Tech Deciphered

Robotics is a field that seemingly hasn't really delivered on its promises. Sure, plenty of robot arms and other robotic solutions in logistics and industrial spaces, but what about the rest… including, Consumer?! Navigation:Intro (01:34)B2B RoboticsConsumer RoboticsLooking AheadConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves PedroWelcome to Episode 64 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we will discuss robotics. Our new overlords are coming. Robotics is a field that seemingly hasn't really delivered on its promise. Sure, plenty of robot arms and other robotic solutions are out there. But somehow it feels like we should be actually already controlled and dominated by our robotic overlords.Today, we will discuss B2B Robotics, their growth, adoption, industry use cases, the drivers of innovation in that space, players in that space, challenges. We will also talk about consumer robotics, talking about also robots that have gone mainstream, personal and social robots, emerging trends that are happening in the home, market dynamics.Then we'll look ahead to the future of B2B, the future of consumer, and the societal and workforce impact, which obviously is going to be the last but not the least topic that we will address today. Let's start with B2B. B2B Robotics.Bertrand SchmittYes, thank you, Nuno. It's certainly a growing space. As you say, it might not feel like it, but at the end of the day, we already have quite a few millions robots in B2B. It's estimated that the stock of your operational robots, industrial robots, is around 4.28 million units in 2023, which was a 10% increase year-on-year.If we look at China, and I think we talk about the fact that we are installing around 400,000 robots a year. China alone by itself has been installing 276,000 units in 2023. China is definitely a leader in that space and that might come as a surprise to some. That number, to put it into perspective, is five times higher than the second place, Japan.Nuno Goncalves PedroI think China has recognized a long time ago that because of its population composition, that they're going to have a lack of people to produce, to be in factories, et cetera, so they actually have been adopting robots now for many, many years. I think now, you were joking with me just before we recorded this, but now that we're having trade tariffs and all that stuff, it might make sense to have a broad discussion around why robotics in an industrial environment are key.Bertrand SchmittDefinitely. I think that actually I was surprised to hear that, when we're making this recording on April 15, I was surprised to hear in the Trump administration, quite a lot of very positive support regarding AI and robotics. It looks like part of the plan is already acknowledging this is not like the old-school jobs that we are going to bring back. It would be a different type of jobs. There will be way more robotics than before. Obviously, more robotics is possible thanks to the latest advanced in AI.There is some consensus that, yeah, it's not just bring back the old jobs as they were, but it would be a new type of jobs. It would be a new type of industrial revolution and acknowledgment that robotics are here to make all of this not just more efficient, but even possible. Because it's clear that if you take the US, for instance, there is actually not so much unemployment in the US. For an industrial revolution to happen,

The current landscape of fundraising for start-ups, companies and VC funds, as well as best practices and hacks… and how to get those investors to giving you the money.Navigation:Intro (01:34)What is the current evolution and landscape for fundraising for start-ups?What is the current evolution and landscape for fundraising for VC firms?What are the best practices - strategies, processes, tactics and hacks - for fundraising overall … for start-ups?What are the best practices - strategies, processes, tactics and hacks - for fundraising overall … for VC firms?How to get investors (VCs and LPs) to commit to giving you money?ConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast BertrandHello and welcome to Tech Deciphered episode 63. In this episode, we are going to talk about the evolution and the current landscape of startups and VCs fundraising. We will talk about this evolution and landscape for fundraising, both from a startup and VC sides. We are going to talk about the best practices, strategies, process, tactics, and hacks for fundraising on both sides when you are a startup or when you are a VC firm. And ultimately, we will finish on how to get investors to commit to give you money. Hi, Nuno. How are you? NunoHey, Bertrand. We'll start with the evolution and current landscape of startup fundraising. It's been a couple of exciting years. We got to the height of it all, the bull of all bull markets, actually in 2021, post-COVID. Then we had 2022 and 2023. Very sharp correction, dramatic reduction in venture investments. '24 was a good year. It's a year that scaled back again, seems stabilizing. I think we'll see what '25 has on hold. My prediction is that it's going to be a great year. BertrandYeah, 2021 was pretty shockingly good post the start of COVID. After a sharp wait and see by end of 2020, things were going back not just to normal, but to overdrive. It's really by the end of 2021 that the music stopped. We had to worry about inflation with interest rates going up. 2022 was definitely bad for startups and VCs alike. But as you said, 2024, we are back to a better place. I would have the same bet for 2025, as you have, Nuno. NunoOne interesting piece is there's something that I think changed everything in 2024, which is AI. If we didn't have AI in 2024, I don't think we would have had this landscape. Important to note, and we'll talk about it later on when we talk about the landscape for actual VC fundraising, that the way that VCs work in their cycles and how they raise money, there's always a little bit of a lag around the table. It means there's still a lot of what we call dry powder with VC firms.  This means that VC firms have raised quite a lot of money from limited partners for 10-year funds with, for example, four-year investment periods. Therefore, they still need to deploy capital in whatever market they're in. The fact that there were a lot of AI opportunities means that they've been deploying a lot towards, for example, AI place. That's going to change as well. We'll talk later about, again, the VC fundraising landscape, but there's going to be a little bit of an adaptation on those two time lags around the table.  But for me, the big effect of 2024 was without a doubt, AI. BertrandYeah, and it's very interesting because when you think about it, the new AI revolution started with LLMs, with OpenAI launching ChatGPT.

Our analysis of the Space & Aeronautics, Defense and Homeland Security industries from key trends to investment landscape… to perhaps, more importantly, evil vs no evil? Where are we now?Navigation:Intro (01:34)Why now?GeopoliticsAerospace and AeronauticsDefense and Homeland SecurityConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno G. PedroWelcome to Tech DECIPHERED. In today's episode, Episode 62, we're going to discuss space and aeronautics, defense and online security. We are going to talk about key trends, why now is such a wonderful time to be looking at this space not only from a startup perspective but also from an investment landscape perspective. We'll also go into the whole evil versus no evil topic. Specifically, we will discuss why now, and the geopolitics of the industries, aerospace and aeronautics, defense and homeland security, and then we will conclude. Bertrand, why now? Bertrand SchmittWhy now? I think this industry, this sector, space, defense, homeland security has seen not just a lot of growth and quite a few very successful companies coming out, but it's an interesting complete turnaround, if you look at that from an entrepreneur or from a VC investor perspective. Why now? I think there has been, I would say, historically, there was a lot of scepticism, a lot of concerns by entrepreneurs, investors alike, centred around the military industrial complex. Bertrand SchmittWe probably all remember the famous Eisenhower's farewell address where he was sharing his distrust of that military industrial complex. And venture capital shunned these sectors also due to long sales cycle, in some cases only one client, the Department of defense for many startups, as well as ethical debates. Bertrand SchmittAt the same time, it's an evolving landscape. Startup came with disrupting legacy models. It's not just a cost-plus approach. It's a product approach. It's agile. It's innovation. The debate around, is it evil to is it something we must do in order to address global threats, basically coming to the forefront for investors and entrepreneurs alike. Nuno G. PedroIt's a supply and demand issue. It's not just that startups are not necessarily interested in it because it always creates this issue around, is it evil? Is it good? Are we doing something good or not? I think there's a lot of that. There's a lot of supply issue because of that angle. But it's also a demand issue. Contracts historically with military take a long time to be hashed out. They depend on doing trials and proofs of concept. Nuno G. PedroI think on the other hand, it's an industry that historically was very resilient and dominated by services. Particularly the US military want to own everything, and so, therefore, there was this notion that whoever was the provider provided it to provide it as a service for them. There are services that still need to be done today, but the industry has been largely productized, and there are a lot of products. I buy planes, I buy weaponry, I buy a bunch of different software systems that will allow me to operate, but they're productized. I think that's one of the big shifts that we've seen and why now is a good time to look at it. Nuno G. PedroIf I'm a startup, I don't need to go through 3, 4, 5-year cycles until I sell anything of scale. Then on the plus side, once I sell, it is at scale. There's a lot of money in the military.

Our review of 2024 and what 2025 holds for the world and the Tech industry. From geopolitical dynamics to M&A and IPOs, regulation, crypto winters and summers, to inflation and DOGE and many other things.Navigation:Intro (01:34)Review of 2024What's next, 2025?ConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Tech DECIPHERED Episode 61. It's at this time of the year where we look back what happened in the past year in 2024 in tech, as well as trying to put some thoughts into what 2025 might look like, what might be the next big things happening in global tech industry. Let's start with our review of 2024. Nuno Goncalves PedroIt's been an interesting year. A year of elections around the world, so maybe we start at that level. The landscape geopolitically has become very interesting. I'd seen some chart that shows the most gain on the right ever globally across elections. I think there's some message going on that people are really not happy about, status quo. Obviously, in the US, Donald Trump got elected, so he will again be the President of the United States next year or starting next year. Nuno Goncalves PedroIn Europe, we've had a lot of countries that went to the right. Austria, I believe the right wing party won. A lot of interesting and somehow shocking results in some cases with very populist views, for example, countries like my own Portugal, and all around that. Very significant geopolitical transition where it seems like populism is here to stay. Nuno Goncalves PedroThere are significant concerns around the world around immigration. There are significant concerns around the world around security. There are significant concerns around the world around economic growth. I think the elections that we saw this year, for the most, are reflecting upon the discontent of citizens across the world, of which the US is just but an example. Bertrand SchmittYes. Actually, I'm not sure anymore about that when we call populism, one side or the other, what it really means at some point, it doesn't sit right to me anymore. I think 10 years ago, maybe I had some concept about what it means. But today, I'm not really clear, to be frank, because when you see Trump and his alliance with people like Elon Musk or JFK, it's not clear they are populist at all. The same in Europe. I'm not really clear, what is true is for sure more right wing, moving away from left or centre. Bertrand SchmittYeah, this will have a significant impact on a lot of topics, and we'll go through that. France also went more right wing, at least in term of parliament. Germany, we will see next year, actually. They're preparing for election, the government in Germany. I think it was the day or the next day after the result of the US election, the government imploded. There are new elections scheduled for early next year. It looks like it will also go more right wing. It will make certainly for an interesting change of policies and politics. Nuno Goncalves PedroIndeed, all of all, I think a lot of renewed discussion around what is the role of countries, governments, different counties, provinces, states in the case of the US, local government, is the system fully broken or not? A lot of debate around precisely the incentives that people have to vote for a party versus another and what are the key issues that are on their mind. But as I mentioned, I feel it's clear that it's the economy,

In a few decades, will Europe be good for anything beyond food and tourist experiences? With Europe lagging on innovation, productivity and with extremely costly decisions on the Energy side, and needing to defend itself, what is next?Navigation:Intro (01:34)New report out from Mario DraghiProfound mistakes in Energy initiatives increasing costs and competitivenessDalio and Lee Kuan Yew commentsLack of growth in Europe, lack of creation of new European championsToo much protection for employees?Too Complex regulations around companies and innovation initiatives are too bureaucraticConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves PedroWelcome to Episode 60 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we will discuss European competitiveness. The competitiveness of all of Europe, not just the European Union, but the whole of Europe. It's been in the news recently. There's been a new report out from Mario Draghi a couple of months ago that really mentions what is happening in Europe, what are the things that need to be done for Europe to increase its competitiveness going forward. Nuno Goncalves PedroThere have been a lot of discussions around the world on Asia, in particular, and American dominance of the world economy. Europe is lagging behind. What do we make out of all of this? Maybe let's start with the report out from Mario Draghi and the conclusions of that report. Bertrand SchmittYes, I think it was for once, a pretty interesting and pretty lucid report from a commission by the European Commission and written by Mario Draghi with a lot of support from many CEOs and also entrepreneurs to provide feedback to try to explain what's happening, what's going on. I would agree with everything in terms of analysis or conclusion, but I must say it's a good read. Bertrand SchmittMaybe a few points that he's making is first acknowledging that there is an issue in European competitiveness and growth since the past 20, 25 years. This lack of competitiveness and growth has increased with a great financial crisis from 2008-2012. In 2012, there was a crisis around the euro. I think it is indeed time to try to look back at what happened and try to get some sense about what could be done differently going forward. Nuno Goncalves PedroA couple of really astute observations. Obviously, the GDP growth of Europe has lag behind that of the US and China. The period of time from 2002-2023, the US has grown 2% and both on constant prices and constant PPP prices. China, 8.3% and the EU, 27 at 1.4%. Obviously this report is on the EU. Clearly lagging, and the lag is significant. Nuno Goncalves PedroIf we look at GDP at constant prices, there was a 17% delta in 2002 between US and Europe, and now there's a 30% delta between US and Europe. It's lagging you further behind. Even more seriously, China has outpaced it on constant prices. If we look at constant PPP prices, the EU was actually 4% above the US back in 2002, and it is now below 12% of the US. Nuno Goncalves PedroChina has outpaced both of them at constant PPP prices. This is worrisome. I think Mario Draghi makes, or the report makes a bunch of very significant and strong statements, which basically are saying, "We cannot, as the European Union, continue like this and have the social welfare that we put in place in all these countries." something's got to give. Nuno Goncalves PedroHe goes on to make a couple of proposals and what he thinks need...

Do we need yet another new AI platform? Would new foundation models stand a chance in today's market? Will OpenAI, Anthropic, etc be the new Tech winners … or will they just get acquired, at some point?Navigation:Intro (01:34)LandscapeRecent gigantic acqui-hiresThe Big PlayersHow will the hardware change?Will there be a next wave beyond GPT?Is it too late to come in and disrupt the big players?ConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast BertrandWelcome to Tech Deciphered episode 59. Again, this will be an episode on AI. This time we make the case for not starting yet a new AI platform and not investing in one either. What's happening in AI? I guess all of you have heard about all the massive investment made by some of the leading players, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, XAI, Oracle, as well as even some smaller startups from Anthropic to Mistral. BertrandOf course, Amazon has built its own frontier model as well as is providing infrastructure to a lot of players. But isn't there already too much capital going into AI platforms and isn't it going too fast? NunoWell, we think probably yes. That's going to be the thesis of our discussion today. Some of the startups you mentioned, by the way, they've raised a ton of money. I mean, Anthropic is well above 8 billion. Mistral is at a couple of billions as well, right, at this stage? BertrandI think we are closer to a billion. NunoIt's around a billion. Yeah, around a billion, several billion for Anthropic. Then there's a couple of companies we will talk about later that raised a few billion that are no longer independent. It feels like too much. It feels like there's a gold rush of sorts. It is probably a good analogy. A lot of investors putting capital into it. NunoBut at the same time, it's being matched by the big players, Microsoft, Google, Meta by pushing LLM, XAI, OpenAI, we could argue, is it a big player already or not? But they just raised a ton of money as well. At 150 billion valuation, right? I mean, it's like... BertrandYes, 150 billion valuation. NunoIt's like, okay. They've already said, well, we are going to continue raising money. We're going to continue spending a lot of money as well. It feels like a gold rush. It feels like there's too much capital deployed into it. Something's got to give, someone's going to fail. Maybe that's a good segue to the fact that we already start seeing some moments that are quite interesting. BertrandMaybe to OpenAI, to jump back, to be fair, they've reached more than 3 billion of annualized revenues, and that was based on numbers from June. This is very high valuation for sure. But it's also coming with one of the fastest growing business ever in terms of revenues. NunoYes. We will see if it's sustainable, the business that they're building, because there's no competition. People are using other services out there in tandem. I see a lot of people, for example, using perplexity rather than ChatGPT. We'll see if Gemini catches up at some point or not. I would argue they have grown very fast, but they have not faced as much competition as they're probably starting to face right now. At least that would be my thesis. NunoIn any case, we start seeing signals of companies that go to the market and get bought out, and they get bought out for amazing amounts. If we look at Google and there, I would argue, acquihire of Character.ai. It seems to 2.

