"earth is a beta test"

19 Aug 2010

The Trivergence

I was reading this article today about the Death of the Web, as well as a blog post from VC John Doerr announcing the “Third Wave,” the idea that the Internet is reinventing itself for the third time with potential new leaders. These articles add to a list of other trend opinion pieces predicting a major change coming in the web. I do agree, it’s the reason why I have started jolicloud.

Here are the three main catalysts of the “Third Wave”:

The rebooting of hardware (including the incredible growth of mobile devices)
The Cloud as a replacement for pretty much any software
A massive adoption of social media and its subtrends : location-based services, gaming, collaboration, etc

What if the Web is not dead, but just splitting into multiple forms?

I think it’s already happened. I remember explaining just ten years ago how the Internet in China would be so different of ours, not because of the Great Firewall but because of the fact that China is building in an environment free from established rules and policies, so anything is possible.

Mike Walsh, a good friend, explains this very well in his new presentation, “The Divergence.” His theory is that because Asia is very young and adopts new trends quickly, they are already living in what we call the future. If demographics was the only parameter, I would agree totally with Mike.

But I want to bring the Geopolitical card, as well as Europe, to the table. Europe is a key market for Internet monetization. Google makes a majority of its revenues in Europe now.

Because of this “menage a trois”, I have called this theory the Trivergence:

What is the Trivergence?

The Trivergence is the idea that the US, Europe and Asia will have different paths because of their different short-term interests. These short-term interests are defined by economics, demographics, legal frameworks, and political leadership.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve been lucky enough to discuss about this around the world with remarkable people: entrepreneurs, CEOs, politicians, artists, investors, and scientists. I’ve spent time in cybercafes and computer retailers, quietly observing how people are using the Internet.

Trivergence is something you can experience anytime you travel.

What differentiate the 3 players ?

The US: The New Frontier

The US is definitely leading the Internet game; it defines it's rules. From searching to social networks, real-time to geolocalization, most new ideas are coming from the US. The VC-based model creates constant challenge and reinvention.

But this time, it’s around mobile, social and Cloud services. Previous Web generations gave us Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, and Apple. Now it’s all about Facebook and Zynga, while Foursquare, AirBnB and others are waiting to become the next kings.

Although the US has been very good in producing the software and the hardware of the technological revolution, they’ve lacked a good Internet infrastructure. As the number of iPhone and Android devices is going to the roof, large operators now have to catch up with the mobile demand, which has definitely had an impact on government policy. The Obama administration push mobile as a priority. However, cable Internet and DSL have not been upgraded yet, mostly to protect the cable industry. Will the arrival of Apple and Google in the TV create pressure for change? It’s too early to say.

Even with the Brightest industry, US has not been able to provide a competitive market for broadband with clear rules. The recent Google Verizon secret deal should be for all of us a wake-up call. There’s an emergency increase the bandwidth mobile and landline to catch up with the rest of the world. But if the US broadband audience is not completely there yet, it’s not a big deal for US companies: they have Europe.

Europe : An Environment of Auto-Defense

Europe is a continent with an extremely complex legal environment that has its own auto-defense mechanism: to protect old industries from any innovating threat.

Do you remember the second level in Inception where the mind of the dreamer constructs its own defense to attack Leonardo Di Caprio’s team? In Europe you want to either be a big industry or a farmer so you can get enormous and generous subventions; if you are small and innovative, you will be squashed. The Telecom industry fits the big profile so they’ve benefited from a custom and tailored legislation. But being too comfortable in this super competitive environment comes at a cost: the death of all European mobile handset manufacturers, except Nokia and Sony Ericsson. At the same time, Apple in the US was kicking the mobile phone second act, taking Nokia out of the lucrative smartphone business.

The legislation protects operators pretty well, but comfort and control keep them away from opportunities for new revenues. They are slowing turning into dumb pipes because they have no stake in the mobile innovation stack.

