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Straightforward discussions on what's currently on our radar, without filters or buzzwords.

❌ Are we past social media?

❌ Are we past social media?

Facebook has been losing steam for years, and now Instagram has also started to feel stale. Twitter has objectively devolved into a toxic cesspool, and Mastodon feels like a half-backed, overly cumbersome platform. As innovators, we feel in our bones that such a market is ripe for new entrants, if

🤑 Is TikTok a propaganda machine? It's certainly a cash machine.

🤑 Is TikTok a propaganda machine? It's certainly a cash machine.

TikTok has been, for a few years, the center stage of heated debates about being a Chinese propaganda machine in the West. The irony of American tech companies and social networks pointing the finger on how TikTok could sabotage democracies when the January 6 committee is still trying to figure

🤫 The shop that didn't need a website

🤫 The shop that didn't need a website

One of the shops in our cozy city of Haarlem sells high-end HiFi. As I pushed the door for the first time a few years ago, I was surprised at the really exceptional brands they had in store. The friendly owner was surprised too. He politely asked if I had

🤖 The digital native myth

🤖 The digital native myth

Today, a quick note for future reference as I still hear a lot of marketers still strategizing about "digital natives." The digital native demography is a common target of many incumbent companies trying to get more into digital. How to address the digital natives effectively has been the main theme

💳 An Amazon-like store without market awareness

💳 An Amazon-like store without market awareness

Since a few months ago, the supermarket chain Aldi has been testing a fully automated checkout-free store in Utrecht and London (Aldi Shop & Go). This is a classic but always interesting move of prototyping at scale technology to understand how your market reacts to it and, most importantly, if there's

🤢 The U.S. army doesn't think VR is ready, either

🤢 The U.S. army doesn't think VR is ready, either

Being mostly bearish on VR, I'm still monitoring a few reasonably useful applications. Among them, there is the U.S. army Integrated Visual Augmentation Systems (IVAS) initiative, promising to equip the "soldier of the future" with enhanced capabilities such as: * Allowing soldiers in the back of fighting vehicles to have

👻 CES, the tradeshow where tech goes to die

👻 CES, the tradeshow where tech goes to die

Every year for the CES Las Vegas, I have to shut down my social networks and stop listening to tech podcasts. But this is never 100% failproof, and I always catch glimpses of the recurring non-sensical projects pitched in the faint hope of generating some ephemeral buzz. I'm not even

💶 The most overlooked question a startup should ask to start with...

💶 The most overlooked question a startup should ask to start with...

There are a dozen key questions you should ask yourself as a startup founder. One of these that is essentially overlooked is simple: can you be bootstrapped? The term bootstrapped indicates a business model that can start with modest capital and be rapidly fuelled through its own operating revenues without

🎄 That's a wrap for 2022!

🎄 That's a wrap for 2022!

Before I pause posting for a few days, I wanted to reflect on what posting five articles a week for more than nine months achieved (including starting to grow organically a long-form newsletter discussing our tools and sharing market analysis) and what's next. Keep in mind that besides tracking the

🎓 The disruption of the MBA

🎓 The disruption of the MBA

The beginning of 2023 will be my next fully remote MBA class for students in Shanghai with Kedge Business School and Jia Tong University. As such, I keep reflecting on the value of what we deliver as guest lecturers or full-time professors in such programs. Business Model Design Class -

🚀 The acceleration fallacy

🚀 The acceleration fallacy

These last few days, there have been several comparisons about how fast ChatGDP reached 1 million users, and you probably caught a few of those. ChatGPT has crossed 1M+ users in just 5 days. To compare, it took Netflix 41 months, FB - 10 months, and Instagram - 2.5

🤯 Midjounrey, Chatgpt, and the pressure cooker effect of rupture innovation

🤯 Midjounrey, Chatgpt, and the pressure cooker effect of rupture innovation

All the recent commotion about midjourney, dall-e, stable diffusion or (even more recently) chatgpt is rather interesting. ChatGPT launched on wednesday. today it crossed 1 million users! — Sam Altman (@sama) December 5, 2022 The current hype illustrates perfectly the core laws of rupture innovation. 1. Ruptures are fuelled by a