Another election year and it's already a dramatic one. Biden vs Trump turned into Harris vs Trump. An attempt on Trump's life. What's next? This episode will focus on the implication of the elections for Tech and its ecosystem in the US and globally. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Harris vs. Trump Silicon Valley / Tech business at large views Implications for Rest of the World Our take Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves Pedro Welcome to Episode 58 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we will discuss the US election and what it means for tech. How will the upcoming US election affect tech and the entire ecosystem in the US and globally? To be clear, and just to put a disclaimer, this episode will not focus on policies by the candidates that do not relate to what we perceive to be implications to tech. For example, we will not be discussing topics like pro-choice versus pro-life, and other things that are obviously very central to the decisions that many of you will make in how you will vote for the next presidential elections in the US. Nuno Goncalves Pedro At the same time, we will also share with you what we know to the best of our knowledge. Obviously, policies change with time, and proposed policies definitely change a lot with time, as you know, with politicians. There might be things that we will share with you today that might be different when you listen to our episode. We are not responsible for that. People and candidates change their minds all the time, even after they've been elected. That's not our fault. Just with those disclaimers, that's what we're going to share today. Nuno Goncalves Pedro The third and final disclaimer, obviously, there will be tonality on how we discuss and evaluate some of the policies, and if they're good or bad or whatever. But from this, you cannot also take a conclusion on, "Oh, I should vote for Trump," or, "I should vote for Harris," because no, this is just a view around tech and tech ecosystem. We will share how we perceive the policies and the proposed policies, and that's literally it. We're not giving you advice on who to vote for. Bertrand Schmitt First, this is a recording made August 28. We'll try to be as precise and as relevant as of this date. This is before the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. As a reminder, a French politician once said that promises by candidates only engage those who listen to them. With that as a reminder, let's start the topic. Maybe first, we can talk about the official platform. As of today, there is an official platform if we go to the page of the candidate, Donald J. Trump, there is a 20-point page, and there is a more detailed PDF as well on the Trump Republican platform. Some of our points will try to leverage what is on this official platform page, and we will also, of course, try to leverage what was done when Donald Trump was president, because sometimes actions speak louder than words. We also pick what we have heard from the candidates on the trail, if it diverts or if it adds to that platform. Bertrand Schmitt On the other side, VP Harris' platform is not there. As of August 28, there is no official platform on her website, which, to be frank, it's scary because if you cannot hold a candidate to their promise after they are elected, that's a tough place to be. Obviously, she's part of the Biden-Harris administration, so we will leverage for discussion what was done by her administration,...

Did we go from a broad bubble to a gen AI bubble? What is the current state of AI and generative AI? What has been commoditized and what is still distinctive? What does the future hold?Navigation:Intro (01:34)The State of AI / gen AIOn the negative sideOn the positive sideOur takeConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Tech Deciphered, episode 57. This episode will be about generative AI, and we will be asking the question, "Are we in a generative AI bubble?"Bertrand SchmittIn our last episode, we talked about AI, what was the latest happening in terms of endpoints, PCs, Macs, iPhones, and is it a risk? Is it a benefit? Today, we'll talk about what's happening with GenAI. Is it overhyped? Is it too much investment? On the plus side, we'll be wondering, okay, maybe it's not a bubble after all, or even if it's one, is it such an issue because basically is it laying the foundation for a new stage, a new scale of AI for an act two of generative AI. Good to talk to you today, Nuno.Nuno Goncalves PedroNice to talk to you as well, Bertrand. I'll start with my answer. It is a bubble and it isn't. I'll come back to that. I'll leave you guys on that cliffhanger. Let's start maybe a little bit with where we are in the state of AI and GenAI. Are we at commodity level or not? Adoption levels that we're seeing in the market. Interesting report from McKinsey. Some around the state of AI, they did over 1,300 interviews. It was really a survey format around AI and GenAI adoption.Nuno Goncalves PedroSome, like the conclusions, increased adoption of AI in at least one business function. Over the last year, this dramatic increase. I'm not really sure. Everyone that said, yes, we're using it is actually using it. I take that with a grain of salt. This is self-reported, again, and so everyone has to be using GenAI, but everyone's aware of it. I'm sure there's an increase in adoption for sure.Nuno Goncalves PedroThe second piece that I feel is a little bit more exciting is what are the functional areas of companies that are using AI and generative AI more actively? Maybe not super mega surprising marketing and sales, which is core to some companies, but relatively support function. A little bit surprising to me that people are seeing product in our service development as number two. Surprising to me that software engineering is so low. Again, maybe no software engineer has actually filled in anything around that. That's why it's so low or middle of the board, or they don't know what their engineers are doing, really, which is also interesting.Nuno Goncalves PedroThen very low on strategy and corporate finance were business analysis, triangulation of data, or using ChatGPT, et cetera, I would have taken a little bit for granted that people would be using it. A bit surprising on that. Just feel it's an interesting... Again, self-reported, it's a survey. Some interesting conclusions on both sides in terms of the functions, et cetera. Some the conclusions as well on the rapid ascendancy of generative AI.Bertrand SchmittYeah, for me, what I'm quite impressed, I must say, is how fast generative AI has picked up. I don't think I remember any new technologies that move so fast in terms of adoption, because here we are already talking about adoption metrics. I mean, it moved from nowhere in 2022, 33% in 2023, 65% in 2024. Basically, as high as the adoption of AI,

AI is literally everywhere… in our mobile phones, laptops, their chipsets, etc. As integrations increase, what are the implications for everyone? Why are all the announcements from Microsoft, Google, Apple, Open AI and others, important? One of those episodes that you really need to listen to, as this IMPACTS YOU and all of usNavigation:Intro (01:34)Getting us all on the same pageThis matters TO YOU!!!Open AI launching 4oThe responsesSo… What?ConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittHi, welcome to episode 55 of Tech Deciphered. In this episode, we will talk about open versus closed and proprietary. What does it mean in technology to be an open or closed application? You have all heard about open-source, I guess. There is a saying in Silicon Valley, if you are first, you close it. If you come late, you open it.Bertrand SchmittBasically, it means that you might have an advantage being the first player on the field. You might afford to be able to close-source your product, your software, your application. But if you are late to the game, late to the party, and it's difficult to fight the leading player in the marketplace, maybe an alternative strategy in order to gain distribution is to open-source your product. There have been many examples of this through Silicon Valley history. Today, we are going to talk more about all of this. Good to see you, Nuno, today.Nuno Goncalves PedroNice to see you as well. Shall we start with history—the history of open-source? It's apparently the first known system that was supposedly open-source or in public domain was in the '50s, the A2 system in 1953. Basically, it was a compiler. A compiler is what turns source code into binary code that gets run by a machine.Nuno Goncalves PedroIt's what allows you to run apps on, for example, your phone and things like that, a compiler. I know some of you that are like, I'm a computer engineer. Is that a compiler really or is it an interpreter? Let's forget that for a second. Let's call it a compiler just to make life easier for everyone involved.Nuno Goncalves PedroThat was the first public domain open-source thing that we know. Then there isn't much, '50s, '60s, '70s, there isn't much. Obviously, there was the summer of love at some point in the late '60s, and maybe through the '70s, people started thinking through, shouldn't we be doing things that are more open? One of such people was a gentleman called Richard Stallman, who's still alive, so you'd shout out to him. He was part of this "let's call it hacker community" from those days and was doing some interesting things around it.Nuno Goncalves PedroThere was this belief that source code shouldn't be closed, that if you were monetising something quite a lot, and you were putting even certain things in your code, that if, for example, you were using unlicensed applications, so unlicensed binary, that you would run into trouble and have other issues. So he manifested himself against it and came up with something that we're still using till this day, the GNU or the GNU Project and GNU Manifesto. Now, GNU, this is the funny part—some of you will find it funny, others might not—stands for GNU's Not Unix, which is a recursive acronym. You have to appreciate computer scientists and computer engineers coming up with things like that.Nuno Goncalves PedroBut its GNU is GNU's not Unix, because at that time,

When a company says they are launching a new product that is open, is it really? What does open even mean? The history behind open source, its successes and failures, and all the lies we are told all the time by some Tech players. The truth, unvarnishedNavigation:Intro (01:34)What is Open Source Software - history, definition and core innovations?Open Source ftw (for the win)Lies… when Open is not Open, but a Moat or the Bridge for ClosedConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittHi, welcome to episode 55 of Tech Deciphered. In this episode, we will talk about open versus closed and proprietary. What does it mean in technology to be an open or closed application? You have all heard about open-source, I guess. There is a saying in Silicon Valley, if you are first, you close it. If you come late, you open it.Bertrand SchmittBasically, it means that you might have an advantage being the first player on the field. You might afford to be able to close-source your product, your software, your application. But if you are late to the game, late to the party, and it's difficult to fight the leading player in the marketplace, maybe an alternative strategy in order to gain distribution is to open-source your product. There have been many examples of this through Silicon Valley history. Today, we are going to talk more about all of this. Good to see you, Nuno, today.Nuno Goncalves PedroNice to see you as well. Shall we start with history—the history of open-source? It's apparently the first known system that was supposedly open-source or in public domain was in the '50s, the A2 system in 1953. Basically, it was a compiler. A compiler is what turns source code into binary code that gets run by a machine.Nuno Goncalves PedroIt's what allows you to run apps on, for example, your phone and things like that, a compiler. I know some of you that are like, I'm a computer engineer. Is that a compiler really or is it an interpreter? Let's forget that for a second. Let's call it a compiler just to make life easier for everyone involved.Nuno Goncalves PedroThat was the first public domain open-source thing that we know. Then there isn't much, '50s, '60s, '70s, there isn't much. Obviously, there was the summer of love at some point in the late '60s, and maybe through the '70s, people started thinking through, shouldn't we be doing things that are more open? One of such people was a gentleman called Richard Stallman, who's still alive, so you'd shout out to him. He was part of this "let's call it hacker community" from those days and was doing some interesting things around it.Nuno Goncalves PedroThere was this belief that source code shouldn't be closed, that if you were monetising something quite a lot, and you were putting even certain things in your code, that if, for example, you were using unlicensed applications, so unlicensed binary, that you would run into trouble and have other issues. So he manifested himself against it and came up with something that we're still using till this day, the GNU or the GNU Project and GNU Manifesto. Now, GNU, this is the funny part—some of you will find it funny, others might not—stands for GNU's Not Unix, which is a recursive acronym. You have to appreciate computer scientists and computer engineers coming up with things like that.Nuno Goncalves PedroBut its GNU is GNU's not Unix, because at that time,

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Can you handle the truth? What is the future of news? Are we at a Spotify moment? Do we even care about the truth?Navigation:Intro (01:34)Mainstream vs Niche News (02:09)Are we Close to the Spotify/Netflix moment? (29:30)State or Government Ownership and Influence of Media (46:06)Polarization & The Truth (58:36)Year of Election (1:05:10)Conclusion (1:09:21) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast NunoIn today's episode of Tech Deciphered, we will be discussing the truth. Can you handle the truth and the whole truth? More specifically, we're going to talk about the future of news, where we are today. Obviously, a lot of discussion around fake news, polarization of news.NunoWe will go into a conversation on whether we are close to the Spotify moment of the news space, and whether how we're caring for the truth is still actually true. Do we still care for truth or do we just care about our own opinions and to reinforce them over time?BertrandThat's a big question. I think to start about this topic, we probably want to start from this big debate that has gone pretty big over the past 10 years, but maybe even more the past five years. It's maybe the mainstream versus niche news and all the dramatic changes that have happened in a way, thanks to internet.NunoThere's the mainstream versus niche, there's the mainstream versus speciality. Maybe let's start with mainstream. What is mainstream news? Is it just news or do we get news through mechanisms that sometimes are not news anymore?BertrandIs it still mainstream?NunoClearly, there has been a decrease in viewership of the newscasts, the news programs that we used to watch in our own countries, in the US. Now people can watch whatever they want whenever they want it. In some ways, there's still maybe some flagship national news shows that people listen to. Obviously, there's dedicated news channels like CNN, Fox News, of course, as well.NunoIs it really where we consume our mainstream news? My view is obviously with the decreasing of viewership across the top channels, one would say maybe less so, but clearly still there is mainstream news. Fox News represents a specific side of the spectrum, but it is mainstream. CNN is as well. What's your view, Bertrand?BertrandI was asking this question only jokingly because I don't know many people who still watch some of these mainstream news channels. My impression is that actually, first, the metrics are pretty clear. It's a significant decline in viewership. You talk about TV, but the price is the same. A few managed to, I would say, stay somewhat relevant. Take a New York Times, take a Wall Street Journal, but even that definition of relevant is a very small viewership.BertrandThe numbers are extremely small in terms of who is paying for a subscription to these services. We are talking about millions at best, so that's very small. One thing I noticed, I think that is pretty clear across the board is that, most of what we call mainstream media is more and more watched by the older generations, meaning people who have very long habits of watching their news that way from a TV channel. And two, who have not gone to the internet for their news because they were stuck in their old ways in some ways.BertrandObviously not everyone is like this, but my understanding is that they are all facing growing, older and older generations. Of course,

Is Technology intrinsically good, bad or neutral? In this episode, we will go into the depths of Technology Philosophy & Ethics, what it actually is, its historical developments, the current movements of the present and what the future likely holds. What is e/acc, what is EA? What is Degrowth? We will also discuss spiritual and religious elements, in as much as they relate to Science and Technology.Navigation:Intro (01:34)What is Technology Philosophy & Ethics? (02:33)Historical Developments (04:17)The Present (23:44)Our Views (49:06)Conclusion (54:45)Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast 1. Intro Bertrand Schmitt Welcome to episode 53 of Tech Deciphered. This episode will be about technology philosophy and ethics. This is a bit far from our usual topics around investment and building companies, but we felt it was an interesting moment in time, especially with the development of AI, to talk about some of this, I would say what's behind some of the reflection in tech around where we should move forward, how much we should accelerate, should we even consider a pause in some developments? Bertrand Schmitt Is technology intrinsically good, bad or neutral? We'll try to go into the depths of some of these questions. We'll also talk about e/acc, about EA, about degrowth, and we will also discuss some spiritual and religious elements in so far as to how they relate to science and technology. 2. What is Technology Philosophy & Ethics? Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Wonderful. Let's start with what is technology, philosophy, and ethics? Basically, define the philosophy of technology as a subfield of philosophy. We have a good start there. It's part of philosophy. Let's start there. Nuno Goncalves Pedro, It actually studies the nature of technology and its social effects. It has several branches. Ethics is probably the one that's been most published about recently. What are the ethics of AI, et cetera? Relations between science and technology, human-technology relations, there's been some interesting debates as well around that, in particular in countries like Japan who always seem to be at the forefront of some of the stuff that happens around virtual and digital things and actual humans. Bertrand Schmitt Are you thinking about virtual girlfriends? Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Virtual girlfriends, virtual wives. You could get married to virtual wives. Obviously, the political dimensions of technology has also been hotly debated recently. Who owns semiconductors? Who owns AI? Is AI centralised or not? Is this an arms race? Is this going to be a source of geopolitical danger? Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Obviously, there's different views around technology. There's obviously the view that technology is autonomous, but it does determine society. It's a human construct. It's co-evolutionary, so it evolves at the same time as we should, and there should be boundary conditions around it and how we evolve. Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Basically, this leads to anything between technophobes, people that hate technology, people that are technophilia, I'm not sure that would be the right word, but that have technophilia, that love technology like you and I, Bertrand, we love technology in some ways. Then there's people at the edges of this that go on different angles like technology anarchy and a bunch of other things. 3. Historical Developments Nuno Goncalves Pedro, That's basically a very broad definition of techn...

