Tag Archives: Venture Capital

The Entrepreneurial State: the important role of government in innovation (part 1)

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Mazzacuto’s Entrepreneurial State is I think an important book. The author claims we have been unfair with the role in innovation of government and the public sector in general, which has provided funds for most not to say all R&D (Pharma, IT, Space). I share the blame as I am a strong supporter of start-ups, venture capital, Silicon Valley being the ultimate model. And the idea that the State should just provide the basics (education, research, infrastructure) and let the private sector innovate may have been a big mistake (of mine included). I will not take the blame on the second argument as I always shared with the author the idea that tax breaks and tax evasion makes the judgment even more unfair. Finally, the private sector is very risk averse so that there is less innovation (not only venture capital but corporate R&D, compared to the past when corporate R&D labs at IBM, Bell or Xerox were big or when VCs really contributed to innovation in semiconductor, computers and biotech in the 60s and 70s)

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Let me now quote Mariana Mazzacuto following her book linearly. You can also listen to her when she gave a talk at TedX.

While innovation is not the State’s main role, illustrating its potential innovative and dynamic character – its historical ability, in some countries, to play an entrepreneurial role in society is perhaps the most effective way to defend its existence. (Page 1.)

Entrepreneurship is not (just) about start-ups, venture capital and “garage tinkerers”. It is about the willingness and ability of economic agents to take on risk and real Knightian* uncertainty, what is genuinely unknown. (Page 2.)
Note: *Knightian uncertainty relates to the “immeasurable“ risk, i.e. a risk that cannot be calculated.

Even during a boom most firms and banks (would) prefer to fund low-risk incremental innovations, waiting for the State to make its mark in more radical areas. (Page 7.) Examples are provided from the pharmaceutical industry – where the most revolutionary new drugs are produced mainly with public, not private funds. (Page 10.)

Apple must pay tax not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the epicenter of a company that requires the public purse to be large and risk-taking enough to continue making the investments that entrepreneurs like Jobs will later capitalize on. (Page 11) Precisely because State investments are uncertain, there is a high risk that they will fail. But when they are successful, it is naive and dangerous to allow all the rewards to be privatized. (Page 12)

Chapter 1 – (The Innovation Crisis)

The emphasis on the State as an entrepreneurial agent is not of course meant to deny the existence of private sector entrepreneurship activity, from the role of young new companies in providing the dynamism behind new sectors (e.g. Google) to the importance source of funding from private sources like venture capital. The key problem is that this is the only story that is usually told. (Page 20)

It is naive to expect venture capital to lead in the early and most risky stage of any new economic sector today** (such as clean technology). In biotechnology, nanotechnology and the Internet, venture capital arrived 15-20 years after the most important investments were made by public sector funds. (Page 23) The State has been behind most technological revolutions and periods of long-term growth. This is why an “entrepreneurial” state is needed to engage in risk taking and the creation of a new vision.
Note: ** Well maybe not in the 50s to the 70s, certainly in the last 10 years.

Big R&D labs have been closing and the R of the R&D spend has also been falling. A recent MIT study (1) claims that the current absence in the US of corporate labs like Xerox PARC (which produced the graphical user interface technology that led to both Apple’s and Windows’ operating systems) and Bell Labs – both highly co-financed by government agency budgets – is one of the reasons why the US innovation machine is under threat. (Page 24) Rodrik (2004) states that the problem is not in which types of tools (R&D, tax credits vs. subsidies) or which types of sectors to choose (steel vs. software), but how policy can foster self-discovery processes, which foster creativity and innovation – the need to foster exploration trial and error (and this is the core tenet of the “evolutionary theory of economic change” in chapter 2)
References
[1] MIT 2013. Innovation Economic Report, web.mit.edu/press/images/documents/pie-report.pdf‎
[2] Rodrik, 2004. Industrial Policy for the 21st century. CEPR Discussion Paper 4767

Chapter 2 – Technology, Innovation and Growth.

Progressive redistribution policies are fundamental, but they do not cause growth. Bringing together the lessons of Keynes and Schumpeter can make this happen. (Page 31) Solow discovered that 90 per cent of variation in economic output was not explained by capital and labor, he called the residual “technical change”. (Page 33)

An “evolutionary theory” explains this as a constant process of differentiation among firms, based on their ability to innovate. Selection does not always lead to “survival of the fittest” both due to the effects of increasing returns and also to the effects of policies. Selection dynamics in products markets and financial markets may be at odds.

