Occam's Razor

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

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 !!!

Commitment vs. Intelligence

Very relevant essay from Paul Graham adapted from one of his talk at the start-up school. The section on commitment is a must-read.

1. Release Early.
2. Keep Pumping Out Features.
3. Make Users Happy.
4. Fear the Right Things.
5. Commitment Is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

I now have enough experience with startups to be able to say what the most important quality is in a startup founder, and it's not what you might think. The most important quality in a startup founder is determination. Not intelligence-- determination….

…You can lose quite a lot in the brains department and it won't kill you. But lose even

a little

bit in the commitment department, and that will kill you very rapidly.

…But if you lack commitment, chances are it will have been hurting you long before you actually quit. Everyone who deals with startups knows how important commitment is, so if they sense you're ambivalent, they won't give you much attention. If you lack commitment, you'll just find that for some mysterious reason good things happen to your competitors but not to you. If you lack commitment, it will seem to you that you're unlucky.

….Whereas if you're determined to stick around, people will pay attention to you, because odds are they'll have to deal with you later. You're a local, not just a tourist, so everyone has to come to terms with you.

….You can't fake this. The only way to convince everyone that you're ready to fight to the death is actually to be ready to.

….You have to be the right kind of determined, though. I carefully chose the word determined rather than stubborn, because stubbornness is a disastrous quality in a startup. You have to be determined, but flexible, like a running back. A successful running back doesn't just put his head down and try to run through people. He improvises: if someone appears in front of him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he spins out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong direction briefly if that will help. The one thing he'll never do is stand still.

6. There Is Always Room.
7. Don't Get Your Hopes Up.
8. Speed, not Money

CGS 4.0 is now sold-out

We have now 35 people registered for the CGS4.0 dinner of next Friday, i do expect a 20% no-show which should leave another 5 or 6 seats avaialble, email/skype me for any question

Logistic:

Le Bistro Vivienne 4, rue des petit champs 75002 331 4927 0050
Table for 35 reserves at 20:00 (first floor of the restaurant)

Attendees list:

(3) CGS (Clavier + Goldberg + Sepulveda)
(6) Julien Codor + Julien Genestoux + Julien andre
(9) David Guillocheau + Louis van Proosdij + David Pooxy
(12) Jacques Froissant + Alexander Cassasovici + Stephanie
(15) Francisque + Stephane Lee + Louis de Louvieres
(18) Colette Balou + Leafar + Gregory
(22) Michel Paillet + Emmanuel Vivier + Laurent/Chine
(25) Richard Menneveux + Yann Mauchamps + Charles Nhouyrit
(29) Raphael + Thierry + Gabriel + Jonathan
(33) Thierry Dagallier + Franck Poisson + LucieAnn/Joann Peach
(35) Catherine B. + Olivier Seres

Meeting with Chris Shipley on March 7 in Paris ?

I had the opportunity last year to speak at the first edition of Innovate Europe, the European innovation conference put together by the Guidewire Group – which is also organizing DEMO.

The planning of Innovate Europe 2006 is under way, and the selection of startups that will have the opportunity to present at the conference is taking place soon. Chris Shipley will do a tour of Paris, London, Dublin, Tel Aviv, Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza between March 7th and March 17th.

If you want to meet with Chris and company, go check this post that explains it all, and fill in this form if you are interested in participating, or contact me at the Paris Occam Capital office.

Tag: innovateeurope06

I had the opportunity last year to speak at the first edition of Innovate Europe, the European innovation conference put together by the Guidewire Group – which is also organizing DEMO.

The planning of Innovate Europe 2006 is under way, and the selection of startups that will have the opportunity to present at the conference is taking place soon. Chris Shipley will do a tour of Paris, London, Dublin, Tel Aviv, Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza between March 7th and March 17th.

If you want to meet with Chris and company, go check this post that explains it all, and fill in this form if you are interested in participating, or contact me at the Paris Occam Capital office.

Tag: innovateeurope06

Measure it, Manage it!

Great post on how and management by metrics, with some smart comments by Ed Sim on the same topic:

When you can accurately predict your results in each operating unit, it means less risk and a greater opportunity to scale your company without blowing your capital (missed quarters get more and more expensive as you grow!). Being able to make accurate predictions also means that:

• You have an operating model (not just a collection of people), which allows you to scale better,
• You understand the key drivers of output in your operating model,
• You are consistently managing the unit to your operating model,
• You have a set of early warning signs (your key drivers) that you can focus more attention on when they get below certain thresholds (i.e., it helps you to know where to spend your time),
• You have a set of measures that you can benchmark against other companies to understand where you have opportunities to move to best practices, and
• You know when you need to add staff or other resources well before you get caught short.

Finally, the understanding of the above gives you a solid platform for experimenting with new approaches and accurately evaluating the effectiveness of the new approaches (thereby allowing you to kill the approaches that don’t work and expanding the approaches that do work).

