/ Hot Takes

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

/ Hot Takes

🎓 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 -

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🚀 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

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🤯 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

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🥔 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

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🔋 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

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👋 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

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💩 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

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🔫 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

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🤑 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.

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🦊 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

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🐰 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

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💎 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

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🫥 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

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😱 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

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😵 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.

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/ Hot Takes Featured

🟢 Five points about Twitter's business model to help you navigate Elon's Musk acquisition

Given the hectic flow of news regarding Elon Musk acquiring Twitter, then not doing it, then finally doing it... I though it'd be interesting to give some pointers about Twitters as a business and what could be the next steps.

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💎 China is officially reinventing luxury on its own terms

As an echo of last February's article on cracking the luxury market in China and other signals indicating that China was starting to get branding right, we now have many little big bangs confirming European brands are officially in trouble. While selling Western taste and glamour for decades was an

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👋 It's time we stop trusting that startups can disrupt multinationals

When I pause and look back at these last decade of startups vs. big corp debate, something starts to bug me more and more. We are at a point where we collectively underestimate the extent to which large groups are the only ones in a real position to trigger disruptive

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🍑 How sex changed the internet...

I wrote about sex and the creator economy only a few days ago, and I wanted to go back today to a promising book about this topic. On November 15, Samantha Cole (senior editor for Motherboard) will be released a collection of stories from the billboard age to the current

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😴 Most startups are wholefully unaware we're in a 2008 moment

I have recently realized that most startups are still in innovation-as-usual mode. Day in, and day out, they keep on trucking with technology, apps, business services, consumer platforms, and new business models as if it was 2018. That's cute. How many of them are aware we've entered an irreversible 2008

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🐥 About Twitter being a superapp...

With all Elon Musk's circus around buying Twitter like you and I would do grocery shopping, a little music about Twitter's potential as a superapp has started playing. I'll try to explain why it's probably a dumb proposition. What's a superapp? Essentially, it's WeChat or Alipay. Apps that centralize social,

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📦 So, we now have an office

I've been gently teasing the news for a few weeks now, but I guess it's time to make it official now: yes, we have an office. Sign o'the times First off, this is a weird transition for Stéphanie and me. Since 2008 we have had little use of an office

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😱 First they ignore the Chinese EV, then they laugh at it, then they say it's unfair...

The Paris Motor Show is in full swing, and for the first years, Chinese automakers such as BYD are front and central. The full capabilities of China as a technology leader are now on full display, and incumbents in the West are starting to feel queasy. It's disturbing, I root

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🍆 Sex and the creator economy

A basic rule of the internet is that sex is embedded in its social nature. Online sex sells more than combined education, investigation, science, technology, or market analysis. The foundational issue of the creator economy is that most creators aren’t great at what they do. It’s a power

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🟢 The state of the metaverse (Q4, 2022)

A few discussions these last weeks led me to try to pinpoint where the metaverse is at as of late 2022. Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code. ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (1992) First, what do I mean by metaverse? I mean the hard promise of