Innovation is firm specific and highly uncertain. It is not the quantity of R&D, but how it is distributed throughout an economy. The old view that R&D can be modeled as a lottery where a certain amount will create a certain probability of successful innovation is criticized because in fact innovation would be an example of a true Knightian uncertainty, which cannot be modeled with a normal (or nay other) probability distribution. (Page 35 – the Black Swan again)

Systems of innovation are defined as the “network of institutions in the public and private sector whose activities and interactions initiate, import, modify and diffuse new technology”. (Equilibrium theory cannot work; rather than using incremental calculus from Newtonian physics, mathematics from biology are used, which can explicitly take into account heterogeneity, and the possibility of path dependency and multiple equilibria.) (Page 36) The perspective is neither micro nor macro, but meso. The causation between basic science, to large scale R&D, to applications to diffusing innovation is not linear, but full of feedback loops. One must be able to recognize serendipity and uncertainty that characterizes the innovation process. […] Using Japan as an example, “the contributions of the development state in Japan cannot be understood in abstraction from the growth of companies such as Toyota, Sony or Hitachi aside from the Japanese State’s public support for industry”. (Page 38)

Regional systems of innovation focus on the cultural geographical, and institutional proximity that creates and facilitate transactions between different socioeconomic actors, including local administrations, unions and family-owned companies… The State does this by rallying existing innovation networks or by facilitating the development of new ones that bring together a diverse group of stakeholders. But a rich system of innovation is not sufficient. The State must develop strategies for technological advance.

Mazzacuto finishes Chapter 2 with 6 myths about innovation I totally agree with!

Myth 1: Innovation is about R&D. “It is fundamental to identify the company-specific conditions that must be present to allow spending on R&D to positively affect growth.”

Myth 2: Small is Beautiful. “There is confusion between size and growth.” What is important is the “role of young high-growth firms. Many small firms are not high-growth. […] Most of the impact is from age.” “Targeting assistance to SMES through grants, soft loans and tax breaks will necessarily involve a high degree of waste. While this waste is a necessary gamble in the innovation process,” it should be targeted on high growth and not SMEs, i.e. support “young companies that have already demonstrated ambition”.

Myth 3: Venture Capital is Risk-Loving. “Risk capital is scarce in the seed stage; it is concentrated in areas of high-growth potential, low technological complexity and low capital intensity.” […] “The short-term bias is damaging to the scientific exploration process which requires longer-term horizon and tolerance to failure.” “Rewards to VC have been disproportional to risks taken”, but Mazzacuto also recognizes that “Venture capital has succeeded more in the US when it provided not only committed finance, but managerial expertise.” Finally “The progressive commercialization of science seems to be unproductive”.

Myth 4: Patents. “The rise in patents does not reflect a rise in innovation”. [I will not come back here on the topic, read again Against Intellectual Monopoly]

Myth 5: Europe’s problem is all about Commercialization. “If the US is better at innovation, it isn’t because university-industry links are better (they aren’t) or because US universities produce more spinouts (they don’t). It simply reflects more research being done in more institutions, which generate better technical skills in the workforce. US funding is split between research in universities and early stage technology development in firms. Europe has a weaker system of scientific research and weaker and less innovative companies.”

Myth 6: Business Requires Less Tax. “The R&D tax credit system does not hold firms accountable as whether they have conducted new innovation that would not otherwise have taken place, or simply pursued routine forms of product development.” “As Keynes emphasized, business investment is a function of the gut instinct of investors about future growth prospects.” This is impacted not by tax break, but by the quality of the science base, education, credit system and human capital. “It is important for innovation policy to resist the appeal of tax measures of different kinds”.

More will follow when I have read chapters 3 and followings. Now I need to share some of my concerns, first by quoting again:

“Entrepreneurship by the State can take on many forms. Four examples: DARPA, SBIR, the Orphan Drug Act, Nanotechnology. (…) Apple is far from the “market” example it is often used to depict. It is a company that not only received early stage finance from the government (through the SBIC program) but also “ingeniously” made use of publicly funded technology*** to create “smart” products.” (Pages 10-11)
Note: *** Internet, GPS, Touch screen, Siri.

