can borrow and consume.* As a result, we shouldn’t be surprised by the following: on one hand, the shift to the Entrepreneurial Age is a direct challenge for housing as we know it; on the other hand, it’s very difficult to change anything in housing because it’s so ingrained in our culture, our collective psyche, and our social contract.The pandemic has been revealing in this regard. With many schools closed and many people stuck at home, there has been a widespread realization that the housing market doesn’t really match our needs and expectations anymore.* The model of a single-family home, which became dominant during the post-war period, is ill-designed for today’s economy. Two-income households, longer life expectancy, less predictable careers, more and more jobs (whether high-skill or low-skill) concentrated in urban areas: all of these call for a dramatic upgrade of the housing market and our very conception of ‘home’.It so happens that history is the most fertile ground there is to help us broaden our perspective when it comes to housing. By going into the past, we can see that communal housing, short-term rentals for highly mobile workers, and multi-generational households were the norm in the vibrant cities of the 19th century. What if those are a frontier we should try and (re-)explore?Indeed, in her landmark book Brave New Home, Diana Lind acts as a guide to the history of housing and reveals that what we take for granted is in fact very recent and very dependent on a specific cultural and political context. Thus our vision of housing is also much more precarious than many people assume. It could very well be that the pandemic, as an accelerant of the shift to a new techno-economic paradigm, marks the end of housing as we know it—and the beginning of a new approach to providing shelter, investing in assets, and living together in our more urban world.👉 Listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Diana in the latest episode of the Building Bridges podcast using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.📦 Amazon’s Strange Politics The past few weeks have seen some heated commentary regarding Amazon and a union drive at its Alabama fulfillment center. As someone who supports both a strong social safety net and admires Amazon’s performance as a company, I understand how people can be surprised at the contrast: Amazon has generally progressive cultural and political legacy, but now it’s taking a turn toward defending its interests as a now highly labor-intensive business.Amazon’s position is unusual indeed. When we step back, most businesses in the past have moved being labor-intensive to being capital-intensive industries, becoming able to produce just as much, if not more, with a smaller and smaller workforce. On the other hand, very few corporations have gone the other way like Amazon, and this might explain the company’s strange politics.In any case, it’s clear that balances must be struck. There are industries in which capital is unable to replace labor, for instance in proximity services where many workers are on the front lines interacting with many customers. And then there are industries in which capital can exist on its own, creating a highly stratified world of a few haves and many have-nots. And so the question is there: can we as a society (and Amazon as a company) have the best of both worlds?👉 I reflect on the current situation and capitalism’s politics in Amazon’s Strange Politics.🚲 All About the Gig EconomyReflecting on labor-intensive industries and the spectacle of the Deliveroo IPO led me to think that collecting together resources on the “gig economy” could be quite timely. I started by noting, however, that I don’t particularly use that term (except with the associated quotation marks) since I think it’s about much more than that, namely the entire world of flexible work powered by tech platforms.My first writings in English on the topic date back to 2015, when I wrote an article in Foreign Affairs with my friend Bruno Palier. A year later I talked about it as part of one of my most read pieces ever, “Enough With This Basic Income B******t” and then it became a critical part of the research and material for my 2018 book on building a social safety net for the Entrepreneurial Age, Hedge.Throughout, I’ve been convinced that the move to a more entrepreneurial economy will carry with it the rise of the gig economy, simply because of the ability for information to move more and more quickly among interested parties. This is also what underlies the growing need for an upgraded social safety net, which was a key part of discussions around the Deliveroo IPO.👉 Read on about what is needed to make flexible work good work in All About the Gig Economy.⛪️ What Should Be Centralized?In my home country of France, which has just headed back into another lockdown period, the headlines over the last few days have centered on the opening of new mass vaccination sites. Yet in the US, which has been one of the fastest at vaccinating its citizens, such mass vaccination sites have been largely abandoned in favor of distribution through the vast network of local pharmacies.It got me thinking about how organizations manage the balance between their centralized and decentralized levels. I don’t believe that it’s so simple as positing centralization vs. decentralization as a general theory; every organization has elements of both, and so the real question is how to optimally distribute assets, functions and risks between the two.A big challenge is that the functions that are optimally centralized (or decentralized) in the age of computing and networks are not the same ones that were optimally centralized (or decentralized) in the age of the automobile and mass production. As such, many organizations are struggling to reshuffle things, especially when they are trapped in a centralizing mindset such as that which dominates France’s government and institutions.