The Apple Vision Pro is out and we each got ourselves one… Our first impressions on the early days of the Vision Pro. Will it change the world forever, like the iPhone?Navigation:Intro (01:34)Overall… TL;DRIn-depth analysisCompetition with Meta Quest 3ConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture newsIntro Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno G. PedroIn this episode, episode 52 of Tech Deciphered, we will talk about the Apple Vision Pro. It's now out, and both Bertrand and myself got ourselves one. So what are our first impressions on the early days of the Vision Pro? Will this revolutionise the future of input and output? Is this the new iPhone? Is this finally the product that Tim Cook has developed that shows us that he is the future of Apple? Let's start with the overall impressions, Bertrand. What are your overall impressions?Bertrand SchmittWhat are my overall impressions? It's a mixed bag, that's for sure. It's a very impressive piece of tech. I think my worry is that it has been oversold by Apple, but also by a lot of YouTubers. When you keep looking at these YouTube videos of people using it for eight hours a day, I think it's totally, utterly bullshit. There is no way in hell any normal human being will put that on their head eight hours a day unless forced to do it.Nuno G. PedroUnless you're working on your neck like you're a Formula One driver or something.Bertrand SchmittExactly. You are working on your neck. Yes, it's neck training. No, more seriously, overall, and we will go more in depth later on this episode, I feel it's a great device for maybe two use cases. One is if you want to watch 3D content. To watch 3D content, 3D movies, potentially at some point 3D sports, when we get that, we don't have that yet so far, 3D concert, then I think It's awesome.Bertrand SchmittWatching 90 minutes of 3D movies, it's just an insane experience for me. It's just amazing. It's your best way to consume a Blade Runner 2049, a Dune. It's actually maybe better than in a movie theatre if you combine it with a proper headset because the audio is quite good, the bass are pretty poor. For me today, as a mainstream consumer, that's the best main use case. For businesses, there might be some reason to look at, if you are doing 3D design, to look at 3D objects in the middle of your room, I can see that as well.Bertrand SchmittBeyond that, I think we're talking about very stretch use cases. One of these could be to record a video of what you are doing and sharing that with other for training. I could see that probably for training purposes. But beyond that, at this stage, I'm not sure what's the point to put 2D panels in the middle of a 3D vision with a headset that's very heavy and very uncomfortable.Bertrand SchmittI don't know your experience, wearing the headset, but anyone telling you that this headset is nice to wear, do they have a metal head to wear that comfortably? I have no clue. I mean, I'm hopeful there will be better straps, but for me, it's still a nightmare to wear it.Nuno G. PedroYeah, this has been tested by 007 villains, so they all can send away the thing on their head. Fully agree with your assessment. It's impossible have it on your head, to be honest, even for more than an hour-and-a-half, two hours. An hour-and-a-half and two hours is already a lot. So even watching that movie, you might have to take a little break to watch that movie, in particular if it's over two hours,

Do you remember that company that raised at $1 billion valuation and sold for $15 million? How about that one that was the “hottest thing” ever, is still around, but never really became huge. This episode is about these companies… and about why some founders and investors can make a lot of money, while their companies fail miserably.Navigation:Intro (01:34)Why “ka-ching” isn't necessarily related to success (or failure)?The nasty onesThe ones that are still alive, but not doing greatThe ones that did ok/well, but… should they have gotten that outcome?Why don't all companies exit?ConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Tech DECIPHERED episode 51. We are going to talk about companies that ultimately became too big to succeed. What do we mean by too big? We mean that, in most situations, they probably raised too much to end up having some level of good success. The weight of their financing weighed on them, and what could be opportunities for the right exits.Bertrand SchmittSo, Nuno, let's start about this and obviously we will talk about some pretty big companies that went under, some smaller ones that also didn't go well, and some are still alive, just absolutely not where we would have expected them a few years ago, and not enough to make everyone happy in these companies. Maybe we start by explaining a bit more what is success or failure?Nuno Goncalves PedroLet's start with the punchline today instead of... Hopefully you guys will stay for the examples because they're pretty cool. But let's start with a punchline and why cashing isn't necessarily related to success or failure. Why success sometimes on paper isn't success in the end. It ain't over until the fat lady sings. Probably not a very appropriate expression any more, but it really ain't over until the company actually liquidates and everyone's made their money, et cetera.Nuno Goncalves PedroLet's start with first principles: the first thing is a valuation on paper, a company is raising a private round of funding, a series B, a series C, a series D from venture capital investing, investors, even IPO ing, even going public into the stock market.Nuno Goncalves PedroThe valuation before any liquidation and an IPO would be an effective liquidation. Any valuation before a liquidation is on paper. It means what it means. It means that someone is willing to pay a certain price per share for the company at that valuation of the company. It doesn't mean the company is actually worth that. It means there are certain actors that think that the company is worth that.Nuno Goncalves PedroWhat it means is you can raise a ton of money, and in particular, you can raise a ton of money at a lot of valuation. You can be a unicorn on paper, so worth over a billion dollars. You can be a decacorn worth over $10 billion on paper. But that's all on paper until there's liquidation, be it an IPO, a full on trade sales where someone buys you out, et cetera, et cetera. Basically, it ain't done yet.Nuno Goncalves PedroNow, why isn't cashing necessarily related to success? Why do people still make money? Well, people still make money because other things happen in the life of the company. When a company is raising, potentially series b or series c, it might be that certain investors or certain executives or founders of the company do what is called a secondary transaction.

That episode… the 50th, the big 50. We go back to the past and look into the future: was 2023 as bad as it gets? Is there some good or silver lining in front of us in 2024? These and more questions answered in our recap and looking forward episode. Navigation:Intro (01:34)Looking Back to 2023 (02:00)Looking Ahead into 2024 (32:05)Conclusion (48:20) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast NunoWelcome to episode 50 of Tech DECIPHERED, the big 50, 5-0. Today, we will do a recap of 2023 and what to look forward to in 2024. Although this is actually not really our 50th episode, because of how we've done the numbering scheme over time and we've changed it back and forth. Let's just call it our 50th episode and celebrate and take advantage of that. 2023, what a hell of a year, Bertrand. BertrandYes, indeed. What a hell of a year. Maybe we can start about the positives of 2023. NunoYes, that would be fast. No, I'm kidding. BertrandGood news is that I'm not sure if it's fully behind us, but definitely COVID-19 is mostly under control. It feels less in the news these days, either mainstream media or Twitter. It looks like people are back to a more normal life, back to getting the flu or whatever cold you might get, but at least it feels like a cancer-distant memory, but less impacting our daily lives. NunoWe put COVID-19 behind us. I was just watching or catching up on a TV series, The Good Fight. They did this funky thing starting, it's season five maybe, which is literally the whole episode is like a previously on, but we never saw that. They basically did a whole year into 50 minutes of an episode, and they presented it as previously on, as if we'd watched it before, which we have never watched it, which is very funny. It was actually scary. We were scared for our lives and what was going to happen next. That was 2020. NunoThen 2021, we started rebalancing and things started looking a bit better. Last year was like, "Oh, let's just go back to the normal world." This year, we're full throttle. It's the big vindication. Everyone's travelling a lot. I'm sure it's going to be a mess over Thanksgiving. We're close to Thanksgiving right now. Everyone's back to travelling. COVID is a little bit behind us. Some people are taking booster shots. Have you taken your booster shot yet, Bertrand? BertrandI have. NunoI have as well. BertrandFlu shot. NunoFlu as well. Yes, cool stuff. Some may have not, I'm pretty sure. Some people are getting COVID again, but things do seem to be under control. That's a big, heavy burden that we're not really inside anymore. We'll see what happens in the next few years. Fingers crossed. I'm knock-on-wood type stuff because honestly, we can't declare victory. NunoThe second very positive thing is, besides we did talk about recession. We talked about economy imploding. It really did not. It's been an up-and-down year, but the economy did not implode. If something economic activity has now picked up again and there's no signals of recession, and again, fingers crossed on that, which I guess is good and bad. We'll come back to the bad in a bit, but it's mostly good. BertrandYeah, it's good news. The question is why, obviously, and can it still happen? Definitely, I came in this year with a more negative outlook, at least for the US. Because if we talk about some other countries, some other countries might have a pretty bad year, actually. At least in the US,

What is an exit? You need to sell your company or sell some of your shares? How is the market for that, right now? All things M&A, IPO, Secondaries, etc.  Navigation: Intro (01:34) What is an exit? (02:17) Stats on M&A and IPOs (17:50) What's ahead? (42:02) Conclusion (59:48) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Tech DECIPHERED Episode 49. This will be our Exit episode. What do we mean by exit? Exit, it's really when you need to provide liquidity to your shareholders. It's when you sell your company as a whole. You sell some shares in a public market, meaning that ultimately that will provide not as fast liquidity as getting acquired, but will provide liquidity for those that want to leave the business as shareholders in a gradual way. In this episode, we are going to talk about all things M&A, IPO, secondaries. But let's start with more details about what is an exit. Nuno Goncalves PedroMore generically, an exit is on the eye of the beholder. An exit for a company, as you mentioned rightfully so, is the sale of normally most of its stock. It could be not all of the stock; sometimes it is all of the stock. It could be a sale of most of its stock or the taking that stock public in some way. Nuno Goncalves PedroWe'll come back to this notion of what selling stock means, but in general, selling stock, even when you go IPO, there is a selling of stock. There is a transformation of stock in some way. But it could be for an investor. What is an exit for an investor? Or what is an exit for a founder of a company? In that case, I would say an exit is, again, when you sell the majority of your stock that you have for that specific entity. Nuno Goncalves PedroFor a founder, it would be, "I'm selling most of my stock in that company." For an investor, "I'm selling most of my stock in that company." We could then basically say, is it a full exit or not? But it's an active element of liquidation at scale. For me, takes into account majority. It takes into account that the majority of what you put or that you have, you've sold. A liquidation means you've liquidated part of your position. It could be actually a very small amount of stock. That is the definition of exit and the definition of liquidation. Nuno Goncalves PedroThere's different types of exits and elements of liquidation. There's mergers and acquisitions whereby two companies—normally it's two companies—come together as a merger. We always talk about this notion of mergers of equals. There is rarely mergers of equals. There is always one party that is slightly bigger than the other. Even in the case of a merger, there is one party that in some ways is acquiring the other. Then there's straight-up acquisitions, the ability for a company to acquire another company and take over that company. That's M&A. Nuno Goncalves PedroIn M&A, normally the majority of stock is taken by the acquirer or by the entity that is merging that is slightly larger than the other one. There's what we call a change of control. The entity that got sold is now taken by the new entity or by the entity that bought it. That's a change of control. A lot of people know the sexier type of exits, which is IPOs. Nuno Goncalves PedroAn IPO stands for initial public offering. It's an offering of stock to the retail market, to the public market. Why it's the public market? Because people like you and me and people that necessarily...

So you're starting a company? You're now officially a founder. What should you do first? In episode 48, we will share our views on culture and why it “eats strategy for breakfast”, our thoughts on structure and legal framework for your new baby/start-up and on what 2nd+ time founders do differently.Navigation:Intro (01:34)“Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast” (01:54)Structure / Legal (16:27)2nd time founders, what do they do differently? (29:37)Conclusion (35:35) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves PedroWelcome to Episode 48, the second and last episode on day zero as a founder. What should I do? In this episode, we'll discuss how culture eats strategy for breakfast, how you should think through the structure of your entity and the legality of your entity. And finally, we'll land on second-time founders. What do they do differently? Nuno Goncalves PedroLet us start with culture eats strategy for breakfast. This is actually a quote that has to be attributed to one of my professors at Stanford, Robert Pilgarman, one of the great professors of strategy in academia. He always used to say it. I'm probably paraphrasing him wrong but, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." And his point was you can define the best strategy ever, but your company culture, if it's going in a very different direction that doesn't allow you to align the execution with a strategy you have set forth, that culture will win and the strategy will never work. Bertrand SchmittI totally agree. I don't see it either way. You have to build your strategy in the constraints of what your team can achieve. Obviously, you can always arrange things a bit. You can hire more people, you can bring different types of people on board. But culture is typically very hard to change, and hopefully you have the right culture. If it's way beyond what your culture is able to achieve, that will be a problem. Let's take some examples. If you have a culture of being very careful about your spend, think about Amazon in the early days. Nuno Goncalves PedroStill today? Bertrand SchmittStill today. I remember earlier, I don't think they still do it today, but they would use, I think, some doors that they buy on the cheap and that they use as a desk, as a surface for your desk. That's a very distinct type of culture where you try to optimize cost everywhere. Bertrand SchmittThere are other ways to optimize cost, by the way. If you look at how they pay employees, stock options the first two years, for instance, they won't invest much. It will be on year three, year four. That's not typical, to be clear. But the analysis was most people stay two years or less. We better don't give too much in term of stock because it's valuable. We will only give stock to people who are staying for the long run with us. Bertrand SchmittMy point here is if you have that culture, you won't be going, for instance, in the luxury business. Good luck trying to go to sell luxury products with a culture of optimizing cost to the bones. My point is you have to align the two together. You have to understand what type of products we're willing to deliver, and you have to have a culture that match it. Hopefully, early on, you need to have a good instinct about your type of product, your type of market, and therefore, the type of culture that's necessary and hire the people who would be a good match with this culture. Step by step, be more clear,

So you're starting a company? You're now officially a founder. What should you do first? In episode 47, we will frame the landscape, share when it is a good time to start a company, how validate your start-up idea and the 3 key things to take into account: product, market and team.Navigation:IntroFirst Things, FirstWhen is a good time to start?How to validate a startup idea - vitamin vs painkillerThe 3 key things: product, market, teamConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Episode 47 of Tech DECIPHERED. This will be the first episode in a series of two episodes about Day zero as a founder. Basically, we will talk in Episode 47 about what is Day zero as a founder? We will talk about when is it a good time to start a business, how to validate? Your startup IDs. Of course, we'll go around three key things: product, market, and team. That will be all for episode 47. You will hear more in our episode 48 about culture, about structure, legal, and about second-time funders. Nuno.Nuno Gonçalves PedroFirst things first.Bertrand SchmittFirst things first.Nuno Gonçalves PedroFirst things first, what is day zero? Day zero is basically to us when you're really starting your company. You have an idea, you may have done a little bit of market research. You've sought through a few things, but you're about to go and embark on this journey of having a startup or a company of some sort.Nuno Gonçalves PedroThe first important thing is, what are you doing? What is it you're going to do the company on? Is it a services company? Is it a product company? Is it something that you've done before? We're going to start a little bit today in this episode talking about first-time founders. Later on, we'll talk about the differences between second-time founders and first-time founders. Most of the episode today and then part of the episode next time will focus a lot on first time founders.Nuno Gonçalves PedroBut at least you have to have a notion of product or service. What is it that I'm supplying to the market? Second, what is the market? What market am I going to operate in? Third, what is the team? Normally, the team at day zero is you and potentially co-founders. It might be you by yourself, if you're a single founder or a solopreneur, as we call it.Nuno Gonçalves PedroWhat do you do first? The first things you need to do is to understand what markets are you going to act on, what products or services are you going to manifest in that market, and what's the ongoing team into this problem, into this company? That's your effective day zero start. If you don't have these things and you're like, "Oh, I just have an idea for a startup," that's cool, but it's not something you can go and raise money on. It's not something you can go and do anything on. You have to at least go to a stage where you have a plan, where you have a potential co-founding team, where you have a market that you're going to operate on.Bertrand SchmittBy the way, not all businesses are venture-backable or not, and that might be something we come back to. I would say another point is also around, are you still working another job? Are you doing this part-time during your nights and weekends? Or have you resigned from your previous job and moved full-time on this idea? That's always a big question.Bertrand SchmittI would say a lot of people, you wonder if they are serious enough when they have been...

Is work-life balance attainable or is it a “mythical creature”? What can one do to extract top professional performance while not endangering one's personal life and hers/his/theirs physical and mental health? We will discuss how much is too much, the big axes of “life”, whether work-life balance is possible, differences between geographies and will, as always, share our own “hacks” and key “systems”.Navigation:Intro (01:34)How much is too much? (01:59)The big axis: family (21:35)The other axis: friends, hobbies, spirituality, etc (30:27)Is work-life balance possible? (39:05)Differences between geographies (56:24)Bring it all together (61:57)Conclusion (63:43) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves PedroWelcome to Episode 46 of Tech DECIPHERED. In this episode, we will discuss the lifelong exercise of work-life balance and whether it is possible. We will discuss mental health, physical health, how much is too much, whether it's actually possible to attain work-life balance, and as always, we will share some of our own hacks and principles. Bertrand, how much is too much?Bertrand SchmittThat's the question. I'm a serious believer that it depends also of which stage are you in your life. Which period in your life are you? Are you still quite young with a lot of energy? Are you a single parent with kids? I think depending on the stage in life, you won't physically have the same time available to devote to work. That will have an impact on your ability to work and how much you can execute and that can put pressure, obviously, to your capacity to endure.Bertrand SchmittAt the same time, obviously, if you're in your 20s, you should probably have way more time to do a lot, to learn a lot, to try to achieve a lot. You might be able to endure it much more easily than if you were in your 40s, for instance.Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe we start with a disclaimer. Obviously, all opinions we're going to share today—we're not psychologists, we're not trained psychiatrists, we're not MDs—it's our views and based on experience we've had from managing people, our own lives, interacting with many different players at various different levels of seniority. Hopefully, it is not just anecdotal, but again, we are not trained physicians, MDs, et cetera, so take this obviously with a grain of salt.Nuno Goncalves PedroTo your point, I fully agree. There is a stage of life, and it's a bit more granular, I believe, than that. It might be that once you're joining a specific company, specific organisation at a specific time, you're going very aggressively to fit into the organisation, to understand how everything works, to balance yourself and how you interact with other people and learn a new set of skills. It might be two years in that your role and job might be a bit different if you're more in corporate life.Nuno Goncalves PedroIn startup life, as you know, it doesn't seem to go away, certainly in the first four or five years of the company. Venture capital is also an activity that classically, I think, if done properly, if done with love and with gusto and with passion, it's an activity that is very encompassing. I always make the joke, I don't suffer from ADHD, I enjoy every minute of it, which probably makes sense.Nuno Goncalves PedroI fully agree with you. How much is too much? How do you know? There's the obvious warning signs, and normally the obvious warning signs are actually not...