“Many of the most innovative young companies in the US were funded not by private venture capital but by public venture capital, such as that provided by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.” (Page 20)

My concerns are that
– research is not innovation & the transfer is where entrepreneurship occurs so that investing in research is not innovating or even being entrepreneurial. This is at least my experience in the field.
– SBIR real impact unclear
– Green and nano-tech impact also unclear
But I have not finished reading yet…

Stanford will invest in companies founded by students

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“The prestigious American university Stanford will now invest in start-ups.” Thus begins an article in the newspaper Le Monde. The author, Jerome Marin, is rather negative about this decision, as the following quote shows: “The confusion is fueled even at the top of the university: the president has close ties with several giants of Silicon Valley, including Google as it is a member of the Board.” Without trying to argue, I think the reporter is misled.

Stanford va investir

But before I give you my point of view , I’d like to mention that I looked for other articles related to the topic, I found at least two :
– That of TechCrunch, close in spirit to Le Monde’s one, Stanford University Is Going To Invest In Student Startups Like A VC Firm. The article is also critical but I think better informed… and it also deals with the tension between the academic and business worlds. “That tension between academia and industry was highlighted this past spring when a number of students dropped out of school to start Clinkle”.
with references to another New Yorker article.
– The press release by Stanford University, StartX, Stanford University and Stanford Hospital & Clinics announce $3.6M grant and venture fund. If you read the statement carefully, it is about a gift from Stanford to StartX and a joint Stanford-StartX fund. StartX is an accelerator created by Stanford students and I understand that the University therefore supports this initiative. There is no mention, however, of a fund managed by Stanford as a VC fund.

The reason I think the reporter is mistaken is when he says that “Stanford will invest in companies created by its students”. As if it was new. Even if I agree that the stakes taken in start-ups in exchange for licensing of intellectual property is not an investment per se, Stanford still has acquired stakes in more than 170 of its spin-offs in the past . In addition the Stanford endowment has invested on an individual basis in many start-ups in the past (not to mention in many VC funds). For example, I found in a database I am building on Stanford-related companies, that Stanford invested in Aion (1984), Convergent (1980), Gemfire (1995), Metreo (2000), Tensilica (1998). Website LinkSv mentions Stanford invested in 143 companies. [I am aware there might be some confusion between investor and shareholder, so the topic remains somehow confusing].

Finally, in the 2000s, the Office of Technology Transfer at Stanford managed two funds, the Birdseed Fund (for amounts of $5k to $25k) and the Gap Fund ($25k to $250k) as shown the 2002 OTL annual report.

It is not at all new that Stanford invests in its start-ups. There has also always been tension, let’s do not deny it either. A little-known example of Cisco-Stanford early relationship. So nothing new under the sun. But you will not be surprised if I add that the overall result seems (is) extremely positive for all stakeholders, the university (including in its academic dimension), individuals, start-ups and the economy in general.

Slicing Pie – Part 3 (or How Startup Funding Works)

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A colleague of mine at EPFL just mentioned a new nice infographics about sharing equity in a start-up: How Startup Funding Works. It has apparently its roots with famous entrepreneur Paul Graham. It could be indeed based on his essay written in 2005. Nice piece of vizualizing. Thanks Sanna 🙂

So following many posts about equity splitting including the one about the nice book Slicing the Pie, here is the visual solution.

how-startup-funding-works_51db987f390b4

The father of venture capital: Georges Doriot

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Not many people ever heard of Georges Doriot. I knew his name because I know a little about VC (you can always check my visual history of VC). But I did not know much about him. Now that I read Creative Capital by Spencer Ante, I know much more. As usual, when I comment books, I mostly do some copy-pastes. Here they are:

CreativeCapital-Doriot-Ante

In 1921, Doriot came to America on a steamship. Even though he had no friends or family in the United States, never graduated from college, and dropped out of graduate school, the Frenchman became, arguably, the most influential and popular professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business. Over three generations, Doriot taught thousands of students [Page xiv].

He was early to recognize the importance of globalization and creativity in the business world. “A lot of the things that were attributed to Peter Drucker [link blog] were Doriot’s ideas” says Charles P. Waite [Page xv].