👉 I also tested out a new format for gathering these ideas together in What Should Be Centralized?Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!🚀 In my latest contribution to The Family’s daily newsletter, I comment on Deliveroo’s IPO and lessons that early-stage founders can draw from it: Three lessons to keep in mind about your (future) IPO.🇪🇺 A few weeks ago, I wrote a column in Sifted about the difficulty that Europe has in growing successful companies in the social media space. It inspired interesting counterpoints earlier this week:* Sameer Singh, an angel investor with Atomico, also took to Sifted to share a convincing Blueprint for building social media giants in Europe.* Sarah Guemouri, a Senior Associate at Atomico, expanded on Sameer’s thoughts on Twitter:* Then Akhil Gupta, a startup founder based in Bangalore, offered an inspiring comparison with building social media companies in fragmented India:From Solving the Housing Problem: Hunters and Settlers (March 2018):One way to mitigate problems on the housing market would be drafting zoning rules that favor the constant mingling of hunters and settlers, rather than doing the opposite (as they currently do). There wouldn’t be a crisis of suburban housing if suburban areas were attractive for hunters—which they aren’t. Likewise, there wouldn’t be a crisis of urban housing if it was easier to settle in such areas.The stakes are high. New legal frameworks should make it possible to harness technology and achieve a radical upheaval of the way of life for both adventurous hunters and settling families—in each case at every level of the income ladder. If they fail to accommodate both populations, the danger is for every large city to be inhabited only by very rich hunters and very old settlers.All recent editions:* What Should Be Centralized?—for subscribers only.* All About the Gig Economy—for subscribers only.* Amazon’s Strange Politics—for subscribers only.* Discussing Europe (& Rabbits 🐰) w/ Noah Smith. Deliveroo. Delaware. Defensibility. Software Digesting the World.—for everyone.* Where’s Europe’s Delaware?—for subscribers only.* All About Defensibility—for subscribers only.* An Investment Thesis: Help Software Digest the World—for subscribers only.* Growing Your Network w/ Kelly Hoey. Europe. Stripe. Accelerators vs. Seed Funds.—for everyone.European Straits is a 4-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* Bloomberg columnist (and writer, and Twitter extraordinaire, and owner of rabbits) Noah Smith on Europe in the Entrepreneurial Age* Why investors shouldn’t shun Deliveroo, in Sifted* Software is eating the world, but can we facilitate its digestive capacities?* A business’s defensibility is what investors are most interested in* US tech companies have Delaware. But what’s Europe’s equivalent?First of all, it’s now official: my wife Laetitia Vitaud and I have decided to merge our respective podcasts under one single brand, Building Bridges. From now on, we’ll take turns interviewing inspiring guests about the state of our fragmenting world. The resulting podcast will be syndicated across this newsletter, Laetitia’s own Laetitia@Work, and the Building Bridges hub on Substack.🐰 Today, I’m pleased to share a new episode of Building Bridges in which I interview Noah Smith, an opinion columnist at Bloomberg and writer at Noahpinion, which I highly recommend subscribing to since it covers so many topics that resonate with this newsletter—from economic development to immigration to the current paradigm shift to industrial policy to economics in general.My idea was to focus the conversation on Europe, and indeed Noah has many insights to share. One of them, which I find particularly compelling, is the idea of “optimal fragmentation”. There was a time, in the 19th century, when Europe actually benefited from being a fragmented continent. Britain, Germany and France were of roughly equal sizes; the world was the stage on which their rivalry played out; and the technology of the day made it so that each could grow their national industrial champions and claim to be part of the club of the more advanced countries.* Today, the situation in Europe is very different, however. The advanced technologies of the day (computing and networks) call for growing corporations whose scale far exceeds the size of any European market. And because they have realized fragmentation isn’t much of an advantage anymore, European countries have been trying to join forces under the umbrella of the European Union—alas encountering many frictions and obstacles along the way.Here are the other topics I discussed with Noah:* The various places he’s lived, including Texas, Japan, New York, and the Bay Area—and what specifically attracted him to Japan, where he spent 5 years in total.* Industrial policy: what it is, why it is so difficult to design and implement during a paradigm shift, and how Europe has been performing on that front.* Texas and its (so far) failed attempts at catching up on Silicon Valley: it’s all about non-compete clauses, urban sprawling, and universities.* Where to look for inspiration: Noah shared his assessment of how various European countries are doing and what other regions in the world we should all study.* Finally, I made sure to ask Noah about his pet rabbits, and he shared the reasons why everyone should consider adopting their own—tl;dr, “they’re like clumsy, vegetarian cats”.👉 Listen to my conversation with Noah using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.