Thanks to an effort in the 80’s to modernize the phone infrastructure over Europe (ISDN), we inherited of a pretty good DSL and cable broadband-ready infrastructure . But as it happened in the mobile industry, I am ready to bet that it will be Google and Apple TV that will be the ultimate beneficiaries of our modern state-subsidized infrastructure because of the lack of local competition. By competition I mean European startups.

Because it is the nature of Europe to protect “old” interests like IP owners or telecommunication giants, political leaders prefer delaying 4G networks and spending government money to filter P2P rather than enabling new European champions to emerge.

The startup world in Europe is very small, and success stories like Skype don’t happen every day. As Europe is becoming a very profitable consumer platform for US companies, you can now see large European media groups crying and ask for revenue protection.

I am convinced that Europe is now becoming the first monetization option for any big Internet player. The infrastructure of the US is not mature enough for ultra-high bandwidths. But it’s not a big deal because Europe is a fast adopter. France now has the second most iPhone users and is the source of a colossal revenue stream for Apple.

While Europe turns slowly in the “monetization courtyard” of large US Internet companies, China is working hard to build an independant digital future.

China : The Self Absorbed Continent

remark : I will mostly talk about China here.

When we talk about Asia, there are monumental and strategic differences between India and China. India is working hard to produce affordable services and hardware for a poor population; it’s all about $2000 cars and $17 computers. China, however, is betting on raising the standard of its middle class while providing the best infrastructure possible, and higher quality products like their $50 Android phone.

China is a perfect opposite of Europe .

Europe doesn’t support innovation and startups, but China loves the idea of supporting local equivalent of popular US services. Europe, via Ireland mainly, make it easy for American companies to pay very few taxes and bring the money back home, but it’s much harder for them to operate in China due to government licenses. Money generated in China stays in China.

China, like Europe, is governed by an older pre-Internet generation, but has prioritized the Internet as a key opportunity to deal with an explosive demography.

Chinese Internet is tailored for the young, while European Internet is designed for older, non-techie users.

Everytime I go to China I am amazed at the scale of Internet use. China is now operating on its own standards (they are now going after Intel, Android, etc), with the obsession of copying ideas from the West to make sure that the huge local market stays in local hands. I was not surprised to see Google leave China and come back a few months later. I am intrigued to see how Facebook, which has been flawless in taking Europe, will make its Chinese move. It is still blocked but I don't expect this to be definitive.

So where does this leave us?

-I think that the US will remain at center of the innovation for now. The current strategy adopted works well and should not be changed.

1. Create buzz among the early adopters in the Sillicon Valley
2. Monetize well in the States
3. Aggressively address Europe and benefit of the brand power to monetize super well
4. If you are Twitter or Salesforce, you can find a way to monetize Japan too
5. If you are big and if you can be present the Chinese market

-China can't close too much it's market, as it has its own stake in the US economy by being the supplier for the biggest tech companies, like Apple.

I know some of you will find me too hard against Europe, but I don’t see any smart decisions being made soon. In France, for example, some idiots said that it would be better to tax Google than invest in the local startup ecosystem. There's an urgent need for startup and technology evangelist to become a driving force in Europe. Everything is not bad of course it has a thriving ecosystem of startup and innovative services and Europe does great in some segments. But they have a hard time gaining market shares in Europe so US and in China is always a later choice. There's room for improvement.

Of course I have some unanswered questions:

Are the Chinese interested in becoming large players on the Internet in Europe and the US?
Do the differences in Internet usage and culture make it too hard for Americans and Europeans to enter the Chinese market?
Where is Brazil standing in that new ecosystem? Is it a future Europe or a future China ?

31 Jul 2010

France needs a CTO now !

I have been like you following the disaster of the France.fr launch. I am not here to comment the failure but more to share with you, the urgency of having a profound and radical change in the technology leadership of this country.

In France, crucial digital government projects are designed and implemented as if Social Networks, Mobile, Open data and the Cloud didn't exist. In their world we still live in the 2000’s.