He believed in building companies for the long haul, not flipping them for a quick profit. Returns were the by-product of hard labor, not a goal. Doriot often worked with a company for a decade or more before realizing any return. That is why he often referred to his companies as his “children”. “When you have a child, you don’t ask what return you can expect” Doriot was quoted in a 1967 Fortune story “Of course, you have hopes – you hope the child will become President of the United States. But that is not very probable. I want them to do outstandingly well in their field. And if they do, the rewards will come. But if a man is good and loyal and does not achieve a so-called good rate of return, I will stay with him. Some people don’t become geniuses until after they are 24, you know. If I were a speculator, the question, of return would apply. But I don’t consider a speculator – in my definition of the word – constructive. I am building men and companies.” [Page xvii]

“A creative man merely has ideas; a resourceful man makes them practical.” [Page xviii]

[He] ushered a new era of corporate culture. At Digital, the engineer was king. Hierarchy was out. Controlled chaos was in. Like Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation, Digital was a petri dish in which the counterculture was spawned in the late 1950s. “He was definitely part of a social revolution that loosened things up.”

For 20 years Doriot was a professor and a business advisor. “How did a man with hardly any experience running a business come to be such a world-class businessman? The answer is that during those years, dozens of companies hired the professor to help guide them through the worst disaster that ever hit the American economy. In that dark decade, Doriot gained a lifetime experience as an officer, director and consultant” [page 64].

American Research and Development Corporation (ARD)

The idea of an entity helping companies by making risky investments was born before World War II but could be implemented only in 1946. On June 6, 1946, the American Research and Development Corporation (ARD) was incorporated under Massachusetts law. It believed in “innovation, risk-taking and an unwavering belief in human potential”. They also realized that organizations with fiduciary resources and the seasoned operators running them were not daredevils skilled in the art of invention and that, conversely, inventors were struggling creative types with no money. ARD sought to bring together these two independent yet largely separate communities.

Typically, ARD preferred to take a hands-off approach. They were there to coach, guide and inspire. Running the business was the job of the entrepreneur. But quite often, circumstances called for more drastic action. [Page 121]

“Never go in venture capital if you want a peaceful life”. [Page 126] In 1953, Doriot was gloomy about the state of venture capital. “Venture capital is not fashionable anymore.” Waves of technologies seemed to come out of nowhere and crash onshore every twenty or thirty years. The trick of a venture capitalist was to catch the wave several years before it crested ad to bail out before it crashed. [Looks like speculation, or doesn’t it?] It is interesting to see how the great interest that existed seven or eight years ago in venture capital has disappeared and how the daring and courage which were prevalent at that time have now waned” wrote Doriot. [page 138]

More about ARD’s facts and figures in the table below.

A star is born – 1957

“In the early 1950s, the postwar euphoria of the previous decade that had infused Americans with a sense of infinite possibilities morphed into a Cold War miasma of fear and paranoia. Yet underneath the surface of fear, a subculture of experimentation and rebellion flourished. In the early – to mid-190s, Allen Ginsberg, jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs developed a radical new form of literature that emphasized “stream of consciousness” writing. Modern abstract painting by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko overthrew European conventions of beauty and form. And in laboratories and universities across the northeastern seaboard, a bunch of scientists and engineers tinkered away on strange but powerful new electronics and computer devices that promised to completely change the way people communicated and conducted business. “ [Page 147]

In the spring 1957 Ken Olsen then at MIT would team up with his buddy Harlan Anderson. They had an idea and a plan. They needed some money. They approached General Dynamics, who “turned them down flat because we didn’t have any business experience.” Then they contacted ARD. ARD had the perfect formula: two grade A men paired with an outstanding idea. ARD offered $70,000 for a 70 percent stake. Ten percent was reserved for a seasoned manager (who would never be found or hired) and the remaining 20% to the 2 founders (12% to Olsen and 8% to Anderson). Because computers were not fashionable, the company project name was changed from Digital Computers to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). [Pages 148-150]

The birth of a new industry

1957 was a critical year. America was shocked by the Sputnik. Public money flowed both to R&D with the creation of ARPA (later DARPA) and to venture capital through the new SBIC program. “Many of today’s most successful venture capitalists rightly point out that the SBIC program never created a company of considerable or lasting success. But if the SBIC program did little to advance the art and practice of successful venture investing, it did help propel the venture industry by attracting talented young men who later became pioneers of the field.

In 1957, Doriot also worked at the creation of INSEAD in Paris which was opened in September 1959. Doriot would have 3 careers in his life, a professor at Harvard business school (including helping in the creation of INSEAD), a consultant and even a administrator for the Army, the reason why he was a general and finally a VC with not only ARD but also at the origin of TED (UK), CED (Canada) and EED (Europe).