Augmented Reality, VR, XR… what is all this? Shouldn't we all be using these devices by now? Is Apple going to change everything? Or is it Meta? In this episode, we go in into the arenas of AR, VR and MR, explain what these different technologies are, the developments thus far, whether (or not) we are an inflection point on devices, software, applications and content, as well as on what the (hopefully non sci-fi) future holds.Navigation:Intro (01:34)What is it and how does it work? (02:09)The last (lost?) decade (11:15)The inflection point for devices? (19:10)The inflection point for Software and Applications? Developer is king… (36:47)A non sci-fi future? (49:04)Conclusion (56:09) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast IntroBertrand SchmittHello. Welcome to episode 45 of Tech Deciphered. Today, we are going to talk about VR, AR, MR; mixed reality, in the context of the announcement of the Apple Vision Pro, their first spatial computer. Obviously, already talking about VR, AR, MR is old school, we should be talking about spatial computer. Apple has been very careful about not employing the world VR or AR. Maybe let's start about what is all of this and how do they work?Section 1 - What is it and how does it work?Nuno G. PedroLet's start with an easy one, which is extended reality. Extended reality is everything. Extended reality encompasses augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality. When you see XR, that means extended reality. It's the encompassing word for all these forms that we're going to talk about today. Nuno G. PedroAugmented reality is probably the simplest form. It's a view of the real world with some pieces of digital. But normally the definition for augmented reality is it's a non interactive domain. We'll come back to that when we talked about mixed reality. It's you basically seeing things that are on a plane, for example, using your mobile phone, your iPhone, an android device, and looking around you and seeing things that appear that are digital, but they appear in the real world. That would be augmented reality. There's almost no interaction involved, etc, etc. Nuno G. PedroMixed reality brings in the element of interaction. You still see the real world, but you also see these digital objects and these virtual objects and you can interact and make them interact and you can interact with that world. To be very honest with you guys, I'm still an old-school guy. So for me, augmented reality and mixed reality are effectively the same. Nuno G. PedroI think at some point, someone decided to do this distinction, maybe because of the devices that are linked to it and to really separate in particular what was happening in mobile augmented reality, what was happening with mobile phones. But ultimately, for me, they're very similar. Obviously, for me they're almost indistinguishable anyway. The people out there, that like distinguishing them, that's the difference between AR and MR; mixed reality. Nuno G. PedroFinally, there's virtual reality, which is a fully immersive virtual world experience, the one that normally uses things like in the past look like helmets, things that basically take over most of your head because you want to be fully immersed. It can't be just full, a simple goggle experience. It needs to be a more immersive experience. That's basically what defines virtual reality or VR. Nuno G. PedroAgain, XR; extended reality, AR and MR,

Final episode on AI and generative AI, including start-up and VC landscape, regulatory & privacy environment and what does the future hold, with answers to such important questions as, can AI kill us? (spoiler alert: yes, it can). Navigation: Intro (01:33) Start-up and VC Landscape (02:13) Open-Source (08:31) Regulatory & Privacy Environment (14:31) The Future (21:18) Conclusion (31:17) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) -- Introduction -- Nuno Welcome to Episode 44 of Tech DECIPHERED. This is our second and last episode on Artificial Intelligence and generative AI. Nuno In the last episode, we introduced AI. We talked about what's happening around generative AI as well as verticals and what the big guys are doing. In this episode, we will go further into what's happening in the startup and venture capital landscape, the open source landscape, the regulatory and privacy environment, and we'll end by talking about whether AI will save all our lives and save the world, or whether it will kill us all. -- Start-up and VC Landscape -- Nuno Maybe moving to startups, obviously, there's been a lot of funding into companies that are now at the forefront of some of these big shifts. We talked about stability AI that had raised over 100 million from players like Lightspeed and others. KOTO, I believe as well, that are responsible for stable diffusion. We've seen in the past very well funded startups in the AI space not necessarily then scaling or doing very well. But at the end of the day, there's definitely been a lot of funding. What is the current crux of the matter if you're a venture capital firm and you're looking at this landscape? Nuno The crux of the matter is noise. You see all these, "Okay, I'm chat GPT for something, or I'm an app that's going to run on top of existing platforms using generative AI." Nuno Generative AI is the new blockchain. It's a new Web3. It used to be in all pitches two or three years back, Web3, tokenization, token economics, et cetera. Now everyone's like, "It has generative AI." My, again, relatively simplistic view of looking at this is I think of it as an app economy. In the same way that we had the launch of the app store in 2008 and we had mobile apps, initially everyone said, "Oh, that's not an app economy. This thing is never going to amount to an economy." It did. We now know that mobile first and mobile app is an economy. We have two proofs of that in this podcast. Nuno It is also true that I believe what we're seeing right now is a similar thing to an app economy. This doesn't mean that we're not going to have some significant revolutions around AI and new platforms emerging that everything is going to be based on. I think we will have that as well. Nuno But at the same time, when we start seeing people saying, I'm going to use the tools and platforms that exist today to do an application specifically around this, which will be really cool and will take productivity to the next level, most of these will fail, like most apps failed. Some will potentially win. Nuno The notion of generative AI first is how I look at it, is for me a bit analogous to app economy like we saw with mobile. Some will rise to the top, very few. Most will fail dramatically. There will be a tons of noise. For us as investors, as venture capitalists, the complexity is to understand how can I reduce the noise level?

The truth about Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI. This is the first of two episodes on AI. Navigation: Intro (01:33) What is AI and AGI? Why now? (02:07) Setting the Record Straight (08:55) Verticals (20:30) Other AIs (28:48) The Big Guys (31:20) Conclusion (38:38) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Schmitt Welcome to Tech DECIPHERED Episode 43. This would be the first of a series of two episodes on AI, AGI, generative AI. A lot has been happening in the past six months and we felt it was a great time where not everything is clear yet. The fog of war is still intense. There is probably a little bit more visibility into where things are going. It would be with pleasure that we'll talk about this deeply fascinating topic and for sure one of the topics most discussed today in tech. What is AI? What is AGI? Why now? (02:07) Bertrand Schmitt Nuno, maybe we should start with trying to define what is AI, what is AGI, what is generative AI? Nuno G. Pedro Easy task. AI is what is in the name. It's artificial intelligence. It's typically seen as a branch of computer science that is looking at creating mechanisms within machines that, in some ways, are similar to human intelligence or practically speaking, would refer to human intellect. Nuno G. Pedro Now, as we know, machines can't think. That's still true today. So they do this through very complex mathematical models that get implemented normally through software and hardware combinations. Then within artificial intelligence there are different fields of artificial intelligence. Nuno G. Pedro In the good old days, people used to talk about weak AI versus strong AI, which is more general intelligence, where weak AI is normally more focused within a specific field of solution set. General AI and strong AI will eventually become our overlord and think better than us. Nowadays you will hear a lot of different things around artificial intelligence. You'll hear machine learning, you'll hear deep learning, you'll hear about natural language processing, computer vision, et cetera. Nuno G. Pedro All of these fields are fields of artificial intelligence that intend to emulate what we as human beings do. So computer vision basically would look at the automatic analysis of things that get processed through vision. Could be video, could be pictures. Nuno G. Pedro Natural language processing is looking at the interaction of machines and computers with natural languages and human languages, the language that we have. Deep learning, I would allege, is a subfield of machine learning. There's still a huge argument on that or whether deep learning is a different field or not. Nuno G. Pedro I normally see it as a subfield of machine learning where deep learning normally uses things like neural networks—we'll talk about neural networks later on—which are trying to emulate how our brain structures thinking effectively. In a nutshell, AI is a field of computer science. It's an evolution of computer science. Machines can't think for themselves, so they do this through very complex algorithms and techniques that normally use a lot of mathematics and quite a bit of data. Nuno G. Pedro Although we'll also have a discussion today on how much data do you really need. Are we past the times where you need massive amounts of data or not? In some cases, these techniques and algorithms also need to be trained.

In this episode, we deep dive into the process of Venture Capital - how does it actually all work? - and what the future of VC holds. The end of our 2 part episode on the Evolution of Venture Capital. Navigation: Intro (01:33) Section 1: The Process of VC (01:59) Section 2: Stats on VC (19:03) Section 3: The Future of VC (27:31) Conclusion (38:40)  Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Welcome to Tech DECIPHERED episode 42. After our first episode, episode 41, sharing the history of venture capital as well as the business of VC, and we are starting episode 42 with the process of VC, as well as some statistics around VC and we will finish with the future of venture capital. Nuno, good to see you again. Section 1: The Process of VC - (01:59) Nuno Nice to see you, and let's start with the process of venture capital. At its essence, the process of venture capital is we're funnel managers. We're not just fund managers, we're funnel managers. We manage a funnel. It's about how healthy that funnel is that a fund can return a lot of capital or not. Nuno So it's all about really two extreme positions in the funnel, the beginning of the end being deal sourcing, the quality of the deals you see in the market and the market is essentially—we'll come back to that later—has been very inbound driven. It's about people that come to you. That's why you needed to create a brand, people need to know that you existed, et cetera. I suggest that's about to change and that's we'll talk about in the future of venture capital. Nuno But it's about the quality of the deal flow that you have, your proprietary networks, your access to key entrepreneurs that bring you other entrepreneurs, your access to scouts, your access to the market and the quality of those deals. Nuno And then at the other extreme is selling the asset at the right time. And really normally you sell an asset either because the company is bought by someone else, or the company IPOs, and at some point you can sell it as public equity or the company fails miserably. Nuno I think in the last few years it's very obvious there is maybe a fourth mechanism for you to exit, which is secondary. Someone wants to buy your participation in that company and you can sell it to that other entity, be it an investor, be it a company, be it someone else. But maybe minority sale or selling just your stock rather than anything else. Nuno Also important to highlight in the business of venture capital, venture capital firms are minority shareholders. They're not majority shareholders, they're minority shareholders. They're just protected by special provisions because when they buy into the company, they buy into preferred shares. Their shares are paid higher than they should be, but then they get special rights. And then if that VC gets someone on the board, the board member also gets special rights in terms of approval, minority protections, et cetera. Nuno So it's not that VCs are dumbasses or stupid and they only want to have minority protection, no, we don't run your businesses, we don't want to own it. But we do want to have protections on your businesses to make sure that we are well represented, either because we're on the board or because we're a lead investor or we're a significant investor in the company. Nuno Two pieces of the funnel are top-end deal sourcing, top of funnel, bottom end of the funnel, end of the funnel,

In this episode, we will go in-depth into the evolution of Venture Capital, including its History, the business model, process and operating model, and what its future holds. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: History of Venture Capital (01:59) Section 2: The Business of VC (15:27) Conclusion (19:54) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno Goncalves Pedro Welcome to Episode 41 of Tech DECIPHERED. In this episode, we will talk about the evolution of venture capital. We will start it with its history. We will discuss the business of venture capital, what is it all about, and we will go into the process of venture capital. How do venture capital firms and funds actually operate? Finally, we will talk about the future of venture capital, the immediate future and the more long term one. How will it change? Section 1 - History of Venture Capital  (01:59) Nuno Goncalves Pedro Maybe starting with history. Venture capital actually goes back a long way. Obviously, we always like to go back to Second World War, the military complex in the US going full throttle, a lot of IP being generated, a lot of really useful things for defense that could be applied to the mainstream markets. In some ways, that's the beginning of the history of Silicon Valley and the beginning of the history of venture capital at scale with public-private partnerships, grants and money from government, technology transfer into areas that were ultimately areas that went fully outside of defence and into normal markets, so to speak. Nuno Goncalves Pedro But actually, venture capital goes back even further. Venture capital and high risk projects go back to, for example, the time of discoveries, the time of trading by boat. Actually, that is where the term carried interest comes from. It is carried interest. What happened was the boat owners were going to take merchandise from one place to the other. Because a lot of these missions and projects had a lot of risk to them, not only they got paid to do it, but they also got paid in kind to do it with carried interest. They would keep some of their carried interest. That's how the term carried interest really comes into these high risk profile projects. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Venture Capital is a very high-risk endeavor, or a higher risk endeavor than normal. Its history starts around World War II with private-public partnerships. Bertrand Schmitt I feel that between the age of discovery and World War II, there might have been the age of whaling in the US, from what I understand. Nuno, you want to say a few words on this? Nuno Goncalves Pedro Yeah. It goes back to whaling. It goes back to all these endeavors and projects and shipping. The military complex really expands it into private markets, so public-private partnerships, getting money into it. We started having, in venture capital, actually, early days, there was a lot of East Coast players in the market, which were more coming from the banking angle to it, just pushing into it. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Then we started having, because of a lot of aerospace defense projects happening around California and in California, there was a migration to players that were more, I would say, businessy, less banking. Some of the early VCs in this market, people like Pitch Johnson, Bill Draper, the granddaddies of us all. Bill was involved in a firm with Pitch. I think that was one of the original firms, if I recall correctly.

SVB goes down, and the Fed and Treasury react. The latest on the financial crisis: What actually happened? What was done to stave off the crisis? What are the next steps and what's further on the horizon? As always, our “no bs” views and analysis. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: What happened? Section 2: What was done to stave off the crisis? Section 3: What are the next steps? Section 4: What's on the horizon? Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Welcome to Episode 40 of Tech DECIPHERED. An episode, of course, focused on what happened this past week with Silicon Valley Bank and the overall financial crisis around it. We are recording this as of Wednesday, March 15, Pacific Time. Between the recording and the release of this episode, it might take a few days, so things might have changed. Bear with us. What a week in Silicon Valley. That was pretty insane. I think we have a black swan type of crisis every year now happening. Nuno If it's once a year, is it still a black swan? Bertrand Of course not. Sorry if my joke was not explicit enough. Nuno You're being facetious, understood. Okay, clear. Bertrand I'm definitely being facetious about this. Definitely, in the past, I don't know, three, four years have forced us to run businesses in a different way. We will try to do a short episode this time focusing on what happened, what was done to stave off this crisis, as well as what's the next steps, what's on the horizon. Nuno Let's start with the obvious big picture thing. Rate increases by the Fed is one of the engines of all the issue around SVB. We'll come back to what actually happened later on, but let's go through fundamentals first. The Fed has been increasing interest rates dramatically for the last less than a year. It's going to be a year, I think, this week, from starting at 0.25-0.5 range to now being at 4.5%-4.75% range, if I got that right, for the Fed rate in one year, less than a year, which is incredible. That has created, obviously, a situation where there's a lot of strain on various financial products that banks, for example, may be over exposed to. Nuno But it all started, in all honesty, for a valid reason, which was really containing and reducing inflation. If we remember, inflation started around the one point something percent mark, so well below the 2% magical number, which we're now questioning is 2% really the right number or not. But it went through the roof by 2021 into 2022 to 9%, and the Fed had to do something. They've been pushing it down. Obviously, I think the last number of inflation is around 6.0%, very close to 6.0%. Clearly, the interest rate increases have been working in really containing and reducing inflation, but this is the side effect. Bertrand Yes, it's definitely a side effect. Why is it a side effect? It's because when you increase rates, especially so fast as a bank, especially banks who have seen continuous increase in deposits, thanks to the monetary inflation over the past few years. If you have bought assets, long-term bonds at low rates, suddenly with the rate increase, the value of your bonds is decreasing. Bertrand For me, what's also interesting in all of this, and we keep learning more and more in the coming few days, but if I look at regulators, it looks like as well, they were asleep at the wheel. I was reading that a very recent FDIC stress test was not including any chance of rate i...