Disasters after disasters, France keeps failing in producing digital government services that matter and work well. This is hurting badly our country and it has an important impact on budget constraint and capacity of reform.

How can you conduct reform when the tools are not there, or not adaptable ? It has also an important impact on the life of our citizen. As a citizen, I believe we deserve the best tools possible, and sometime, when I use some of theses services, I am wondering of what we have been punished from.

Here are the two main issues that come to my mind :

a) The lack of interest and knowledge in technology of our political and administrative elite.

Projects are handled like if they were designed in the late 70's. Add to the mix the tradition in France of building cathedrals (predicting everything in advance doesn't work under today's rules). They are a few people that get it but they are usually not in charge.

A good example : the “dossier médical personnel” (DMP), a center-piece of Health Policy. In December 2010, any French citizen will be able to open a file and begin creating a secure, personal electronic health record (EHR). A huge and ambitious program, with 65 million DMPs. For security and privacy concerns, the agency which runs the project announced that it will not have mobile access, neither provide mobile services. Yes you heard, in 2010 no mobile access.

Another example : Chorus, an integrated ERP for budgetary and accounting processes of government departments. It is the most extensive inter-ministerial program ever carried out in France. Its cost jumped to 1.3 billion euros. Its delay had dramatic consequences : ministries are unabled to pay their bills. In Ministry of defense, 120.000 bills are awaiting payment. "Our concern is the delay, the amount of the expenditure and the tool itself" declared the President of the Cour des Comptes (Court of Auditors).

A lot of digital government services are still lacking good and modern web and mobile access. They use proprietary technologies and are not tied to the Web open stack.

the solution : hire a CTO pair him with a CIO, make sure that the CTO is young (I would say 35/40) and knows his stuff, and the CIO should have 20 years in experience in "managing the digital government" beast.

b) A mediocre ecosystem of large services integrators combined with a lack of transparent processes

The equation of death of most government projects : Decision makers that have no clue + Integrators that lack competences and innovation= disastrous project

Most French System integrators live in a technology bubble. In the last 10 years, the technology make it easier to build scalable products, Google, Facebook opensource all their technologies. Theses technologies are rarely used, because people don't take risk like startup do. It is hard to build a project that will last if you don't love technology and if you don't want to try to build something that matters. The lack of transparency in technological choices is an issue. Why did we end up using this and that ? We never really know and it's very frustrating.

The solution : Define an open government stack that include a pool of technologies to be used by all digital government project.
Provide in a website available for every citizen with all projects, contractors, technology used, Term of references, technical documentation and the name of the government team that has conducted and approved the project. Citizen and end users should be able to provide rating and feedback to every digital government website. This website already exist in the US, btw.

So why is this so important ?

Inadequate digital systems hamper the capacity to reform. One example : The current government had the intention to harmonize the pensions of civil servants with those the private sector. The calculation of the civil servants pension would now include the best 25 years, instead of the last 6 months as previously. This reform appeared to be impossible because the public pension information system was designed to save only the last 6 months. Because of data unavailability, this reform has been postponed. I am not discussing the validity of the reform here, but the fact that because of a faulty design of information system, it is not achievable.
In Japan it was even worse when 50 millions pension files where erased by mistake.

In today's world, managing an efficient digital government environment is the only way we can make a change in this country. Investing in a better and smarter system could also reduce the impact of the bureaucracy. Think about it. What if all your citizen, taxpayer life was as easy as using Facebook?

But It’s even more than that. Since the Greece Fiasco and the flacky Euro Zone, France can not afford to have a bad rating for it’s debt. The unthinkable scenario of seeing France in a similar situation as Greece is high and probable. One of the rating parameters is the ability for France to vote and DO the reforms. With a faulty information system, we are incapable of making changes and we put ourselves at risk.

There an urgency for change

Bringing the digital government to the standard of ease of Facebook, Google and other services should be one of the major goal of the next decade.

I will not vote on the next elections for a president that doesn't have a CTO among his top advisers.