The success of DEC would make ARD highly successful but would also contribute to its end… As an investment company, ARD was highly regulated; compensation of its employees would become a long battle with SEC and IRS. Only 4 ARD employees would get DEC shares (worth $20M for each individual) and the allocation looked arbitrary to many. “Pressure was growing on ARD to divulge its growing mess of regulatory problems, and to take Digital public. But Doriot did not think Digital was ready to deal with the unforgiving spotlight of public ownership.” [Page 186]

Doriot did not prepare his succession, incentives were low for employees. Some left. Elfers was first and founded Greylock, Waite would follow him. “There was one more reason Elfers left. He realized along with an increasing number of investors in new companies that venture capital and the stock markets mixed as well as oil and water. For Elfers, the solutions to many of ARD’s problems was to take advantage of a new organizational form: the limited partnership (LP). In 1959, the first LP was organized in Palo Alto: Draper, Gaither & Anderson. Then in 1961, Arthur Rock, a former student of Doriot formed Davis & Rock. There were distinct advantages. General partners who ran the firm received not only a management fee, they also received a share of the capital gains. A limited partnership would avoid the glare of public disclosure.” [Page 190]

Still the DEC IPO was a success (see table). “The Digital IPO amounted to a financial revolution. It was really mind-blowing that you could take such a small amount of seed capital and get ownership of a company that was worth more than IBM in a fairly short period of time.” [page 197]

Doriot-DEC-FF

The emergence of Silicon Valley

“Today many financiers and entrepreneurs assume the west coast always dominated the VC business. They simply do not realize the industry was pioneered by ARD and a few other northeastern firms in the three decades following World War II. So why did Silicon Valley take over leadership?” [page 227] Spencer Ante explains that with MIT, Harvard, in Boston and New York as the financial capital, the East Coast had a huge lead; but a hospitable climate, ethnic diversity and the vision of Terman at Stanford were critical for the West. “Terman was disturbed to find most of his top students fleeing to the east coast. In 1934, two of his best students, Dave Packard and William Hewlett, followed the same path. Terman wooed them back.” [page 229] Then following Fairchild, semiconductor makers started popping up all over northern California. “All It needed was a steady supply of venture capital.” It’s ironic to read that Tom Perkins declined joining ARD. He wanted to launch his own firm. With Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins would become one of the top 2 VCs in Silicon Valley. The rest is history… ARD was merged with Textron for $400M in 1972. It had made more than $200M in DEC from an initial $70k seed investment.

“In 1978, there were 23 venture funds managing $500 million. By 1983, there were 230 firms overseeing $11 billion. “ [page 250] No doubt, the East Coast missed some of the features that the West would develop with an open culture and the right incentives, in addition to what Doriot pioneered on the East Coast… He dies on June 2, 1987. He was 87 years old.

Doriot-ARD-FF

Tumblr acquisition and shareholding

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Tumblr made the news these past days, and some discussions about how much the investors, founder and employees made were quite passionate as you may read from Fred Wilson reactions. We may discuss a long time about why Yahoo bought a 26-year old kid company, as could be done with Instagram (see my pots from April 2012), but the point is that there’s been a continuous flow of such stories for decades in Silicon Valley.

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26-year old David Karp, founder & CEO of Tumblr.

Indeed I added to my usual cap. tables some numbers on multiple returns and ROIs (return on investment). I do not have exactly the same “huge” numbers that were at the origin of the angry exchanges, but I might be wrong… Now there were two different pieces of info, so I put two cap. tables which are not that different. One gives investor data per round, the other one per specific fund.

Tumblr-CapTable1
Click on picture to enlarge.

Tumblr-CapTable2
Click on picture to enlarge.

Venture Capital in Europe and in the USA

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A very short note on an excellent presentation by Jean-David Chamboredon, partner with ISAI fund, entitled Funding Innovation in Europe. I particularly liked two slides that show the success rate of investment in a start-up, and the other one addressing a subject that is dear to me, the comparison of VC in Europe and the USA. Thank you to my colleague Marie-Laure for mentioning this study have me 🙂

ISAI-VCreturns

ISAI-USvsEU

What’s Criteo worth?

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Criteo is the latest European story. Not yet, some may say, but its numbers are impressive. How do I know? Well in France the Register of Commerce provides a lot of data if you are prepared to pay a small fee (about €10 per document you download). It is possible to know about the rounds of financing, about the revenues, about the founders. It was not as easy as I imagined and maybe I should have bought more documents. (The revenues are not what I had read, stockholders’ shares is probably not accurate as things may be missing. But it looks good enough to me.)