In this final episode on Boards of Directors, we will share tips for successful board meetings, how to manage them, how to be a value-add board member and insights on advisors and advisory boards. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: Tips for Successful Board meetings (02:11) Section 2: How to manage your Board (18:24) Section 3: For Board members (25:52) Section 4: Advisory Board / Advisors (33:09) Conclusion (49:19) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34)NunoWelcome to Episode 39 of Tech DECIPHERED, where we continue our discussion around how to best manage your board and get the most out of it, as well as how to be a great and hopefully non-dysfunctional board member. NunoIn this episode, we will talk about tips for successful board meetings, how to manage your board, and we'll go into details on anything from agendas to how to organize the cadence of it, KPIs, et cetera. How to think through advisory board members and advisors and how they're different from consultants and contractors, and also on how to be a fully functional board member and bring value to the company that you're a board member of.Section 1: Tips for Successful Board meetings (02:11)NunoMaybe we go to tips for successful board meetings and door calls. Maybe we go to the first one, which I know is one of your favorites. BertrandI think it's quite key to be prepared for your board meeting, and it works for both sides, the execs, the CEO, and on the other side, investors, people who receive the communication from the company. That part is quite critical. BertrandMyself, not initially, but at some point when I was running my previous business, App Annie, Data.ai now, one thing I did after ending up sending a board deck and board back instead of the usual two days before a board meeting to send it a few hours before. I was not feeling very good about how it worked out. I ended up approaching that to share stuff at least a week in advance. BertrandThat might sound crazy from a lot of perspective, but at the end of the day, it's a question of just organization. There is no reason you cannot do a week in advance. You can do two days in advance, but you would have more time. If it slips, it's no big deal. If it slips by a day. BertrandWhat it also gives you is the opportunity to potentially reach out to different board members between the moment where you send your board materials and the moment where you have your board meetings. It gives you more time to set up some calls, to answer some questions, highlight some points. BertrandIf you have time to do that between sending your board back and having a board meeting, you will have a much more streamlined board meeting itself because if the big questions have been discussed in one-to-one, if some controversies have been addressed in one-to-one, things will go a lot smoother. BertrandSurprisingly enough, some board member might prefer more challenging confrontational type of board discussion. Personally, I don't if it's not needed, but working that way gives you definitely some more efficient board meetings. NunoTo your point, manage this thoughtfully. Again, when you're sending board materials, you send it to observers as well, et cetera. If you have some lead board directors, in particular from investors, that are material to you and you know there's going to be a complex conversation at the board meeting,

In this episode, we will explain what a Board of Directors is and is *not*, its roles & responsibilities, and how it should evolve over time. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: What is a Board of Directors (02:10) Section 2: Taxonomy (06:20) Section 3: Evolution of Board structure over time (12:08) Section 4: Board Composition (18:38) Conclusion (29:47) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Welcome to Tech DECIPHERED, episode 38. This is the first of two episodes where we will discuss about how to manage your board from a CEO perspective, mostly. The idea here is to talk about why do you want a board, what's the purpose of a board, what would be the taxonomy about running a board, the evolution of a board, its composition, how you should manage your board, as well as other board, like an advisory board, as well as sharing some perspective from a board member perspective or from an advisor perspective. Section 1: What is a Board of Directors (2:10) Nuno Indeed. Maybe we start at the beginning. What is a board of directors? I think that might be a question that gets thrown quite a bit. I'll read from a definition. Some of the stuff we'll be doing today is based on a document I prepared a very long time ago and some other things that Bertrand dug out. But just to directly quote, a board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. A board's activities are determined by the powers, duties, and responsibilities delegated to it or conferred on it by an authority outside itself. These matters are typically detailed in the organization's bylaws. What is a board? A board represents, basically, normally actually shareholders. Shareholders and other stakeholders in a company. It depends on the country. We know, for example, in Germany, that boards of directors also have in many cases representation by unions. But in the case of what we will discuss today for the most, we're going to talk about startups and tech companies. Normally, boards represent shareholders, and they represent the interests of shareholders. So the people that are on a board of directors are there to make decisions around a couple of areas that are vital to the well-being and growing of the company in representation of a larger group of shareholders. Nuno The typical duties of boards of directors obviously include the governance of the company, so all the key policies and objectives of the company. The selection, appointment, supporting, and reviewing of the performance of a chief executive. We'll come back to that as well. It's normally a contentious issue, but it is the responsibility of the board to do that. Making sure that the company has their adequate financial resources to sustain itself, to be a growing concern, proving annual budgets, strategic items, any accounting that is done to other stakeholders of the company, including shareholders. And last but not the least, and there's many other things a board can do, but last but not the least, setting the salaries and compensations for company management. This should be interpreted under the logic of the senior people of the company, certainly the CEO, maybe founders, and other core people to the company. In a nutshell, what the board is responsible for is governance on the one hand, and on the other hand, what I would call mostly strategic decisions.

We sort of predicted the FTX and SBF debacle… seriously! How much are CEOs' political and socio-economic views welcome publicly? How about employees'? How much is too much? In this episode of season 3 of Tech Deciphered, we talk about founders & CEOs activism, employee activism and share our tips on when to talk and when to just… keep your mouth shut. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: Founders & CEOs activism (02:13) Section 2: M&A changes everything (20:09) Section 3: Employee activism (27:38) Section 4: Bring it all together (39:24) Conclusion (44:57) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno Goncalves Pedro Welcome to Episode 37 of Tech Deciphered. In this episode, we will address CEO and employee activism. How much is too much? We will touch upon a few CEO-activism events that are recent. We will also talk about how M&A changes everything. Nuno Goncalves Pedro We will then address employee activism, which has become more exacerbated over the last three years. Finally, we'll bring it all together. How much is too much? Should you be in the media all the time? How much should your PR department control of what you say? How much should you listen to your employees? How much, as an employee, should you actually speak out? Section 1: Founders & CEOs activism (02:13) Bertrand Schmitt I think Nuno that's a timely topic and it's something that, for the good or for the worse, has been changing, maybe quite dramatically, if you compare the last decade versus how businesses used to be run before. I guess, of course, it's thanks to change in technologies. You have your cell phone always available. You can talk to people. You can record, you can tweet, you can do video. Bertrand Schmitt I guess step by step, CEOs, employees discovers that they actually could have more of a voice, and there might be less need for a middleman to express your opinion. As a result, you communicate more easily. If you stop communicating publicly, challenges can start to increase. It's a brand-new world out there. Nuno Goncalves Pedro As Spiderman would say, or actually his uncle, "With great power comes great responsibility." Unfortunately, sometimes, people forget the responsibility piece and maybe they tweet at the wrong times of the day, or they say the wrong things without really checking themselves up. Part of it we'll discuss today. Sometimes when you share on social media, obviously, it lacks context, it's misinterpreted, or sometimes it's just plainly wrong, which is also the case. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Shall we start? How much should one have an opinion on specific topics, geopolitical topics that are important socially? How much should a CEO or founder have an opinion on? Maybe we'll talk about a few examples. Bertrand Schmitt I think traditionally, the approach was, if you're in the economic sphere, you are out of the public sphere, you are out of the political sphere, and you are very careful and measured about how you communicate. Usually, you have a big PR department, all focused on supporting you and the message you are supposed to convey, and you certainly don't go off the cuff. Bertrand Schmitt Obviously, things have changed since the past 10 years. It's not easy for a CEO to make that decision to do more, but sometimes you have no choice. I think some interesting examples, a few years back, maybe actually with COVID, we saw some tension about, basically,

"I am leading or involved in a company… and we are in trouble. What should I do?” In this episode, we share what do when you are in trouble and what to do if everything else fails. This is the second and final episode on this topic. For more information, also listen to episode 35 Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: What to do, if the company is in trouble? (02:04) Section 2: What if all else fails? (34:46) Conclusion (47:21) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Schmitt Welcome to Tech Deciphered Episode 36. It's our second episode about, "My Company's in Trouble. What Should I Do?" In the previous episode, we talked about the context. We talked about how to determine if your company is in trouble. And we talked about what being relatively safe looks like. In this episode, we are going to talk about what to do if your company is in trouble, as well as what are your options if all else is failing. Section 1: What to do, if the company is in trouble? Nuno Goncalves Pedro Let's say that actually, you are in trouble, that you've done the analysis, you're running out of cash quickly. Your economics are very poor. Your burn is difficult to turn around. What do you do? What is the first thing that you do? Bertrand Schmitt I think the first thing that you do is as management, as a board, to acknowledge you have an issue. That's really the first thing. Acknowledge you have an issue and then start working together, management and board of directors to get in agreement into what is, at the very least, what is our current situation, not even what we should do about it, but always a level of risk, level of tension. The analysis done of what's happening so that you can start smartly discussing about the option for the business. But we saw an acknowledgement across a team of professionals, execs, and board of directors, it's very difficult to move forward. If one side believes a business is doing alright and there is no biggies, that's an issue. If one side believes that, hey, it's not that great in term of burn rate, but we would get financing easily. That's trouble if the other side doesn't believe that. And usually, that might be your board who doesn't believe it would be that easy to fundraise. I guess it depends. But it's really key to be aligned about the analysis. I've seen companies, I think it's less true now, but if you look at in June or May that still we're not acknowledging what was happening in the market, it was crazy for me. It's like, guys, this has happened for six months now. You need to acknowledge it's a different economic condition and what was investable, and we go back to the default investable in November of 2021, is not default investable in September 2022. And the gap might be pretty big. I can see that some people at the first bear markets really start to think, Oh, good times are back. No, no, they're not coming back. Not so easily. And you cannot build and bet your business just based on bet ready for a few weeks. Or both sides of the table need to come into agreement about the burn rate situation, the capacity of the company to deliver on its revenues and its projections of top line, specifically, but also about bottom line and get into agreement about what it means in terms of ability to fundraise. Nuno Goncalves Pedro And let's say we have agreement, so board, executives, everyone's like, we are in trouble.

“I am leading or involved in a company… and we are in trouble. What should I do?” In this episode, the beginning of season 3 of Tech Deciphered, we firstly share how to know when you are in trouble (spoiler alert: getting this right is essential) or … if you are “relatively safe”. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: Context (03:28) Section 2: How to know the company is in trouble (04:58) Section 3: What does “being relatively safe” look like? (17:15) Conclusion (28:17) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno G. Pedro Welcome to season three of Tech Deciphered. We have many surprises in store for the season. But to start, we will have two episodes: Episode 35 and 36, on the topic of My Company is in Trouble. What should I do? In these two episodes, we will discuss context on what is happening currently in the market. But more importantly, we'll help you figure out if your company is in trouble or not, maybe the most important of the first questions that you should answer. Secondly, we will talk about what to do if your company is indeed in trouble. And coming from different perspective, not just the perspective of the CEO, but also of people that are involved at the board level or relatively senior people that are involved in the future of the company. And finally, we come to the "what if all fails" piece, right? If everything's failed, what should I do? It's going to be an interesting set of questions, and hopefully, our answers will be helpful to you all. Section 1 - Context Bertrand Schmitt Thank you, Nuno. Yeah, it would be exciting to start this Episode 35. Maybe to share more context, we can start first with our last two episodes about the bubble bursting, winter coming. I guess winter is getting closer. A lot of great companies, tech companies today, they are valued at 50% of what they were worth last year. Fifty percent, five-zero. And it's not just 50%; it's 50% versus a year ago. Imagine the company attempt to grow, to expand their business, to be more successful, but the market are still valuing it 50% lower. That's happening for a lot of great companies in tech. If I take some private market, this company in the buy-now-pay-later space that announced pretty recently, [inaudible 00:01:42], that they were moving from $46 billion valuation last year to 6 billion market cap this year for the last round of financing, which is a huge gap. We're not talking about 50% anymore. We are talking about 90%. It probably happened because they had to mirror what happened in the public market with other competitors in that space who end up being in a similar situation of losing 90% market cap. Of course, the private market had to react and adjust to that new situation, and you cannot keep disconnecting yourself from the relatives of public markets, especially if you are at very late stage. Nuno G. Pedro You have Zoom that was close to 160 billion at the top of it in 2020. Top of COVID, I guess, and now at 25 billion or so. There's been some interesting... And this is a public company. Bertrand Schmitt We are not talking about Peloton. Nuno G. Pedro We're not talking about Peloton. The whole COVID effect also being felt very strongly in many industries. Bertrand Schmitt Yes, Peloton is actually on 15X. Nuno G. Pedro That's not too bad. Bertrand Schmitt It's in way more serious financial trouble than some of these companies we are talking about. Nuno G. Pedro Today,

In this episode, the end of our 2nd Season, we close our discussion on the crisis that is upon us and deep dive on what will happen next. We finalize with a brief recap of our season 2 and on what we got right and wrong. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: What Will Happen Next Section 2: End of Season 2 - a Quick Recap Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Welcome to Tech Deciphered episode 34. This is our second episode on the bubble that's finally burst winter that has arrived. We will talk more in this episode about what will happen next. If you want to listen to our episode 33, where we talk about what has happened, what is happening, go back to that episode. And for this one, we'll be focused on future, short-term, medium-term, where we believe this is going. Nuno So what is happening next? There were some significant changes in the world that we're really not coming back from. And we've heard some amazing things and some well-written analysis, or at least some very pointed notes from people like Benedict Devin and many others that we have inspired ourselves with. Nuno But in effect that the whole notion of digitization is true, I think we have had a forced digitization over the last two years, which has really brought us forward. Our ability to do ecommerce, our ability to actually use services that we legacy services and have ways of interacting with those services that are more virtual than they were ever before, our ability to get telemedicine and many other things. Nuno So there's been a lot of moving forward that has been positive. There's a lot of things that, in our personal experiences, for example, in the home, we don't accept anymore. I think Benedict was the one saying no one is going back to cable. I'm not sure that holes in that sense, but obviously there's been a lot of court cutting streaming seems to have one day. Clearly, it was already relatively clear. Probably, it got accelerated through COVID. Nuno We'll now see the reckoning of that in the next few years on who's going to be the big winners in that space, but certainly, I think that's moved forward. The ability for us to really communicate with each other at a distance is now a theme that needs to be addressed by everyone. So it's no longer an afterthought. It's not like, okay, oh, maybe we can get on a plane and go somewhere. No, no, no, no. Nuno Do we have a good way for our team, for example, in a professional environment, to interact with each other at a distance? What are the tools we have to do that in? So all this notion of hybrid versus remote versus being in the office doesn't really matter. Remote work needs to work. And we've learned our lessons and there is a lot of tools missing. There's a lot of things that haven't been done properly. Nuno We also know for a fact that there are pieces of the acceleration that we saw in biotech driven by COVID and the vaccines that ultimately are here to stay. So there's definitely not a going back on this either. Obviously, there's a lot of work still to be done in digitization, in particular, across different sectors of the economy. Nuno But honestly, with all the tragedy that COVID has been and all the crap that we've been embedded in for the last two years as a global society, the silver lining is, guys, we've got the digitization we've been asking for. The whole digital transformation stuff we've been talking about,

Winter Has Arrived - the Burst of the Bubble and the Crisis Upon Us… AND WE GOT IT RIGHT! In this episode, we share … that we were right, all along. We were in a bubble and the crisis is upon us. We share context on the current crisis and what is happening, exactly at a macro level - inflation, recession, over-stimuli, etc - as well as in the start-up and VC world. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: First of All… We Told You So… Repeatedly (02:05) Section 2: What is Happening…Exactly (04:25) Conclusion (41:37) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno Welcome to Episode 33 of Tech DECIPHERED. This will be the first of two episodes on the bubble bursting. We've called it very nicely. Winter has arrived when we're really in summer. Today's episode, we're going to go through what's happening exactly in this bursting of the bubble. But let's actually start with congratulating ourselves in having predicted the bubble. There was a dramatic bubble and that it was going to burst, which we did in our duology on the bubble a couple of episodes ago Bertrand. Bertrand Yes, we released these two episode in October or November, about the bubble and how was supposed to burst at some point. I guess timing was perfect to talk about the bubble when it was at the top of the bubble, right before it start to explode. I think you could fit it in a lot of our discussion in the past two years on our podcasters, that we were on one side amazed to see the increase in transaction values, in VC financing and startup financing, and at the same time, constantly reminding that didn't feel right, and this was probably just a big bubble, and we call it right. It's not just about congratulating ourselves. At the end of the day, it's a pretty scary times for everyone, but obviously, it happened for a reasonw and [inaudible 00:01:19] reasons, and that will help us understand what happened and what's going to happen. Nuno Maybe a parenthesis... I think we got it right in several ways because when COVID first hit, we were predicting that that mini-crash was going to lead to a fundamental crash, and it didn't. Part of what we're now going and suffering through was that, because there wasn't that crash, and the market continued to go bull market for another two years, thank you very much, because of governments giving money, incentives to consumption, a bunch of stuff that was really artificial now we know, we ended up actually having top of the market when we did launch the duology in 2021. Nuno I know it's not a great signal. I certainly, I think, in my own professional activity as an investor, in looking at companies et cetera I've used it. I used it throughout to advise my companies, "Raise now when never knows when it's going to burst", "Make sure that you have a plan B". There was a lot of things that instructed me in how I behaved within my professional activity. Nuno I'm sad to say that it didn't inform everything that I do. I probably could have avoided one or two things on that if I'd sort of followed my own advice on it. But in some ways, having been disciplined through the last year and a half, two years, and now we looked at investments. In some ways, I feel a bit vindicated. I don't want to do the "I told you so", but we told them so. Now, we have plenty of proof that we told them so. There's episodes, two episodes that talk about it in October, November, last year.

