Category Archives: Silicon Valley and Europe

Spain has a passion for Innovation

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I had the pleasure to be interviewed on the book “Start-Up” by Doris Obermair. The text is available in Spanish as well as in English in the magazine If… La Revista de Innovation : Más pasión y sueños, menos infraestructura y experiencia (english version)

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and the video (in English) is available on the web site Infonomia.

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Finally, I will attend the Ifest conference on July 10-11 to talk about the topic of my book. Because of the diversity of the attendants, I think it will be a great event.

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Stanford and Start-Up

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Is there anything nicer than being interviewed by your Alma Mater. The Stanford School of Engineering asked me why I wrote “Start-Up” and for whom. You will find it on the Stanford SOE web site. I tried to explain that the book is not (only) about the innovation infrastructure which failed in Europe but (mostly) about the need to encourage young individuals in taking more risks. A debate about nature and culture which I develop at length in the book.

Finland

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I am not the only one complaining about the weakness of Europe in terms of start-ups. Juha Ruohonen compared in his report VICTA (www.tekes.fi/en/document/42911/victa_pdf) the situation of Finland and Israel and he reaches similar conclusions to mine: not enough growth companies, a lack of ambition, and too many lifestyle companies.

His comparison table is self-sufficient:

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And his analysis of the reasons for problems are:

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Finally his conclusions: There is a clear need in Finland:

  • To create a viable high-growth ecosystem
  • To multiply the number of VC capable growth companies
  • To eliminate the waste of resources to lifestyle companies
  • To provide a viable platform for fast international growth
  • To increase the corporate involvement and the number of corporate spin-offs/-outs
  • To better facilitate the transformation from research project into a fast growth start-up.

This can be achieved by:

  • shifting focus from quantity into quality
  • moving from project-based development to efficient long-term structures
  • creating structures to enable success of commercial players
  • attracting much more international talent into Finnish early-stage community.

My comment: you can replace Finland by Europe and the analysis is the same. Solutions are complex no doubt but I would add that betting on youth, on risk taking is essential (the “Stay Foolish, Stay Hungry” explained by Jobs, see the July 07 post) and that international exchange must also include discovering what exists abroad.

Technology Billionaires in 2007

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When Forbes published its list of billionaires, I tried to filter those who became rich through technology start-ups and I also tried to compare the USA and Europe. The following table is quite interesting. In Europe, it seems that only SAP created that level of wealth.

Rank Name Country Wealth ($B) Origin Age
1 Bill Gates USA 56 Microsoft 51
11 Larry Ellison USA 21.5 Oracle 62
19 Paul Allen USA 18 Microsoft 54
26 Sergey Brin USA 16.6 Google 33
26 Larry Page USA 16.6 Google 34
30 Michael Dell USA 15.8 Dell 42
31 Steven Ballmer USA 15 Microsoft 51
76 Pierre Omidyar USA 8.8 Ebay 39
116 Eric Schmidt USA 6.2 Google 51
119 Hasso Plattner Germany 6 SAP 63
132 Steven Jobs USA 5.7 Apple, Pixar 52
188 Jeffrey Bezos USA 4.4 Amazon 43
204 Jeffrey Skoll USA 4.2 Ebay 42
243 Gordon Moore USA 3.6 Intel 78
287 Klaus Tschira Germany 3 SAP 66
369 Ray Dolby USA 2.5 Dolby 74
369 David Filo USA 2.5 Yahoo 40
407 Mark Cuban USA 2.3 Broadcast.com 48
432 John Abele USA 2.2 Boston Scientific 70
432 Henry Nicholas III USA 2.2 Broadcom 47
432 Jerry Yang USA 2.2 Yahoo 38
458 Omid Kordestani USA 2.1 Google 43
458 Henry Samueli USA 2.1 Broadcom 52
538 Hans-Werner Hector Germany 1.9 SAP 67
538 Peter Nicholas USA 1.9 Boston Scientific 65
538 Andy Bechtolsheim USA 1.9 Sun, Google, 51
557 John Morgridge USA 1.8 Cisco 73
583 Irwin Jacobs USA 1.7 Qualcomm 73
583 Mike Lazaridis Canada 1.7 RIM (Blackberry) 46
583 Kavitark Shriram USA 1.7 Google 51
583 Theodore Waitt USA 1.7 Gateway 44
618 James Balsillie Canada 1.6 RIM (Blackberry) 46
664 Amar Bose USA 1.5 Bose 77
664 Thomas Siebel USA 1.5 Siebel Systems 54
717 David Cheriton USA 1.4 Google 55
717 Scott Cook USA 1.4 Intuit 54
717 Todd Wagner USA 1.4 Broadcast.com 46
754 Richard Egan USA 1.3 EMC Corp 71
754 Margaret Whitman USA 1.3 Ebay 50
799 David Duffield USA 1.2 Peoplesoft 66
799 Dietmar Hopp Germany 1.2 SAP 66
840 James Clark USA 1.1 Netscape 63
891 Weili Dai USA 1 Marvell 45
891 John Doerr USA 1 Venture capital 56
891 Arthur Rock USA 1 Venture capital 80
891 Charles Simonyi USA 1 Microsoft 59
891 Sehat Sutardja USA 1 Marvell 45
New Vinod Khosla India 1.5 Sun, Venture capital 52
New Michael Moritz USA 1.3 Venture capital 52