Occam's Razor

Holiday reflections

 

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible

From: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Santa Claus and our Hanukkah-bush

The e-santa was the last decoration on our Hanukka- bush...

Wishing you all a wonderfull Christmas!

CGS 5.0 Dinner is Sold Out

CGS dinners are back with a SOLD OUT CGS5.0 on Tuesday Dec 12 at 20:30 following the Web3.0 gathering  next week.

Bistrot Vivienne ,  4 rue Petits Champs 75002 PARIS, +33 1 49 27 00 50

Current Participant list (we have two rooms, room 1 upstair and room 2 in the ground level, as we have a very full party, i have assigned people to one of the two rooms so the restaurant can serve us dinner, we will then move from one room to the other)

  Room 1 (35 seats):

·       Jeff Clavier ; Marc Goldberg ; Rodrigo Sepulveda

1.    Alexandre Casassovici

2.   Aydin Senkut

3.   Benjamin Carlu

4.   Carlos Diaz

5.   Cedric Maloux + 1

6.   Denis (from Jiwok)

7.    Esme Vos

8.   Ivan Communod

9.   John Vars

10. Jamin Rubio

11.  Jacques Froisant

12.  Lucie Anne Radimsky

13.  Leila X (from the WSJ)

14.  Mathieu Nouzareth

15.  Mayel de Borniol

16.  Nico Guyon

17.  Olivier Maurel

18.  Ouriel Ohayon

19.  Paul Elosegui

20. Pascal Boiteux

21.  Richard Menneveux

22. Scott Rafer

23. Sebastien Martin

24. Stephanie Beaujard

25. Thomas Blard

26. Thomas Owadenko

27.  Eran Lagon

28. Renee Blodgett

29.Virginie Robert

30. isa serfaty-bloch

31. Taki Krim

32 Louis Nauges

Room 2 (43 seats)

·       Eric Plantier; Colette Ballou Lamotte ; Yves Michali

1.    Marc Oiknine 

2.   Leafar

3.   Philippe Monteil

4.   Darius Modaressi-Tehrani

5.   Philippe Pinault

6.   Julien Andre

7.    Louis van Proosdij

8.   Franck Perrier

9.   Patrick Ferran

10. Manuel Diaz

11.  Florent Boutellier

12.  guido van nispen

13.  Christian Jegourel

14.  Laurent Esposito

15.  David de JobMeeters

16.  Jacob Share

17.  Loic Moisand

18.  Thibault Hanin

19. Eric Dos Santos

20.  Stephane Lee

21. Netanel Jacobsson

22. Stefanos Vasdekis

23. John Nousis

24. Remi Poittevin

25. Jean Batiste Rudel

26.  Adriaan Verstijnen

27. Willem Vos

28. Franck Poisson

29. Kevin Slavin

30 Guillaume Limare

31 Charles Nouÿrit

32 Roy Klieger

33 Aymeril Hoang

34 Remi Poittevin

35 François Nonnenmacher

36 Sagi Rubi + 1

37 Andrew Carlton

38 Brett Wayne

Whinning is not a strategy

so funny...

...and so true!

Source: here.

Managing Intangible Assets

The new report on " l'economie de l'immateriel" from Levy (Publicis) & Jouyet (Inspection des Finances)  is now online (but in French...) : Téléchargement rapportlevyjouyet1.pdf

LeWeb3

I'm getting ready for next week conference. I'll be there on Monday all day until 5pm + party on Monday evening + CGS dinner on Tuesday night.

Let me know if/when you want to meet...

CGS Dinners are Back

UPDATE: WE HAVE MOVED THE DATE TO TUESDAY DEC 12 (same time, same place)

CGS dinners are back on Tuesday Dec 12 at 20:30 following the Web3.0 gathering  next week. You can register on this post using the comments, I'll circulate the final attendee list + menu + logistic later. Seating will be restricted to 30 for room 1 and 30 for room 2 (counting with 20% no-show / overbooking, this allow for 75 people to register)...

Bistrot Vivienne ,  4 rue Petits Champs 75002 PARIS, +33 1 49 27 00

Current Participant list (8 seats still available as of dec 8, and I'm working an getting us more space for the dinner using the two floors of the restaurant, which should allow for 60 people to attend... more new on this later here  I have increased the seating capacity to 30 seats for room 1 and 30 seats for room 2 => WE STILL HAVE SPACE ;-) ) :

• Room 1:
• Jeff Clavier ; Marc Goldberg ; Rodrigo Sepulveda

1. Alexandre Casassovici
2. Aydin Senkut
3. Benjamin Carlu
4. Carlos Diaz
5. Cedric Maloux + 1
6. Denis (from Jiwok)
7. Esme Vos
8. Ivan Communod
9. John Vars
10. Jamin Rubio
11. Jacques Froisant
12. Lucie Anne Radimsky
13. Leila X (from the WSJ)
14. Mathieu Nouzareth
15. Mayel de Borniol
16. Nico Guyon
17. Olivier Maurel
18. Ouriel Ohayon
19. Paul Elosegui
20. Pascal Boiteux
21. Richard Menneveux
22. Scott Rafer
23. Sebastien Martin
24. Stephanie Beaujard
25. Thomas Blard
26. Thomas Owadenko