In this episode, we end our discussion on Leadership and Management: we delve into how to execute; explore values systems, including our own; and share our core beliefs.  Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: How to Execute (02:08) Section 2: Culture & Values, Our Core Beliefs (20:11) Conclusion (34:57) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Schmitt Welcome to Episode 32 of Tech DECIPHERED, our second and last episode of this series on leadership and management. In our previous episode, Episode 31, we focus on defining leadership versus management. We spend time talking about the different styles of leadership management. In this episode, Episode 32, we are going to focus on how to execute and how to create and build the right culture through the right values. Section 1 - How to Execute Nuno Goncalves Pedro How to execute, how to do this? What are the levers that you have to lead and to manage? Bertrand Schmitt I would like to share one perspective I've got, what the CEO's job? I'm talking about a company at some level of scale, obviously not five people, ten people team, but we're talking about 50 people plus type of company. What's your job at scale? I believe that you have to have on one side a deep vision, clear vision. You have to bring your team on board. You have to either keep convincing your existing team, bring new members on board, evaluate existing ones, and you have to manage the cash, because if you run out of cash, that's a big problem. In a way, there is this metaphor of being like the bus driver. You have to view outside of you, you have to let people in, sometimes, unfortunately, let people out, and you have to keep the gas. If you don't do all these three, at the very least, that's big trouble for the business. As we discussed, if you are a tech organization, specifically a tech company, you probably need to be as well a product CEO. But at the very core at minimum, you need these three vision, bringing a team, managing cash, as the key pieces of the game as a CEO. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Agreed. I would make a caveat here, which is my view on product CEOs in tech is they are the most dominant type. There are other types that work well, in particular in the B2B environment, in business-to-business. The more commercial-driven CEO, the person who has extreme experience in sales or in business development or corporate development. We've seen a few of those people doing very well in B2B. Again, by nature, tech product CEOs do relatively well. But in B2B, certainly I think we've seen great examples of amazing CEOs that, honestly, are not that technical. But they are very good at selling and they're very good at doing a bunch of other things. There's a few people that come to mind, but again, not to get any hate mail, I will not go into details. I agreed fully with your vision, Bertrand, and the metaphor is very accurate on the bus. The job of the CEO has several dimensions to it as well. Effectively, a CEO needs to manage for the long term and for the short term, and when managing for the long term, strategy comes into play. A set of integrated actions that leads to competitive advantage. Normally, you measure it in years, two to five years. It's something that is really far in the future. You have tactics. Normally, tactics is something that you think through as more the one to two year things. It might be a big initiative, a big product launch,

In this episode, we demystify Leadership and Management: we delve into what sets them apart; typify the different styles; explore values systems, including our own and share our core beliefs. As always, we go below the surface and deep dive into this topic, at a time when it matters more than ever. This episode, on the topic of leadership and management, will be concluded by episode 32. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: Definition (01:58) Section 2: Typifying Leaders (06:34) Conclusion (38:56) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno Welcome to our Episode 31, the first of two episodes on leadership and management. Bertrand and I will demystify leadership and management, define the difference between both, typify them, explore value systems, and also share our own core beliefs. As always, no BS. We will go below the surface and deep dive into this topic. Section 1 - Definition Nuno From the ground up let's start with the actual definition of this and a bit of a caveat emptor. Buyer be aware, as they call it. Obviously we will share what we think are great practices of leadership and management, but by no means these are the only practices, and by no means we aim to be professorial about it. Secondly, most importantly, probably by sharing our own views, we're not saying that we are amazing leaders or managers. Obviously, that's not for us to judge, but for people that have worked with us, for us, with us along the years. So that is not the assumption. Obviously, there is some assumption that we have something to say about this topic, otherwise you wouldn't be listening. But we don't aim to be arrogant enough to say that. Maybe starting with the definition of leadership versus management, and this comes from someone I used to work with, a very good friend, but also someone I worked with for a very long period of time in two different roles. The way she would qualify the difference between leadership and management is, if the objective function is to get to hell, a leader is the person that can convey to people with amazing charisma and presence that we're going to go to hell and hopefully we'll come back for sure, hopefully we'll come back, etc. The leader will likely not define necessarily very much how one will get to hell and back, but they will convince people to go with them, certainly the first time around. A great manager might lack the charisma, but the great manager will define the steps to get to hell and back, will be clear about what needs to be done to get to hell and back. They might have difficulty in convincing people to go to hell in that first time, but it will be easier for them to convince them to go or try to go to hell a second or third time, even if they fail the first time, because they have a clearer view of the process to get there. So again, a leader normally, in my opinion, a little bit more linked to... In some ways great aspects of charisma and management is basically linked to great aspects of understanding steps that need to be done and things that need to be done. A great manager might not be a great leader. A great leader might not be a great manager. There are very few great leaders that are great managers. So that's maybe a little bit more flesh around the definition. Bertrand, do you agree with that definition? Bertrand That definition would be fit for Churchill, for instance, Churchill fighting the Germans, fighting Nazi Germany.

In this, the final episode on the Metaverse - or is the Metaverses - we discuss what the Key Players are doing in the space, as well as the so-whats for entrepreneurs and investors. As you, our listeners are accustomed to, only straight talk and “straight shooting” in this duology on the Metaverse. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: Key players (02:02) Section 2: So-whats for entrepreneurs and investors (22:36) Conclusion (30:35) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Welcome to episode thirty, our second episode on the metaverse. In episode 29, we talk about our definition of the metaverse, we talk about the key enablers for the metaverse. This episode will have two section. One, first section around the key players. And we will have a section about what it means. The so what for entrepreneurs and VCs. Nuno, should we go into the key players? Section 1: Key Players (02:02) Nuno And a very good segue to what the key players are doing around the metaverse or the metaverses and all these different technologies. And maybe sticking to Google again, not because we dislike them particular. I think we've shown them a lot of fondness in the past. But we're starting with another failure, Google Glass, which I already talked about earlier. I love those glasses. They were so cool. There was so much promise in it and then nothing. It was just like, nothing's gonna happen. Sorry guys. Bertrand For me, it was also an example of something that was hyped way too much, way too early, and totally out of context. When you have something for total geek that are only going to touch the most crazy early adopters of all, why do you start to brand it? I remember they were showing off celebrities at modeling shows. It was like crazy. It was as if it was going to be mainstream next month. It's like, wow, a lesson of how to set expectations wrong, as if they did everything they could to make sure it was really going to fail. Because the expectations are so disconnected from the reality of how bad it was. Bad maybe is a strong word. Nuno It wasn't that bad for what it was. I think it's more the point of what you're making, yeah. Bertrand As we see today, it was at least 10 years too early. And you know there is something in history when people tell me, "Oh yeah, we're just 10 years too early." I'm like, "Oh yeah, that's not much, ten years, I guess." I don't like it when people make it wrong by 10 years. There are so many things you could do instead, especially in our world of tech, where in some ways I feel it could be predictable. Google Glass, total fiasco, because it was 10 years too early. But I said 10 or maybe 20. Nuno Maybe 20. Bertrand The jury still out for this until we have something really working. What was about this other company that was promising crazy shit and ultimately went nearly bankrupt? Nuno Magic leap, yeah. By the way, I don't know anyone there. I'm telling our friends just as a way to not throw them under the bus. Yeah, Magic Leap. Bertrand But Magic Leap is a fantastic company. I was from very far smelling a rat. I will call it a rat when you burn billions of dollars and you don't deliver at all anything of value, at least value connected to how much money was invested in the business. I wish them the best in their new version, just focused on enterprise. But there was so much bullshit. And I'm frustrated because some of these companies are so much actively ...

In this episode, we talk about the Metaverse - or is the metaverses? - specify what it is/will be, debunk myths around it and detail its/their key enablers. Everything you wanted to know and also … that you didn't know you needed to know. This will be followed by episode 30, focusing on understanding what the key players are doing in this realm, as well as implications to entrepreneurs, investors and others. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: The Typical Silicon Valley hype machine?/ Definition of Metaverse (01:57) Section 2: Key enablers to the Metaverse (17:44) Conclusion (41:21) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder at App Annie, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno Welcome to episode 29. In this episode, we will go into the metaverse, not literally, but we will discuss the metaverse, its definitions, how people see it evolving, its core enablers, and some of the lessons learned that we believe entrepreneurs and venture capital firms should have. Bertrand, metaverse, what is the metaverse? Bertrand Big question. I guess that's a billion dollar question. There's been so many definition of what the metaverse is or is not. I like one definition from Matthew Ball—a well respected analyst—and I believe he has his own VC firm. By his definition, "Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real time rendered 3D virtual worlds, which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments." Bertrand That's the full definition. I like it, because you are not missing any piece of the puzzle, at the same time, by its very complexity, I feel it's showing us that it's not an easy definition. It might even be seen as a very contrive definition. If you think about the internet, how different is it really? The 3D part for sure. Beyond that, it's not very clear, actually, except that it's maybe more unified than the internet that we know. You could argue if you are just inside Facebook, how different it is about just being inside Facebook and just never leaving Facebook. Of course it to be horrible, at least from my perspective, using Facebook less and less. That's one vision. Some will say, we'll talk about what it is, but also what it is not. I will quote again Mathew Ball. For him it's not just a virtual world. It's not just a virtual space. It's not just VR. It's not just a digital virtual economy. It's not just a game. It's not just a virtual theme park. It's not a new app store. It's not a New UGC platform. For sure, it's a big buzzword in Silicon Valley these days, especially thanks to meta rebranding itself. Just from that perspective, it was huge on Google trends. Since the renaming of Meta everyone has been Googling what the metaverse is, I guess. What you think, Nuno? Nuno A lot of respect for Matthew Ball as an analyst, and his definition, as sound as all the other definitions that are out there. I have a couple of objections to his definition. It starts with interoperable. It starts with, "The metaverse as a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time render 3D virtual worlds." Interoperability is not a given in the metaverse. Nobody has told us that the metaverse will be an interoperable bunch of worlds working together. Actually, if I had to make a bet, using my computer engineer hat and architect,

In this episode, we talk about Strategic Investors, detail what they are, their underlying realities and structures of operation, and present the case For and Against them. We also share Lessons Learnt that can be of value to you, if you are an Entrepreneur, a Financial/Institutional VC or a Strategic Investor.  Navigation: Intro (01:33) Section 1: Context Setting (02:44) Section 2: The Bad Examples (12:01) Seciton 3: The Good Examples (21:39) Section 4: Other Players Join the “Party” (36:30) Section 5: Lessons Learnt for Strategic Investors, Entrepreneurs and VCs (41:25) Conclusion (51:31) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder at App Annie, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand: Welcome to episode 28 of Tech DECIPHERED. This is a special episode on the topic of strategic investors. What are they, who are they, and are they helpful, how helpful can they be? I think it's one of the typical questions as an entrepreneur you would have to answer when you are considering getting financing. What type of investors, should I bring on board? And typically, early on, you might look at business angels. You might look at seed fund. And at some point, you would consider working with VCs. And you will probably discover that you have different type of VCs.  On one side the sides we typically hear about in the news, in the press we are talking about more financial VCs. And on the other side of the spectrum you have what is called strategic investors, strategic VCs. Strategic sometimes for short. And we are going to talk about them. Who are they, what are they helpful for, how useful they are, how bad could they be for your business, for your startup.  Welcome, Nuno, good to be with you to discuss this topic. How are you today?  Nuno: I am well, in sunny California, so very well.  Section 1 - Context Setting 
(02:44) Nuno: Maybe starting by defining what is strategic investors and where does that come from? The notion of they invest in, but they also contribute something that is more strategic. Maybe in the form of a partnership, or in the form of resources or other types of things that you put at the table. Normally, strategic investors are looked in the light, or as opposed to financial investors. So investors that are solely driven by the financial return and therefore, also solely driven by the capital that they put in. The world has become a little bit muddy over the last decade or so. There's now, investors that are more what I would call operating investor. So operating investors that jump into the company, and spend a significant part of their time in the company, sometimes even taking a significant part of the company, not just the classic minority in the company. But in order to simplify our discussion today, let's stick to the financial investor side, and the strategic investor side. So a financial investor would be someone like Chameleon, Red River West other VC firms that are out there, Sequoia Capital. We are investors that invest in a company, the biggest upside we can get is really financial. And obviously, we will produce value for the company under the form of helping the company scale, helping the company hire, helping the company get access to resources, and a variety of other things. So there is a little bit more operational minus in VC in general today, but the key objective of the whole thing is financial returns. A strategic investor, in many cases, when we talk about it, we use strategic investor as opposed to corpor...

We deep-dive into the nuanced - and somewhat less than stellar - history of Tech in Europe and how start-ups and investors are making up for lost time, leading to an ever maturing ecosystem, with significant reasons for optimism. Finally, we discuss the increasingly intertwined destinies of US and European Tech. Navigation: Intro (01:33) Section 1: Framing the European start-up and investment landscape (02:20) Section 2: Investment Approach in Europe (17:18) Section 3: Movements from US to Europe (51:19) Section 4: Movements from Europe to US (59:02) Conclusion (1:05:39) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, co-founder at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno: Welcome to episode 27 of Tech Deciphered. We're going to address the tech landscape in Europe, focusing on the investment landscape, as well as the startup landscape, we will go into the typical entrepreneurial approaches as well as investment approaches in Europe, the mindsets, the tactics, the profiles, as well as the typical exits, we will then deep dive into the present state of Europe and how we see it evolve over time.  Bertrand: Thank you Nuno, good to be here today with you and to discuss this fascinating topic for us, we are both Europeans. Obviously I'm French, you're from Portugal. We have seen the European landscape changing dramatically over the past 20, 25 years. So that will be very exciting to talk about this. Section 1 - Framing the European startup and investment landscape 
(02:20) Bertrand: I guess maybe we can start about controversies that happened a few months ago in June when The Economist had a big cover on the state of the investment in Europe and how Europe was really not doing much in the tech industry. interestingly enough, there was a quick swift reply from the founder and CEO of Stripe Patrick Collison, who is not just running Stripe from the U S but he's also a European citizen being Irish  Nuno: Yeah. His comment was basically saying, all of the points that you raise are great, I think you haven't really shown the case for optimism right? Where there's a lot of great successful companies coming out of Europe. He was mentioning a few that, are obviously runaway successes, like Spotify, Klarna, N26, UIpath, wise and a few others. And he also obviously talks about Stripe and its role, although Stripe is more of an American company, to be honest, but Stripe in its role in working with very innovative companies in Europe as a counter position to the economists headline and main articles in that edition. So to be honest, I think he is onto something in saying there is a case for optimism that wasn't duly manifested in that edition of your magazine or newspaper as they call it. It's very funny cause they call the economists still the newspaper, although it's in my view of magazine.  Bertrand: Maybe you want to restate the position of the economist. Nuno: Yeah. The position of the economist is that basically the U S has taken over, right? You have companies like apple that are worth more in their view than 30 firms in the German blue-chip Dax index combined. Obviously we have Amazon, we have Microsoft, we have Google all these are multi-trillion dollar companies now, actually. And so their point is, in some ways, Europe has lagged behind. I think their point was very focused also on the old Europe and where, even the big emerging tech winners, like SAP took a long time to get to fruition, took a long time to get to a certain scale. Whereas it seemed like magically in the US,

In our second and final episode on the Bubble, we share what is happening in Venture Capital, on the exit - IPO, M&A, etc - front, as well as share clear “so-whats” for entrepreneurs and VCs. For in-depth views on the status of the economy, listen to our previous episode, episode 25. Navigation: Section 1: What is happening in VC? (02:05) Section 2: Exits are great, though, right?! (17:52) Section 3: So-what? Implications for entrepreneurs and VCs (25:57) Conclusion (43:49) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, co-founder at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno: Welcome to episode 26 of tech deciphered. This episode will conclude our two-part series on the bubble and why we actually believe there is one going on. In this episode, we will discuss the VC landscape and how it is evolving. We will talk about exits, not just IPOs, but also other types of exits like mergers and acquisitions and how that landscape is looking like. And finally, we will end up with something pragmatic, the "so what", the takeaways, the implications for both entrepreneurs and investors.  Section 1 - What is happening in Venture Capital? 
(02:05) Nuno: Moving to venture capital, there's a lot of interesting elements to talk about. Some really interesting analysis from our friend Tom Tunguz but also of what's happening in the macro space, some analysis of what we've seen from PitchBook and CB insights, it seems we're going to have an incredible year in venture capital. This is it. There's no crisis there's a ton of money, dry powder, there's new funds, I actually have a new fund going. So I'm very happy with that, but in some ways it's like, woh, this is all fantastic. Increasing everything, increasing everything, more deals, more money deployed. We're all great. We're going to have, a flagship year in venture capital. And somehow I'm like I like being in the market. We just closed our first deal, which is great. Thank you. So what's going to happen? In our micro world of startups and entrepreneurs and venture capital firms, 2021 is going to be an amazing year, but what's going to happen? Bertrand: Yeah. And to share some numbers it's pretty insane what we see. And for me, what's crazy is that it's at every range. So maybe it varies by country, by industry, but overall if I take Series A valuations, for instance, you have seen a jump from what? like more than 50% in two quarters this is the very definition of insanity. I'm not sure if we have ever seen that, and it's happening. At every level in the stack. So maybe early on in the pandemic, it was less true that it was at every level of the stack. Maybe, initially it was more: you are only investing in people you already knew, in companies you already knew, the first quarter or two. And because you are not used to work like this, you didn't know how long it would be like this. So you had a different approach that maybe favored existing companies bigger rounds, insider the rounds. But now I believe that we're at a stage where it's not at all about that anymore.  Or not just that anymore. It cannot be: to stay competitive you have to stay in the market, you have to invest. And maybe on that point maybe not every fund agree. We have a wide range from Tiger Global investing I forgot how many deals a day, actually 1.3 deals a day from Tiger global these days.  But at the other extreme in a global ranking I have not seen Sequoia U S in the top 10 investors. So I wonder if there is less investment from them and they decided that right now is n...