3 Jun 2008

My new role at netvibes

As of Friday afternoon, I am no longer the CEO of Netvibes. Even though TechCrunch broke the story, I wanted to wait until everything was formally done to communicate the news. As promised, it's now the time to announce my new role with Netvibes, the company I founded nearly three years ago. Last week we decided in a board meeting to name Freddy Mini, my second in command, as the new CEO. I am supportive of this decision, which will enable me to have a non-executive role to focus on strategy and the big picture, not on day-to-day issues. And as one of the largest shareholders of the company, I will continue to sit on the board and support the company to the fullest extent. I understand that my decision may have come as a surprise to many people people and I apologize for the short notice, but this is something that we had been planning internally for quite a while. Last year, driving back from a Facebook meeting with Freddy on the 101, I told him that I would step down before the summer -- once I had the feeling that the company is on the right track. I told him that he should be ready to become the next CEO. Even after looking at other candidates, Freddy was the obvious choice . If someone can bring Netvibes to next level, it's him. Freddy is not the only person that will have new responsibilities: my executive team, Franck who runs the product team and Annabelle my CFO, and my beloved team now has the opportunity to execute our vision for the future of Netvibes. As I said at the Netvibes.org developer conference in Paris, four things matter to me : the opinion of my team, our users, our clients, and the developer community, and nothing makes me more happy than their commitment to Netvibes. From the bottom of my heart, I thank them for their continuous support. I have created 7 companies so far, and Netvibes is by far the most international and the one with the largest number of employees. With Netvibes I have always considered myself as a founder CEO. That means two things: a founder and the first CEO of the company. As a founder you have to provide the ambition, the vision, and hire the best team possible to do the job. I believe that we have succeeded in doing so. People who are not entrepreneurs sometimes do not fully understand the unbelievable level of commitment you need to create a company. Before founding Netvibes, I didn't know if I was capable of such commitment, dedication, and will for a project. For a project like Netvibes, you have to give everything or it doesn't work. You have to believe for yourself and the rest of the world, and provide your team with constant energy, making sure that you can get the best of each person on a daily basis. You have to channel your doubts into operational focus, because it's not where you start that matters but how you can lead your team to fulfill your vision and to the difficult road to success. This is why I have respected and admired entrepreneurs ever since I was a child. As the founder of Netvibes, I am here to create something that ultimately has meaning: for the market, the team, and clients, but also fundamentally something that has meaning for myself. It's that last factor that truly defines entrepreneurs. What about strong competition with seemingly unlimited funding and workforce against us? This served as even further motivation to get excited about the project and pursue it despite the related challenges. As a founder CEO my vision is very simple: you have one mission, make sure that the company executes your vision and that it hires the best people in order to render yourself unnecessary as quickly as possible at the operations level. That is the only advice I would give people, hire people you like and respect and that are much better than you in their areas of expertise. Furthermore, give people a chance to express their full potential because sometimes you will be fascinated by the result. And one last thing, keeps egos away as fast as you can. The Netvibes team is by far one of the best teams assembled in the web 2.0 world and is still extremely hard working, modest, and funny. Before handing over the CEO position to Freddy, I wanted to make sure that I had completed my to do list for the company: An ambitious vision: a startpage combined with a monetized widget platform that is now the only alternative to google. An elegant alternative to google. A strong team: Netvibes has a team that is 100% committed to the challenge, extremely talented and capable of creating miracles every day. We've had a very low turnover -- 90% the team is still there and still rocking as usual. A sexy business model: As Freddy has stated in interviews, Netvibes's revenue is increasing every quarter. He expects the company to break even next year and I am fully confident of this. For us, the monetization of Netvibes was never the problem, it's how you monetize while respecting the user that is the hard part. You can't go for the simplest solution and use the traditional tricks of web 1.0 monetization. But if you find a way to make your user accept sponsored widgets as a suggestion and not an obligation, you have a winner. The sponsored widgets model is Adsense 2.0 and Netvibes will play a key role in this transformation. In general I am proud of what we have done and I would change very little of what we did. It is important to note that decisions are made in a context that is often not public, and that Netvibes has always seemed bigger than it is. Our staff of 35 people is not that big when you think of it. This is why it took us more time to deliver what we announced, but we always delivered: * a complete rewriting of the Netvibes backend to support APIs, * a new and more flexible front end that can evolve and be more easily improved, * the public page (Netvibes universe) that is becoming more and more popular every day , * our latest product development: the Netvibes activities that will add the much-anticipated social component (an updated version is coming soon), * the new ecosystem with more tools for developers and better stats, * the sponsored widget ad network * and last but not least, our open source widget platform that will provide an incredible opportunity for developers to connect and mash our technology up. I will follow what will come out of this very closely. In my experience, finding a good business model is not easy: you need to experiment, measure, understand what the client wants, have inventory and drive adoption, all a part of the key knowledge that makes Netvibes invaluable vis-a-vis the widget economy. Freddy and the business team have been instrumental in this phase and it is now the time to unleash the full potential of this opportunity. With an incredibly dedicated team we have made all the changes needed to see Netvibes play a major role in the widget economy. The coming challenge is very exciting and I am highly confident that the team will succeed. I will be available to help the team in whatever way possible. After such a long haul, I will take some time off and start thinking about a new idea of mine. I will also have more personal time, which is not a bad thing ;) and I will spend more time blogging and observing the world. I will soon travel around the world to meet entrepreneurs and friends alike. On a very personal note, I want to thank all the people that contacted me and all of the friends that supported me and advised me about this move. I was amazed by the incredible number of supportive emails, and happy to see that some VCs already have interest in my next idea. ;) I will be mindful of timing, and in another post, I'll talk about the lessons I learned from starting Netvibes, especially in Europe and running it from Paris. This comes at the request of numerous friends and journalists. Again, I'd like to give a big thanks to the Netvibes friends, team, partners, developers, and users for some of the best years of my life. Enjoy