27. Eran Lagon

• Room 2
• Eric Plantier; Colette Ballou Lamotte ; Yves Michali

1. Marc Oiknine 
2. Leafar
3. Philippe Monteil
4. Darius Modaressi-Tehrani
5. Philippe Pinault
6. Julien Andre
7. Louis van Proosdij
8. Franck Perrier
9. Patrick Ferran
10. Manuel Diaz
11. David Grunberger
12. Florent Boutellier
13. guido van nispen
14. Christian Jegourel
15. Laurent Esposito
16. David de JobMeeters
17. Jacob Share
18. Loic Moisand
19. Thibault Hanin
20. Eric Dos Santos
21. Stephane Lee
22. Netanel Jacobsson
23. Stefanos Vasdekis
24. John Nousis
25. Remi Poittevin
26. Jean Batiste Rudel
27. Adriaan Verstijnen
28. Willem Vos
29. Franck Poisson

Managing Burn-Out

Interesting article in this week NY Magazine  on how to manage burn-out or how, in a culture where work can be a religion, burnout is its crisis of faith! Very good reading and very relevant from an entrepreneur perspective on how not to burn yourself, or the people working with you...

In 1981, Maslach, now vice-provost at the University of California, Berkeley, famously co-developed a detailed survey, known as the Maslach Burnout Inventory, to measure the syndrome. Her theory is that any one of the following six problems can fry us to a crisp:

• working too much;
• working in an unjust environment;
• working with little social support;
• working with little agency or control;
• working in the service of values we loathe;
• working for insufficient reward (whether the currency is money, prestige, or positive feedback).

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Maslach’s research is that burnout isn’t necessarily a result of overwork. It can be, certainly. Michael Leiter, a lovely Canadian fellow and frequent collaborator of Maslach’s, has elegantly called burnout a “crisis in self-efficacy,” which to me suggests that head-banging feeling of struggling mightily for too little or (worse) nothing in return. Ayala Pines, a researcher in Israel who’s looked at burnout in all sorts of inspired contexts (including marriage), rather heartbreakingly sums up the problem as “the failure of the existential quest”—that moment when we wake up one morning and realize that what we’re doing has appallingly little value....    ... And Farber often calls burnout “the gap between expectation and reward,”

=>  Happiness equals reality divided by expectations !!!

Understanding Entertainement

Good presentation/analysis on the dynamics of the content/entertainement industry by Analyst Spencer Wang of Bear Stearns who just published a very good overview of the dynamics of the entertainment industry which argues that “aggregation & context and not content are king.”

Although user-generated content is proliferating because new technology is affecting economics (of content creation, storage, and distribution), it is also flourishing because new technology allows the incorporation of connectivity into content itself.

(Source: David Beisel)

Just four VCs alone should guarantee gridlock

This is one of the funniest read on how to manage a board from a CEO perspective i have EVER read. Point 8 is of course my favorite...

1. Meet by phone whenever possible.  Most of them will be doing their email or goosing their admin or something and not paying any attention at all.  They’ll just vote when you ask’em to.
2. Never distribute anything in advance; they might read it and get themselves all confused.  Just present it all: gets you through most of the meeting.
3. Never number the pages of what you are presenting.  Lots of time can be used constructively figuring out what page everybody is on.  If you email the material (preferably just after the start of the meeting), send lots of separate files.  Turkeys’ll never know what to look at.  Bonus suggestion: send slightly different copies of files with different pagination to everyone; it’s a lotta work but it’s worth it.
4. Have your CFO present numbers, lots of numbers.  Make sure they get a chance to go over variances in the pencil budget.
5. If you have to meet in person – it is gonna happen sometime – use food.  Any discussion you don’t want input on should be right after lunch.  No one’s gonna be awake then.
6. Speaking of lunch, you can play this for lots of time.  Have your dumbest admin take orders off some huge takeout menu. Get what type of bread they want, dressing, meat, lettuce, all that. Then have a smart admin shuffle the list so NO order is right.  Wrong bread with wrong filling etc.  No veggies for vegetarians (they tend to be nitpickers anyway). Kills lots of time and helps make sure they meet on the phone next time.  BTW, they’ll pay no attention to anything between when lunch is ordered and when it comes so minimum of an hour.
7. Do bring up board comp and director’s liability insurance.  Sure to get their attention and won’t interfere with the real business of the company.
8. Have a nine person board with three insiders, four VCs and two people who don’t have a clue.  Just four VCs alone should guarantee gridlock.
9. Every meeting should run way over schedule.  You control the agenda: presentations up front; substance in the third overtime period.
10. If they’ve gotta discuss something, get’em down in the weeds.  Color of the office; words for the new ad campaign; what bank to deposit tax payments in.  That keeps everybody out of trouble.
11. If you’re public and their questions are going where you don’t want to go, tell them you’d be glad to answer but that’ll make them insiders for the next two years.  You can also tell by who squirms who was planning to sell.