Is this a bubble? If so, what type of bubble? Where are we heading? We share our views on where the economy is going, the importance and effect of COVID, several key opinions on both sides of the spectrum and land on whether the current situation is sustainable or not. Navigation: Introduction (01:33) Section 1: The COVID effect (02:43) Section 2: The economy...stupid? (11:08) Conclusion (43:33) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, co-founder at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand: Welcome to Tech Deciphered Episode 25. So this episode 25 is part of a 2-serie episodes: episode 25 and 26 that will be around the current bubble. We believe that at this stage from a big macro perspective there are a lot of questions around where's the economy going, and this would be the topic of episode 25, that big picture perspective on where is the economy going? Of course, all of this being impacted big time by COVID. We'll talk a bit about that. We'll talk about inflation, prices where all of this is going from a macro perspective. In episode 26 we will talk more about, in more details, what does it mean for entrepreneurs, tech entrepreneurs, tech industry, VCs, where the VC landscape going, where are exits going, and what does it mean for me as an entrepreneur or me as a VC? Nuno: And today we start with, where is the economy heading, all the macro conditions that are happening in the market and their implications. Bertrand? Section 1 - COVID effect 
(02:43) Bertrand: We have to start with COVID it has so much impact, not just on our lives, but on the state of the economy, on some big decision on the financial market side, on additional government interventions, or not. So I would say it's a very mixed picture. I think I had a sense of optimism that day to day life was going in the right direction just maybe a month ago, even if I was, and we were being both realistic as we discussed in some previous episodes. Back to normal, like international travels and the like, as we used to do on a regular basis might just be for some time next year, maybe summer next year. I guess there are some serious concern that our basic everyday life might be back to some sort of war footings. In where I live in Seattle area, King county, we are back to mask mandates indoor. It's not yet forced, but I guess it will be there soon. It's highly recommended we all heard about the CDC recent news also advising for masks mandates indoors for everyone. Vaccinated or not. It seems it's both because we cannot trust people who are not wearing their masks, that they have been vaccinated and because now there is also the risk that even if are vaccinated with delta, you might harbor the virus and share it with others. And I guess, in your region in the bay, it's also back to mask mandates. This time it's mandatory actually indoor. Nuno: From what I just saw. And, basically I got information from a club that I'm actually a member of that everyone now in San Francisco should wear a mask indoor, irrespective of being vaccinated or not. My understanding it's going to be mandatory at least for a period of time, but I'm not fully sure. Certainly there is a step back. From what was promising to be very nice summer for everyone. If you're vaccinated, you don't need to wear anything, et cetera, et cetera. In some ways, leaving this to the criteria of people wasn't a wise idea in the first place, because how do I know that someone's vaccinated or not? We saw a little bit of reverse engineering later on.

Episode 24 ends our trilogy on Silicon Valley and our “no bs” contextualization: from its history, geography and its most common and core myths.  In this episode, we deep dive on our Silicon Valley loves (and hates) and finally address the elephant in the room: is there an exodus going on or not? Has Silicon Valley's downfall started or is it highly exaggerated? Listen to our most contentious podcast yet. Navigation: Introduction (01:33) Section 1: Hates (02:19) Section 2: Loves (33:51) Section 3: The Future of Silicon Valley (54:41) Conclusion (1:13:09) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno: So today in episode 24 of tech deciphered, we'll be finalizing our trilogy on Silicon valley. Our non bullshit view on Silicon valley, which started in episode 22, talking about what Silicon valley is and what brought us here, then continues in episode 23, with an episode specifically on the mythology of Silicon valley and our sevent myths of Silicon valley. And today we will end with love, hate - our areas of love and our areas  of hate of Silicon valley and the bay area. And we will finalize with Silicon valley in transition. Is there an Exodus? Is this a mindset? Is this a geography? What will happen to this region? Bertrand? Section 1 - Hates (02:19) Bertrand: Should we start with things we love or things we hate?  Nuno: I started with hate let's start with hate. And then we go to love. Yes. Bertrand: Let's start with hate. That sounds very very harsh, but there are some reasons to be harsh about Silicon valley, not everything is the paradise you can read from far. Nuno: Yeah. So maybe starting with the most obvious of them all, with crime safety, homelessness, and here we have to be very specific because obviously there's this situation for example, of San Francisco and crime and homelessness in San Francisco, which is pretty pervasive. And in some ways it's been a little bit amped up also with COVID as a lot of people left town and certainly are working more remotely. But definitely there is a problem in San Francisco. There's a problem also elsewhere, Oakland, I think is having a little bit of what I would call a Renaissance. It's getting and becoming an exciting city and and solving a lot of its issues. But obviously we know the history of crime in Oakland is also a very serious one. And then you have places that have obviously no crime at all, like Atherton, the richest town in America or the wealthiest town in America where, finding crime is probably difficult. So really a tale of two bay areas, so to speak or to Silicon valleys   Bertrand: Sorry let's not forget east Palo Alto  Nuno: Yeah. You have these dichotomies exactly to your point Bertrand, where you have Palo Alto, which we know next to Stanford and where a lot of very wealthy people live like mark Zuckerberg and others which is in general, relatively safe here, and then just east Palo Alto, which is not as safe.  Bertrand: The other side of the highway. Nuno: literally the other side of the 1 0 1. And so again, in some ways it's a little bit quintessential American, right? We know that from other cities like Chicago and in LA and other parts of the U S where you have certain areas that have  for a variety of reasons a significant amount of lack of safety and crime and all of that. And then you have areas that are extremely safe and extremely  controlled in terms of crime as well. So I think the first hate we probably both share, there is a feeling of being unsafe in certain are...

In episode 23, we demystify 7 of the most common and core myths on Silicon Valley, from its laid-backness to “everyone is amazing”.  Check out episode 22, where we explain what Silicon Valley actually is, talk about its history and geography. In episode 24, we will deep dive on our Silicon Valley loves (and hates) and finally address the elephant in the room: is there an exodus going on or not? Has Silicon Valley's downfall started or is it highly exaggerated? Navigation: Intro (01:34) Myth 1 - Laid Back (04:25) Myth 2 - Not Transactional (16:11) Myth 3 - Self-Confidence and Assertiveness (27:22) Myth 4 - Ton of Capital Available (37:29) Myth 5 - Everyone is Amazing (47:31) Myth 6 - Failure Always Rewarded (55:17) Myth 7 - “Changing the World…” (1:00:49) Conclusion (1:04:49) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand: Welcome to episode 23 of tech deciphered. This would be our second episode of our trilogy around Silicon Valley. If you remember how  previous episode, episode 22 was about what is Silicon valley, as well as what brought us there. For this episode, we're going to talk about the myth of Silicon Valley versus reality. And we are going to share with you seven myths that we have seen over these years, and we believe come a long way explaining how Silicon valley really work. Nuno: This started in some ways  with an article I wrote, I think in 2016 and I have four myths in that article. So today we're going to expand on that. Bertrand has come up with a couple more and that whole story started  with two things, one with an entrepreneur that reached out to me and I used to have a lot of requests on LinkedIn via email  semi warm intros from friends about someone from another was coming to Silicon valley or was visiting, was going to come to Silicon valley to visit and meet with potential customers or investors. But this particular entrepreneur that shall go un-named reached out to me and we had several people in common. It was a relatively cold reach out. And then he just sent me a follow-up message saying, I'm going there for a visit. Can you introduce me to Google, Facebook, all these companies. And I was like, why am I bugged by this? And as I started thinking through it I started actually taking it one step further, which was, I am bugged by it because people have this understanding of Silicon valley that is fundamentally wrong. And that's where this whole mythology came from.  In some ways we had people that we knew in common. We had acquaintances, not even really close friends, but I did not know this person. And that was one of the first things that bugged me. It's like, why is he asking me for things? I introduced him to people why? I don't know this guy.  And so again, I started going through it, and the second trigger for me to write this article, the myths of the Bay area back in 2016 which is still on Medium  if you want to take a look at it, I was about to be doing a keynote for an organization that I was a co-founder of called west to west, which was really linking  Portugal to Silicon valley, the two west coast as we call them and really helping entrepreneurs figure out how to best go to market in the U S how to best connect with talents in US, customers, potential investors, et cetera. So I came up with four  myths that really helped me frame in some ways, a little bit of my messaging back to entrepreneurs that are not classically from Silicon valley, but are coming here. And maybe we'll start with the first one,

In episode 22, we begin the second season of Tech Deciphered, by deep diving into what Silicon Valley is, what made us (and others) move here, its unabridged mythology and whether there is really an exodus (or not) going on. This episode is the beginning of a trilogy that is an ode to our love and hate relationship with the region. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: What (exactly) is Silicon Valley? (02:23) Section 2: What brought us (and others) to Silicon Valley? (32:15) Conclusion (46:09) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno: Welcome to season two of Tech Deciphered.  Today, because we like to do really long episodes, we will start our trilogy on Silicon Valley. This episode will focus on what Silicon Valley actually is. We'll go into the geography of Silicon Valley, the origins of Silicon Valley, the development of Silicon Valley. Then we will also talk about what brought us here, what brought Bertrand and myself to Silicon Valley.  In the next few episodes, we will go into the mythology and reality of Silicon Valley as well as other areas of love and hate , and we will finalize with Silicon Valley in transition. Is it a mindset? Is there an Exodus? Is there a no exodus? Bertrand: Thank you Nuno, good to be here with you today.  How are you? Nuno: I'm well, so let's start with what is Silicon Valley?  Section 1 - What (exactly) is Silicon Valley? Today we start with what is Silicon Valley? And one could say Silicon Valley is a state of mind, but it's actually a region of the world with a long history behind it. Bertrand do you want to guide us a little bit through the long history of Silicon Valley and where we're at? Bertrand: Yeah, sure. So as you say, it's a long history, but that depends by which standard?  Nuno: For someone from France and Portugal probably not very long, but yes. Bertrand: Or China Nuno: Long from a US perspective, I guess.  Bertrand: It's one of these places where you don't have much standing that is more than a hundred years old, and one could argue, it might be because of earthquakes. But not just, I would say the modern California is probably and Northern California is probably 150 years old, started with the Gold rush. And maybe before I go to the gold rush, obviously California was  in some ways discovered by the Europeans  500 years ago Nuno if we go back  to the origins of California and Northern California, and it was a spaniard, a Portuguese?    Nuno: We will not have that discussion. And obviously it's not questioned whether it was discovered, it was here, and there were native people here and then.  The Spanish conquistadores arrived. There is some argumentation whether Cabrillo  was actually Portuguese or Spanish, but he was definitely working for the Spaniards. So we'll let them do that. We'll let the Spanish people get that. Bertrand: Yes.  So California  was interspersed by a lot of missions and that connected the main roads. Actually historically the main road in Silicon Valley, El Camino Real, Nuno you want to say what it means. Nuno: Yeah, the Royal way. So it was a way that was put there to connect the different missions. And it was the Royal way because the Spaniards were here at the service of obviously the monarchy in Spain. And that's why it was called the Royal way or Camino Real. So now, you know.   Bertrand: And so, that's for me interesting part of Silicon Valley to think that you are on the Royal way most of the time when you are going from city to city.

In episode 21, we will end our first season of Tech Deciphered, by taking  a look back at 2020 - spoiler alert: defined by something starting with a C and ending with a 9 - as well as what we expect to happen in 2021. We will share our answers on questions like: Will we finally get rid of this pandemic? Is there a bubble in the public equity market in the US? We will also share our own personal lessons-learnt. For a more in-depth look at the future and the 2020s, please listen to episodes 11, 12 and 13, and for a more detailed view on COVID-19, please also listen to episodes 9A and 9B. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Moment of Silence - In Memoriam (02:32) Section 1 - Recap on 2020 (03:00) Section 2 - Personal stories (26:11) Section 3 - COVID-19 and Macro Outlook for 2021 (32:10) Section 4 - Outlook for Tech in 2021 (42:42) Season 2 Preview & Conclusion (51:24) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast

In episode 20, the last of our trilogy on recruiting, we share advice to candidates, from ideas and processes on how to best be visible to recruiters, to how to get the job of your dreams. Also listen to our episodes 18 and 19, in which we share our core principles in recruiting and detailed advice to recruiters. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - How to get found (02:10) Section 2 - How to get the first interview (04:08) Section 3 - Interview questions (07:13) Section 4 - How to get the offer (23:56) Section 5 - Remote world (29:00) Conclusion (39:59) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:24) Nuno: Welcome to episode 20. This episode, will conclude our trilogy on recruiting.  In episodes 18 and 19. We've discussed a variety of topics. We introduced the element of recruiting. We shared our own core principles around recruiting, and in the last episode, episode 19, we gave advice to recruiters.  Today, we will be discussing advice for candidates all the way from being found to how to be recruited in a changing remote world. Bertrand: Let's take the other side. Let's think from a candidate perspective. What could be our advice for candidates. And obviously there is probably a lot of advice we can give.  Section 1 - How to get found (02:10) Nuno, do you want to start on maybe how to get found? Nuno: Yes, and just to reframe this, this is not just based on third-party knowledge in the last decade, because both of us, have not been candidates, cetera, . I certainly have been reached out by a number of organizations. I've explored things beyond my own realm. And there's obviously a lot of lessons learnt here that I think are still very fresh. The first piece is how do you get found, right? Who finds you and how do you make yourself visible in the market?  definitely LinkedIn, your profile needs to be clean. It needs to be clear and sharp about what you're able to do or not. My LinkedIn profile is awful for that, just to be clear. So please don't look at my LinkedIn profile to get any great clues on that, having clarity in what you've done and what you're an expert on and what are your achievements have been Turning your LinkedIn into a richer type of resume is very powerful. If you're an engineer, Github Gitlab and other tools also convey a lot of these elements of being found in the market.  so that's the beginning. It's almost like your advertising systems and services that you want to be present on for recruiting depending on the area you're in. Obviously you should explore. Having some warm relationships with recruiters. And particularly as you get more senior and you moved to a middle level ranks or senior level ranks. knowing your recruiters and having them, having your mind. I believe that recruiters in Europe and Asia, I've shared this with many of my friends, external recruiters in Europe and Asia are less transactional than in the US and because of that, they normally keep warmer relationships with candidates through the years. I certainly have warmer relationships. With some of the recruiters that I interacted with in Asia and in Europe and maybe in the us, this is again, a simplification obviously it varies very much with the recruiter and the individual, himself or herself. but definitely understand where the recruiters are, what's being done, et cetera. And then the final piece around being found is if you're looking for a specific type of job, you need to find a job and you need to figure out the angle to it. 