I also know people involved do not always like such publications. Wealth, money is still a taboo, in France particularly. What is important is the message of value creation that entrepreneurs and their investors contribute to create for others. As I copied from the Slicing Pie recently: “Entrepreneurs give security to other people; they are the generators of social welfare. The country needs entrepreneurs, the world needs entrepreneurs. Without them not much would happen. In spite of the exciting life and important role of entrepreneurs, most people never become entrepreneurs. To most people, life is too risky. Most people can’t handle the ambiguity. Most people are afraid of failure. Every entrepreneur fails more often than they succeed.”

So I publish here again, one of my favorite tools, the capitalization table of Criteo with its rounds of financing (€47M raised), its revenues (at least €74M in 2011), its investors and its founders. But the wealth is virtual, it corresponds to a €15 price per share, more than 3 times the price paid by the series D investors…

I do not think Criteo’s journey was easy and simple. When I first heard of the company, it was developing recommendation systems, not ‘personalized retargeting’. It had Plan B related Pivot. So here it is and my apologies for inaccuracies / frustrations.

Criteo-CapTable

Here are some more references.
– Criteo Nabs $40 Million in Funding at $800 Million Valuation
– Criteo Hires Bank for Imminent IPO

This last article mentions the IPO of Marin, which I had followed too. The comparison is interesting…

Marin-CapTable

Technology billionaires in 2013

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In 2007, I had made the same exercise, i.e. extract from the Forbes billionaire list, the ones who had a link with technology. I found by accident the 2013 Forbes list, and did the same exercise. Again the USA dominates and the word is weak. Europe has 8 whereas the USA has 63…

What’s new from the 2007 Technology Billionaires is the new comers, the web2.0 winners from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Groupon, not to forget GoDaddy!

2013-new billionaires-sma
Top: the Facebook billionaires. Bottom: founders of Linkedin, Twitter, Groupon, GoDaddy and finally Laurene Powell Jobs.

Also, average age is 57 but Internet billionaires’ age is 46!

