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

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 !!!

Paris Marathon 2007

Registration is now sold out, and i'm number 38000 ;-)

I'll also be at the Paris half marathon in March.

I have start training on week days (indoors at l'Usine as the weather is now pretty bad) + one long run on Sundays (Tuillerie/Tour Eiffel/Bois Boulogne), let me know if you want to train together ...

Sunday brunch with Brad Feld

I'm hosting a sunday brunch for Brad Feld who is in Paris this week end (Sunday May 28 2006, 13:00). I'll post the final logistic information here, is you want to join, just put a comment below.

UPDATE: I have booked a table at the Hôtel Montalembert, 3 rue de Montalembert, 75007, Paris (00 33 1 45 49 68 68) for 13:00 on Sunday.

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

CGS4.0 planned for April 28 in Paris

I'm exited to announced the next (yes it's now released 4.0) CGS (Clavier Goldberg Sepulveda) dinner, that we will hosted in Paris on April 28, same rules of engagement as before (register here by posting a comment on this post). Seating is restricted to 30. I will circulated all logistics information (where, where, name of guest speaker,  etc...) in a few days...

Looking forward - Marc.