In episode 19, we share detailed advice to recruiters, sharing views on job descriptions, finding talent, interview process, good and difficult interview questions, other hacks, as well as our own “pet peeves”. This is the second episode on recruiting. In episode 18, we framed the discussion and shared our core recruiting principles, including in compensation, and in the design and development of the recruiting organization. Episode 20 will end our trilogy, by focusing on detailed advice to candidates. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - The Job Description (02:00) Section 2 -  Hacks & Tools (10:19) Section 3 - Finding Talent (15:04) Section 4 - Interview Process (18:14) Section 5 - Other Hacks (31:52) Section 6 - Pet Peeves and Dislikes (39:17) Conclusion (41:27) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:24) Bertrand: Welcome to episode 19. This is the second episode in a trilogy of episodes on recruiting that started previously, with episode 18. In this new episode, we are going to focus on the recruiter side: writing a job description, the tools and approach to find talent, the interview process, global differences, the evergreen approach to recruiting, closing candidates. And we will conclude on our pet peeves and dislikes. Section 1 - The job description (02:00) Nuno: And maybe switching and going into the weeds a little bit on advice that we would specifically have for recruiters and starting with the job description.  The job description is normally this painful thing that someone has to do that involves some copy pasting, hopefully if there's a template or some Googling in the middle, to define what the job looks like. I think this is absolutely the wrong approach, just to be clear. A job description, I think has two sides to it. There should be an external job description, which is manifested to the market. That can be used with external recruiters, that can be used with candidates directly. And that should be sharp and really conveying what hard skills are being looked for, what soft skills are being looked for, what is the value system of the organization, and obviously a brief description of the organization, and finally, a little bit on how that position would fit in terms of roles and responsibilities within the organization. Those four or five things need to at least be there. It should be sharp, it shouldn't be a three page job description. I've seen seven page job descriptions. I'm like, why? Bertrand: No way. Nuno:  Is anyone gonna read that? And sharp should be one page, very clear, there should be a lot of attention to the words that you use and the clarity on it. And it should really be appealing. It is a marketing material. I'm not saying it's not, but it should also be clear in filtering people that have certain skills versus others, people that have a certain value system versus others, et cetera. Then there's a little bit the internal job description, which also should be very clear. Which is, who is this person going to report to, what are going to be the day to day of this person, the complexity of it, et cetera. I'm not sure that needs to be manifested in a very formal way. But there should be clear understanding around the table, from the hiring manager all the way, maybe to the CEO early on in the company, to the person that's managing the recruiting process so that there is clarity on what works and what doesn't. If there are some unwritten rules that are not in the job description that is shared e...

In episode 18, the first of our trilogy on recruiting, we start by sharing our core principles in this space. We delve into high-level principles, recruiting organization and compensation. In episodes 19 and 20, we will share detailed advice for recruiters and candidates, respectively. On the recruiter side, we share core principles that have worked for us, as well as hacks: anything from good and difficult interview questions to some of our “pet peeves”. On the candidate side, we will share ideas and processes from how to best be visible to recruiters, to how to get the job of your dreams. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - Core principles (04:59) Section 2 - Recruiting organization (18:34) Section 3 - Compensation (26:13) Conclusion (31:05) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:24) Nuno: So in this episode, 18, we focus on recruiting. We will discuss on the recruiter side, our core principles that have worked for us along the years, as well as some hacks and some advice for recruiters. On the candidate side, we share ideas and processes from how to best be visible to recruiters, all the way to how to get the job of your dreams. Looking forward to this episode. Bertrand: Yes, and actually we have so much content on Recruiting, that we will have 3 episodes focused on this topic: this episode 18, as well as episode 19 and 20.  Bertrand: I'm very excited that we talk about recruiting, probably not much is more important than recruiting when you're starting a company, running a business, running a startup. And it's recruiting of everyone from your co-founders, to your execs, to your developers, to your sales people. So recruiting is literally the lifeblood of your organization and obviously not just recruiting but keeping people and having people happy and successful at your organization. But it starts at the end of the day with recruiting. So it's exciting to talk about this topic in this episode. Nuno: Indeed. And let's start with framing our experience as recruiters, to give a little bit of credibility to whatever advice we give during this episode. I'll start with my side, I've recruited or help recruit hundreds of people, all the way from recruiting for my own teams as either a line manager, CEO, managing partner, helping recruit peers to myself in different organizations. Helping some of my clients as a consultant recruit their own people. That was also a lot of fun. And I participated in everything from, one-on-one interviews to panel interviews, to group interviews and everything under the sun. I would also add as a candidate, that my experience is still relatively fresh. A lot of people would look at my background and say, you haven't been a candidate for a long time. You did your own venture firm, et cetera. But in all honesty, I've joined boards of directors, both for profit companies and nonprofit companies. And that goes through its own recruiting process. I've tried to be recruited by a bunch of companies in the industry along the years. And funnily enough, because I'm a bit of a nerd. I actually sometimes go into these processes, even though I'm not necessarily thinking of moving on. And I've had some really interesting processes with some of the best known companies in the industry. And hopefully we'll also share some of my lessons learned around it. Last but not the least, I've been very close to the recruiting space, through a bunch of people in my own network that are very close to me.

In this, the third and final episode of our SaaS Primer - or “everything you wanted to know about SaaS” - we look into Financing/Fundraising, share findings on Benchmarking/KPIs, as well as end the discussion on Lessons Learnt and Predictions. Do listen to episodes 15 and 16, in which we had a SaaS Overview, looked at Business Models, as well as Sales and Pricing. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - Financing/Fundraising (02:01) Section 2 - Benchmarking/KPIs (16:08) Section 3 - Lessons Learnt (29:07) Section 4 - Predictions and Conclusion (46:19) Conclusion Resources Please check below to download our SaaS Primer PDF deck, serving as reference for our episodes 15-16-17 Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Download Tech Deciphered SaaS Primer PDF Deck Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:24) Bertrand: Welcome to Episode 17 of Tech Deciphered .  In this episode 17, our third and last episode of our SaaS Primer, we're going to talk about financing, benchmarking, lessons learned, and our predictions, to conclude, about where is going the SaaS Industry. For further reference, please have a listen to our previous episodes, episode 15 and episode 16, where we started this SaaS Primer . Nuno, let's start today with financing. Section 1 - Financing / Fundraising (02:01) Nuno: In financing, our first analysis is around equity capital raised by ARR. So Annual Recurring Revenue that has been achieved by the company. Not a huge amount of surprises, but maybe the sole surprise is that companies are raising more equity capital at earlier stages. Definitely, it seems pretty capital intensive that we have, for example, companies generating less than 1 million in ARR, 10% of those companies having raised $5 to $10 million. 6% of the company's raising 10 to $20 million. That seems like a very hefty bar to start generating such little ARR, in companies that are generating a lot more ARR, so above $50 million, 65% of companies unshockingly or not very shockingly will have raised more than $50 million by then. And then very few, I'd say 12%, 12%, 12% will have just raised anywhere from below $5 million, $10 to $20 million, and $20 to $50 million. It seems to be no man's land for above 50 million, seems to be 5 to 10 million. So no companies that are raising more than 50 million will have raised only 5 to 10 million, which is again, an interesting counter-intuitive realization. We will come back to the point around how much money do you need to raise, to actually generate significant ARR. The reality is, the later you are in the ARR curve, the more ARR you're generating, the likelier you are to be in the midst of basically blitz-scaling your organization in particular sales and marketing organization, we've talked about it in previous episodes. And if that's the case, then at that point, it's the time where you raise a lot of capital. So it seems a little bit counter intuitive. A lot of people would say, once I get to 2.5, 10 million in ARR, I need less to get to the next level. Actually that's, in many cases, when you need more to get the next level, cause you actually need to buy yourself into the next wave and that way to buy into the next wave is to hire a lot of people around sales and marketing. Bertrand: Yeah, I think that, as we discussed in the previous episodes, there are big expectations from a lot of investors, in term of how fast you're growing the business. And definitely, one way to grow fast is to invest cash,  so that you can grow faster.

In this episode, the second part of our SaaS Primer trilogy, we deep dive into Sales and Pricing in the Software-as-a-service space. For further context, please listen to episode 15, in which we did an Overview of SaaS and its intrinsic Business Models. Please look out for our next episode that will conclude our Primer, with deep-dives on Financing/Fundraising, Benchmarking/KPIs, Lessons Learnt and Predictions. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - Sales (01:52) Section 2 - Pricing (20:40) Conclusion (36:58) Resources Please check below to download our SaaS Primer PDF deck, serving as reference for our episodes 15-16-17 Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Download Tech Deciphered SaaS Primer PDF Deck Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:24)Nuno: Today in episode 16, we will have our second episode on our "software as a service" primer.For further reference, please also listen to our episode 15, where we started this discussion.Today, we will talk about sales and pricing, and we will go a little bit in depth into these topics. And we will see where the discussion heads. As always, we always get very verbose when we get excited, as you guys know.Section 1 - SalesBertrand: Exactly. Let's start today on the sales side. The sales motion, the sales process is obviously a critical part of any business. But, SaaS has its own approach to sales, and it's very tightly connected to the financing, obviously, we'll talk later about financing. What do we see as a benchmark of percentage spend of sales and marketing, as a percentage of ARR? What we can see, and we are leveraging some slides from Openview Partners, is that across the range, you are at the lowest, around 30 percent of spend in sales and marketing early on, below the $2.5 million ARR barrier. And then it goes up, 35, 40, potentially 45 percent of spend, on median. From $2.5 million, to 10, to 20, to 50, beyond 50. This is a median, so we see a pretty wide range, plus or minus, 15 percent of these numbers.So if I were to take a different stage, we can see that the wider range would be from 15 to 60 percent being spent in sales and marketing. So widely different range, and usually it depends on the business model. If you have a more product-led growth, you will spend less in sales and marketing. If you're a more traditional, I would call it old-school, SaaS approach, you will usually end up with higher sales and marketing spend. Nuno: And I would highlight two interesting pieces of this chart. One. It seems once you get to a certain critical mass of ARR, let's say about $15 million in this case that the costs will start reducing as a percentage of your ARR, which makes sense. You can start optimizing you have a certain scale and a certain brand, and there's a lot of things you can do.The second effect, which might actually correlate to that as well is in many cases, companies are growing really fast to get into the 50 million ARR or a hundred million ARR. So they are spending way into the market, and we discussed it in our previous episode, they're doing a land grab type strategy.And so there may be overspending on sales or on marketing overall for customer acquisition. And therefore, once they taper at 50 million or 100 million, they might actually then optimize their sales and marketing costs. Also underlines at some point, let's say the a hundred million mark, 120 million mark , would you want to go public as a company and therefore at that stage,

In this episode, we start our Primer on SaaS - Software-as-a-Service - a trilogy on everything you need to know about SaaS. We will give an Overview of SaaS, as well as discuss the intrinsic Business Models. Please look out for our next episodes that will deep-dive into Sales, Pricing, Financing, Benchmarking/KIPs, Lessons Learnt and Predictions.Navigation:Introduction (01:24)Section 1 - Overview (04:39)Section 2 - Business Model (17:59)Conclusion (45:19)ResourcesPlease check below to download our SaaS Primer PDF deck, serving as reference for our episodes 15-16-17Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Download Tech Deciphered SaaS Primer PDF Deck Subscribe To Our Podcast Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errorsIntro (01:24)Bertrand: Welcome to episode 15. In today's episode, we will talk about SaaS. What is SaaS?What does SaaS mean? SaaS means Software-as-a-Service. This is, and we will talk more about that later on, but this has become over the past decade, one of the most successful way to distribute and monetize software. Why is that? We'll talk more    about that, but in a nutshell, SaaS is really a new philosophy and approach to software, that emerged around 20 years ago, as a way to deliver, a centrally-hosted application over the internet, as a service.In the past, you had to have your own server. You have to install your server. You have to upgrade and maintain your server, and you have to install software on every user laptop or desktop. It was very complex to maintain, to manage, but also on the pricing side, in the past, you would pay a very big license fee for your server, for your desktop license, and you would keep paying, a smaller amount, a maintenance fee, every year, usually for technical improvement. But you will have to keep managing your software server and clients side, for years. And it will become very difficult and complex, and you would have to keep up with improvements in the software. And it was difficult to keep up.What SaaS enabled, software-as-a-service, was, you don't have to manage the server side anymore. It was pioneered by companies like Salesforce, like Netsuite. So no more central IT costs to manage all of this, and the software would be distributed on the internet through your browser, so no need to install a specific software. And pricing was also changed as a result, no need for a big upfront license cost. You would pay every month, every quarter, every year. You could stop any time, or once a year, using the service, suddenly become much easier to consider trying a new service. It would become much easier to distribute that new service, and more important, much more alignment, between customers and supplier.Why? Because suddenly, the customer can leave anytime. Or at least once a year in most cases. And what this means is that it pushed suppliers to make sure their software was of really good quality. And on top of it, usually, much more focused on satisfying end user and consumers, not just making sure they check boxes with central IT.So it has been an evolution. It started 20 years ago. It started to ramp up with the last financial crisis in 2008, when companies decided it's time to give it a try. There was at the time, still some worries around storing your data somewhere else, not controlling your server equipment, infrastructure, and while there is still that worries, there is probably an acknowledgement today that these guys,

In this episode, we will deep dive into the world of productivity tools, processes, habits and hacks. We will share our principles of productivity, calendaring, favorite communication, hardware and broader productivity tools (e.g. CRM). Finally, we will share what tools we are still missing and wish we had. As an “easter egg”, we will also share how to best get in touch with us, so do listen in. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - Principles of Productivity (02:20) Section 2 - Calendaring & Tasks (13:35) Section 3 - Communication Tools (28:30) Section 4 - Broader Productivity Tools (Note taking, CRM, LinkedIn, etc) (43:51) Section 5 - Hardware (51:54) Section 6 - Tools We Wish We Had (59:03) Conclusion (1:03:10) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors Intro (01:24) Nuno: Episode 14. In this episode, we will deep dive into the world of productivity tools, processes, habits, and hacks. We will share our principles of productivity, calendaring, favorite communication, and broader productivity tools like CRM. Finally, we will share what tools we're still missing and wish we had. We will also share some hardware and some gadgets. As an Easter egg, we will also share how to best get in touch with us. So do listen in  Bertrand: Hi Nuno, I think that's so very interesting topic for today. Definitely more tactical than usual coming out of a trilogy of the next decade but I think we got a lot of interest on this topic as well, and ultimately that's one topic that can make us better hopefully near immediately. I hope at least you will find some interesting habits and ideas.  Section 1 - Principles of Productivity (02:20) Nuno: And the first section today is going to be around some principles of productivity. So just sharing the high level, how do we think through productivity for ourselves? How do we organize ourselves? What do we optimize for, you know, how do we think through things? And so maybe I'll start and we'll go from there. The first thing for me is, productivity is everything, you know, the ability to optimize my time. To make the most out of my time, so that I have time for myself on a personal level, but I also have time to interact with people, have meetings, calls, time to work, time to actually do some works, do some thinking, write a memo, do a power point presentation, review actual work. All of that's really, really important. So I spend  a ton of time, literally, normally, actually on my Sundays planning my week, thinking through what are the flows of my week. We'll get to calendaring in a second, but really thinking through what sort of things am I trying to get out of this? And it's very easy to get sort of stuck into tactical stuff, the day to day, do I do 30 minutes conversations or do I do one hour conversations? Do I do a coffee for this? And then I need to go for that. Under COVID, life is a bit easier because we're just back to back in zoom calls, but actually during normal life, we actually have to travel. So, you know, thinking through, do I want to go to that place that day to San Francisco, do you want to go to Menlo park? Do I want to fly to somewhere else? And how many days would I stay there? So all of that, I spent an actual amount of time just around planning.  Once in a while I have moments, I can't say they're very well established, but I have moments maybe a couple of times a year where I go back to the dr...