🥔 The teslanomics of electric trucks

🥔 The teslanomics of electric trucks

You have probably read that Tesla is finally delivering its full electric class 8 semi-trailer truck, only three years late. And among the many reasons this truck has been delivered with such tardiness, one of them is probably worth remembering: the battery physics and economics simply didn't work. The magic

🔋 The Model Y as a Big Mac index

🔋 The Model Y as a Big Mac index

I wanted to share an interesting snapshot from Bloomberg discussing the cost of a Tesla Model as a Big Mac index. The Big Mac index is a proxy often used to discuss purchasing power parity between different countries by comparing the price of the famous burger. Given that McDonald's is

👋 You can now find me on Post

👋 You can now find me on Post

As I briefly explained a few days ago, I don't intend to spend much more time on Twitter with the current BS going on (which is for me removing the few moderation rules and decency safe-guards that led to banning Trump and a few others). For the same reason, I'm

💩 The cost of the World Cup

💩 The cost of the World Cup

Qatar has spent $220bn to build an entire city and its various infrastructure to host the Mondial World Cup. The more realistic cost is estimated at a whopping $300bn by Bloomberg. What Qatar Built for the Most Expensive World Cup EverQatar has spent $300 billion preparing for the FIFA World

🔫 Of TikTok and cultural warfare

🔫 Of TikTok and cultural warfare

Since yesterday, I couldn't avoid addressing the elephantic blue bird in the room once again; let's have a quick discussion about TikTok too. Like probably many of you, I've seen a bite-sized takedown of TikTok on LinkedIn that was clipping a 60 Minutes video published on Youtube – you're still with

🤑 Musk's Razor

As we collectively try to decide if Elon Musk is playing 3D chess with Twitter or just being bipolar, it's worth remembering Occam's Razor. Do not attribute to malice which can easily be explained by stupidity. In the case of Elon Musk, though, stupidity is certainly not the proper qualificative.

🦊 The value of (clever) expedient for innovators

🦊 The value of (clever) expedient for innovators

Many (many) years ago, I learned that most branches of Hinduism, and later Buddhism, were using precise tools to teach concepts or notions that essentially cannot be explained. There are called upāya kauśalya (उपाय कौशल्य) in Sanskrit or fāngbiàn (方便) in Chinese. It translates as skillful means

🐰 Patagonia and the mythology of doing good

🐰 Patagonia and the mythology of doing good

I dutifully avoided the subject a few weeks ago when everyone was head over heels as Patagonia's founder, Yvon Chouinard, announced he would "give away" his company to fight the climate crisis. Yvon Chouinard Donates Patagonia to Fight Climate CrisisEarth is now our only shareholder. Patagonia is giving away all

💎 About Twitter's blue mark...

💎 About Twitter's blue mark...

If you're trying to make sense of how much Twitter should cost, it's rapidly obvious that a flat $8 fee doesn't make sense as it doesn't bring enough money, but most importantly, it's not tied to a clear value proposition. Efficient pricing should be linked to the value you transfer

🫥 EU automakers are officially giving up on tech

🫥 EU automakers are officially giving up on tech

Google’s Android Automotive is now the official software layer of Renault vehicles. This is not an overnight breakthrough but was actually quite long in the making. But we are now there. We want to make the car an intelligent object that learns and one that can be upgraded over

😱 Nobody knew content moderation was so complicated?

😱 Nobody knew content moderation was so complicated?

Today I wanted to share an amusingly refreshing take on content moderation on the web. Something that we all have been confronted with, we understand as a hot mess, and we still probably think it's not that complicated. Imagine now you're the richest person in the world and on a

😵 Big Tech is not dying, ad-supported platforms are

😵 Big Tech is not dying, ad-supported platforms are

Well, you probably read quite a few alarming news about how Big Tech is hit hard by inflation. No surprise, as you have to remember, so much of U.S. Big Tech is plain consumer businesses massively scaled by digital network effects, and as such, its Achille's heel is inflation.