⚠️ While the European IPO market hasn’t necessarily been as hot as its US counterpart, one tech company has plans to go public as early as TODAY: Deliveroo. Unfortunately, it seems that investors are a bit skeptical, as the floatation is meeting strong headwinds.* I believe the bear cases against Deliveroo are a bit shortsighted, however. Just like Uber before it, investors will be well-served to remember that Deliveroo’s total addressable market isn’t restricted to food delivery, but instead the entire realm of things that people want delivered to them–both now and in the future.And that’s not all; read the whole thing here: Deliveroo: Is It Worth It? 👀💊 An Investment Thesis: Help Software Digest the World For years, Marc Andreessen’s thesis about “software eating the world” was a solid one indeed–and in general, it still is. But for investors looking at the industries that are still early in the process of being eaten, it’s clear there are quite a few in which software alone can’t finish the job. In ‘hard’ industries that are heavily tangible, whether due to personnel needs, physical infrastructure, complex regulations, or whatever else, software sometimes runs up against problems in digesting its meal.This has been the case (so far, and to varying degrees) in industries such as energy, agriculture, construction, and space. But just because these industries are more difficult for software to consume, that simply means that there’s more opportunity for startups to arrive with solutions that are designed to facilitate the arrival of more and more software. To give you one of the most evident examples of how this can occur, the iPhone was so revolutionary not because of what it brought to communications, but because of how it quickly enabled software to extend much, much further into our lives. This wasn’t just because the iPhone brought its own software and hardware into the equation, but because it also directed all that power into being a vehicle for all the software that developers around the world could dream up. In effect, the iPhone served as a digestive pill, making it much easier for software to keep right on eating.👉 Dive deeper in An Investment Thesis: Help Software Digest the World.🏰 All About DefensibilityThe idea of a company creating a ‘moat’ is nothing new. In the 20th century, businesses were able to do so through various means, whether by investing in physical infrastructure, building privileged relationships with key players, or encouraging politicians to enact regulations that just so happened to make it extremely difficult for anyone new to come along and push their way into the game.In the Entrepreneurial Age, some of the methods for digging moats, or erecting ‘barriers to entry’, have disappeared completely (physical infrastructure in, say, the music industry), changed (access to key players is still needed, but it’s much easier to contact someone via email than by phone or an in-person meeting), or stayed much the same (tech giants certainly aren’t above lobbying politicians to make things difficult for newcomers, such as we’ve seen with the GDPR regulations in Europe).Given my interest in business strategy, it should come as no surprise that my attention has quite often turned to ideas of moats and how companies can incorporate defense strategies while still concentrating on growth and increasing returns. So this past week, following further reflection inspired by Gil Dibner of Angular Ventures, I pulled together a set of resources on the topic.👉 Remember that we don’t build moats, we dig them, while reading All About Defensibility.🇪🇺 Where’s Europe’s Delaware?A while back, I and my colleagues at The Family were excited to support the #NotOptional campaign, led by our friends at Index Ventures. Given the importance of employee equity in growing a thriving startup ecosystem, we’ve been similarly disappointed to see more recently that the enthusiasm the campaign generated hasn’t turned into beneficial changes in Europe’s corporate laws—yet, at least.So I started thinking about how tech startups in the US have the good fortune to be able to incorporate in Delaware, why that is, and whether or not a jurisdiction in Europe could take on that same role. And let’s just say that while I don’t think it to be an impossible feat, it is true that it takes more than simply changing some laws and regulations.Indeed, one of the key aspects as to why Delaware is so attractive for incorporation is the case law that has been developed in the Delaware Court of Chancery during the course of more than 250 years. And no country in Europe would be able to provide that immediately, but… does that mean that no one is willing to even try? 👉 Find out more on why the attempt is needed in Where’s Europe’s Delaware?Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!🇫🇷 The latest podcasts (in French) with Laetitia on our family media operation Nouveau Départ: Ces 20% de diplômés qui se détachent (interview w/ Jean-Laurent Cassely) 🎓 Le foyer à l'épreuve de la longévité ⏰ 🚀 My latest contribution to my firm The Family’s newsletter is about the hybrid nature of every tech company: Every business has two sides.From Will Fragmentation Doom Europe to Another Lost Decade? (January 2020):Here’s an enigma: historians teach us that fragmentation is what made Europe strong and prosperous in the past. So why is that long-time asset now a liability? To understand the reasons, we need to go back in time. In Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared Diamond explains why fragmentation once helped Europe rise as the main Eurasian power at the expense of China, which was much more monolithic than fragmented Europe and thus depended on the (occasionally stupid) decisions of a single sovereign.All recent editions:* Where’s Europe’s Delaware?—for subscribers only.* All About Defensibility—for subscribers only.* An Investment Thesis: Help Software Digest the World—for subscribers only.* Growing Your Network w/ Kelly Hoey. Europe. Stripe. Accelerators vs. Seed Funds.——for everyone.* Accelerators vs. Seed Funds—for subscribers only.* All About Stripe—for subscribers only.* 10 Hypotheses As To Why Europe Is Lagging Behind—for subscribers only.* Investing Across the World w/ Chris Schroeder. Stripe. Consulting. IPOs. Digital Government.—for everyone.European Straits is a 4-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe

The Agenda 👇* 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 I’ve written about them* Can seed funds and accelerators work together? Views differI’ve long called the current period ‘the age of computing and networks’:* The ‘age of computing’ because we are all equipped with a growing number of digital devices whose computing power is increasing exponentially.* And ‘the age of networks’ 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, we’re 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 individual’s contribution helps to improve the Google search engine for all. What happens to personal networks—which, contrary to the examples above, are formed consciously and explicitly—in 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 someone’s 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 you’ve met that person ‘in real life’. Twitter has gotten us used to the idea of having interesting conversations with people we’ve 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? It’s not just Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter anymore, but also TikTok, Discord, Clubhouse—and others that we haven’t 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, it’s clear that the pandemic has changed things. With it, we’ve 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, won’t 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.👉 Listen to Laetitia’s conversation with Kelly using the player above 👆 or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.⚠️ On Deck Catalyst is a ten-week remote program for young leaders who want to solve the world’s 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 opportunities—make roles that previously didn’t exist at any startup you join, launch a startup from scratch, or break into the world of venture capital.⏰ Their next cohort kicks off on June 5. You can apply here before May 4th. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.📉 10 Hypotheses As To Why Europe Is Lagging Behind For all the debates about Europe and how it’s doing, one indicator certainly shows that things aren’t 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 don’t think that Europe is necessarily slow in adopting technology, and I also don’t think that the problem comes down to an excess of regulations. Still, it’s undeniable that something’s going on, and identifying the proper hypotheses as to why it’s 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 levers–so long as those levers match the requirements of the Entrepreneurial Age.👉 Read on in 10 Hypotheses As To Why Europe Is Lagging Behind.💰 All About StripeThe big news in the startup world last week was Stripe’s new fundraising round which brought the tech giant’s valuation to $95B. The company’s 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 Stripe’s 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 they’re 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.👉 Dive further into fintech with All About Stripe.🏎 Accelerators vs. Seed FundsAs 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 tomorrow’s 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 startup’s cap table, with a proven ability to add as much (if not more) value than accelerators.I think that Gil’s idea of conflicting interests between seed funds and accelerators is accurate, although I don’t think the conclusion is necessarily that accelerators don’t have a part to play. For one, accelerators still have some advantages that seed funds don’t, including one that we at The Family treasure: the ability to work with many more founders since their entry into The Family doesn’t involve us signing a hefty check. Another important nuance is whether it’s about a mature entrepreneurial ecosystem or one that is still in its infancy—and where the toxicity requires as much help as possible at the pre-seed stage.👉 Think more about the ongoing shift in Accelerators vs. Seed Funds.Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!🇫🇷 The latest podcasts (in French) with my wife Laetitia Vitaud on our family media operation Nouveau Départ: Le piège du couple à deux carrières 👫 Singapour, cette cité-État érigée en modèle 🇸🇬🚀 My latest contribution to my firm The Family’s newsletter is a tribute to Jeff Bezos (and Kevin Kwok): Learn to draw flywheels.🎧 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):Today’s power is vested in the mighty “multitude”—the 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 Behind—for subscribers only.* All About Stripe—for subscribers only.* Accelerators vs. Seed Funds—for subscribers only.* Investing Across the World w/ Chris Schroeder. Stripe. Consulting. IPOs. Digital Government.—for everyone.* Government in the Entrepreneurial Age—for subscribers only.* Moneyball in Consulting Services—for everyone.* All About Companies Going Public—for subscribers only.* Playing Video Games w/ Rachel Kowert. Consumption. Delivery. Profitability.—for everyone.European Straits is a 4-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.driftsignal.com/subscribe