# Name Origin Company Field Wealth ($B) Age
2 Bill Gates USA Microsoft Software 67 57
5 Larry Ellison USA Oracle Software 43 68
19 Jeff Bezos USA Amazon.com Internet 25.2 49
20 Larry Page USA Google Internet 23 39
21 Sergey Brin USA Google Internet 22.8 39
49 Michael Dell USA Dell Hardware 15.3 48
51 Steve Ballmer USA Microsoft Software 15.2 56
53 Paul Allen USA Microsoft Software 15 60
66 Mark Zuckerberg USA Facebook Internet 13.3 28
94 Ernesto Bertarelli CH Merck Serono Biotech 11 47
98 Laurene Powell Jobs USA Apple Hardware 10.7 49
122 Hasso Plattner D SAP Software 8.9 69
123 Hansjoerg Wyss CH Synthes Medical devices 8.7 78
123 Pierre Omidyar USA Ebay Internet 8.7 45
138 Eric Schmidt USA Google Internet 8.2 57
145 Patrick Soon-Shiong USA Abraxis Pharmaceuticals 8 61
154 James Goodnight USA SAS Software 7.7 70
156 Klaus Tschira D SAP Software 7.5 72
179 Xavier Niel F Free Internet 6.6 45
182 Dietmar Hopp D SAP Software 6.5 72
262 David Duffield USA Peoplesoft Software 4.8 72
316 Gordon Moore USA Intel Hardware 4.1 84
353 Dustin Moskovitz USA Facebook Internet 3.8 28
353 John Sall USA SAS Software 3.8 64
363 Jeffrey Skoll USA Ebay Internet 3.7 48
376 Barbara P. Johnson USA Johnson & Johnson Medical devices 3.6 76
437 Reid Hoffman USA LinkedIn Internet 3.1 45
437 Alain Merieux F Biomerieux Pharmaceuticals 3.1 75
503 Ronda Stryker USA Stryker Corp. Medical devices 2.8 58
503 Andy v. Bechtolsheim USA/D Google Internet 2.8 57
527 John Doerr USA KPCB Venture capital 2.7 61
527 Elon Musk USA Tesla Motors Hardware 2.7 41
554 Marc Benioff USA Salesforce.com Software 2.6 48
554 Jack Dangermond USA ESRI Software 2.6 67
554 Phillip Frost USA Key Pharma, Ivax Pharmaceuticals 2.6 76
554 David Sun USA Kingston Technology Hardware 2.6 61
554 John Tu USA Kingston Technology Hardware 2.6 72
613 Mark Cuban USA Broadcast.com Internet 2.4 54
641 Ray Dolby USA Dolby Laboratories Hardware 2.3 80
641 Ralph Dommermuth D United Internet Internet 2.3 49
670 Michael Moritz USA Sequoia Venture capital 2.2 58
670 Eduardo Saverin USA/Bra Facebook Internet 2.2 30
736 Sean Parker USA Facebook Internet 2 33
785 Romesh T. Wadhwani USA Aspect Software 1.95 65
792 Meg Whitman USA Ebay Internet 1.9 56
831 Hans-Werner Hector D SAP Software 1.8 73
831 Thomas Siebel USA Siebel Software 1.8 60
882 David Filo USA Yahoo Internet 1.7 46
882 Henry Samueli USA Broadcom Hardware 1.7 58
882 David Cheriton USA/Can Google Internet 1.7 61
922 Kavitark Ram Shriram USA Google Venture capital 1.65 56
931 Craig McCaw USA McCaw Telecom Telecom 1.6 63
931 Pat Stryker USA Stryker Corp. Medical devices 1.6 56
931 Peter Thiel USA Paypal, Facebook Internet 1.6 45
965 Irwin Jacobs USA Qualcomm Hardware 1.55 79
974 Vinod Khosla USA KPCB, Khosla Venture capital 1.5 58
974 Bob Parsons USA Go Daddy Internet 1.5 62
974 Jerry Yang USA Yahoo Internet 1.5 44
1031 John Brown USA Stryker Corp. Medical devices 1.4 78
1031 Steve Case USA AOL Internet 1.4 54
1031 Henry Nicholas, III. USA Broadcom Hardware 1.4 53
1107 Mark Stevens USA Sequoia Venture capital 1.3 53
1107 Jon Stryker USA Stryker Corp. Medical devices 1.3 54
1107 Nicholas Woodman USA GoPro Hardware 1.3 37
1161 Graham Weston USA Rackspace Internet 1.25 49
1175 Jim Breyer USA Accel Venture capital 1.2 51
1175 Robert Duggan USA Computer Motion Medical devices 1.2 68
1268 James Clark USA Netscape Internet 1.1 68
1268 Jack Dorsey USA Twitter, Square Internet 1.1 36
1268 Eric Lefkofsky USA Groupon Internet 1.1 43
1342 John Morgridge USA Cisco Hardware 1 79

American Public Television PBS celebrates Silicon Valley

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February 5th 2013 was a special day for PBS and Silicon Valley: 3 documentaries were shown one after the other. It was:

1- Silicon Valley on PBS American Experience “TV’s most watched history series”

AmericanExperience-PBS2013

2- Something Ventured, one of my favorite documentary on the topic. I mentioned already here: Something Ventured: a Great Movie and I show ti to my students as often as I can!

3- Steve Jobs, One Last Thing

SteveJobs-onelastthing

If you don’t want to buy it, here is is!

You can also read the interesting 3 PBS films on Silicon Valley by the San Francisco Chronicle.

I read a lot about SV. Now we probably live times when it’s time to watch videos.

A beautiful thriller in the world of start-ups

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Today, Peter Harboe-Schmidt presents L’HOMME QUI NE CROYAIT PAS AU HASARD the French translation of his thriller The Ultimate Cure. I had at the time said how much I liked this novel. Do not hesitate to join him on the EPFL campus this afternoon.

Here is a short piece again:

“Take your start-up as an example. Why did you do it? If you analyzed the pros and cons for doing a start-up, you’d probably never do it. But your gut feeling pushed you on, knowing that you would get something very valuable out of it. Am I right?”
Martin speculated on why he was so drawn to a world that at times could appear to be no more than sheer madness. Like a world parallel to real life with many of the same attributes, just much more intense and fast-moving. People trying to realize a dream in a world of unpredictability and unknowns, working crazy hours, sacrificing their personal lives, rushing along with all those other technology based start-ups. Medical devices, Internet search engines, telecommunications, nanotechnologies and all the rest competing for the same thing: Money. To make the realization clock tick a little faster.
“Funny you should say that,” Martin finally said. “I’ve always thought of this start-up as a no-brainer.I never tried to justify it in any way.”