Most technology driven businesses tend to be under-managed, with board meetings organized as social gathering and public reading  of  very thick board pack that lack the simple data about the top 5 metrics and trends from one quarter to the other (furthermore, one interesting metric seems to be that the more confused a project is, the larger the board-pack is (NB of pages = function  of square of (confusion))).

Reflection on LesBlog2.0

Some reflections on this week LesBlogs 2.0 that I attended during the first day (got stuck in the office on Tuesday...) .

• Conferences are about synchronizing conversations.  If blogging is about conversation, Conferences are all about synchronisation of those online and offline conversations. There are more about the people (who show’s up) than about the content (who is on the scene and speaks). Based on the metric, LesBlog2.0 was a HUGE success, GREAT people, available, and all trying to engage into multiple conversations.

• The European VCs are clearly not focusing on the right crowd. If technology conferences are metric of the innovation ecosystem maturity, then what we saw in Paris this week if scary. If you attend any of the leading US conference (PCForum, Demo, TED, Web2.0, ETech etc…) you will have at least 20% of the participant from the VC community, attending conferences to get a pulse on where is innovation is unfolding. This week in Paris I could only count around 1% of VC in the 400 participants crowd, yes 1%.....

• Waiting for Godot, or why contents matters for conversations. The first keynote of the conference was an unreal conversation with no subject, no agenda, and no passion between Robert Scobble and Shel Israel. While the Waiting for Godot experience can be enjoyable, it’s important to remember that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent...

• The entrepreneurs are back. With more than 5 new interesting projects resulting from some of my conference conversations, and more than 35 entrepreneurs participating in the post conference CGS dinner that Jeff, Rodrigo, and myself organised on Wednesday dinner, it was clear that the entrepreneurs were back, and working hard to build new ventures…

Internet 10 years after

Just submitted my contribution (in French) for LesEchos Internet 10 years after.

Should be online in a few days. Interesting contributions (in French)  from Pierre Chappaz, Michel Dahan, Christophe Angus, Orianne Garcia and Thomas Lot.

Deloite Fast 50 French selection

Deloite just release its selection of the French Fast 50 . While I have a reasonable degree of scepticism on the metric used ( CAGR for the last 5 years), it's a good snapshot of the French IT activity:

Société	5Yrs CAGR	Secteur type Fast 50
NETSIZE	13504,28%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
WEBRASKA	8554,04%	Logiciels et services informatiques
AWAKIT	2565,47%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
HIGHDEAL	2230,12%	Logiciels et services informatiques
MILLEMERCIS	1750,10%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
DOUBLE TRADE	1652,78%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
ARKOON NETWORK SECURITY	1511,70%	Logiciels et services informatiques
AMANIA	1158,57%	Logiciels et services informatiques
DECISION NEWS MEDIA	1157,31%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
TRONIC'S MICROSYSTEMS	1109,79%	Logiciels et services informatiques
IDELEC	1022,51%	Fabrication de produits électroniques
EMAILVISION	953,61%	Logiciels et services informatiques
PARROT	898,43%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
SET TELECOM	896,46%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
SCT TELECOM	829,30%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
NETASQ	818,28%	Internet - Communications et réseaux
ADD UP	796,83%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
INSERTO	779,89%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
SWORD	733,94%	Logiciels et services informatiques
ABRICO	733,31%	Logiciels et services informatiques
LINAGORA	732,73%	Logiciels et services informatiques
SWAP COM	687,28%	Logiciels et services informatiques
WEBORAMA	606,84%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
ASSYSTEM	562,98%	Logiciels et services informatiques
VERTICAL MAIL	562,68%	Internet - Agence de marketing direct online
XTS Telecom	534,93%	Télécom
CASTELIS	518,13%	Logiciels et services informatiques
FIMASYS	510,39%	Logiciels et services informatiques
SAMEP (PEQUIGNET)	490,88%	Electronique/Hardware
AFG LILLE	470,79%	Logiciels et services informatiques
MESATRONIC	459,12%	Electronique/Hardware
SOITEC	439,53%	Electronique/Hardware
PAGE UP	425,81%	Electronique/Hardware
DEGETEL GROUP	424,00%	Logiciels et services informatiques
ELECTRO WORLD GROUP	416,25%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
GOLDEN EYES	415,87%	Logiciels et services informatiques
POLYSPACE TECHNOLOGIES	407,27%	Logiciels et services informatiques
DFC AUTOMATISME	398,97%	Logiciel et intégrateurs
ATHIC	386,75%	Logiciel et intégrateurs
E.ITEC	380,88%	Electronique/Hardware
ABTEL SARL	376,13%	Logiciels et services informatiques
SARL ASC2I	363,53%	Logiciel et intégrateurs
MICROPOLE UNIVERS	321,15%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
REFERENCEMENT.COM	318,47%	Telecoms et Services en ligne
ARTFUL	311,86%	Telecoms et Services en ligne