29 May 2008

more news soon

hello dear blog readers. As many have seen there's a lots of new things happening in my life and i will give more details on this blog soon. Stay tuned. ps : thanks for all kind words i have received, i value them very much !

29 May 2008

i will speak at the assise numériques tomorrow

the program is here.

28 May 2008

About netvibes and widgets business model

I was last week at the founder’s forum near London, a gathering of internet entrepreneurs hosted by brent (lastminute, mydeco), Johnny Goodwin from Jefferies and Marc Samwer. I was really nice to have time to meet with friends in Europe this time and congratulate Xochi and Michael on their move with Bebo. It is also very interesting to talk with entrepreneurs because you don’t have to convince them about an idea you just have to explain why you are going to make it successful.

I talked a lot about netvibes, the widget economy and new opportunities of this market.

Netvibes is mostly know by the consumer for being the coolest start page on the market, but on the business side, we are known as the company that provide an alternative widget platform to Google gadget. End of this week netvibes will launch a new set of opensource tools will leverage the full potential of netvibes API and platform. It’s a new step in embracing data portability with announced support of oAuth and Openid and cool examples in the mobile. The announcement is happening at netvibes developer camp and at netvibes.org

One of the interesting discussions we had was regarding opportunities brought by the widget to monetize social web. Europe is still a virgin territory as key services like slide rockyou , clearspring operate mostly in the US. Netvibes is definitely one of the only companies that operate in the widget market in Europe. Even if a large part our netvibes revenues comes from US operations.

Before the introduction of netvibes ginger, netvibes business model was based on selling premium universe (netvibes branded pages) to our partners with monthly license fees. Now in addition, Netvibes Ginger integrates a widget ad networks that enable partners to distribute sponsored widgets. The model is a cost per install or CPI and is auction based. This program is just a few month old and had a great kick start. In netvibes categories in the add content you can see live sponsored placements from amazing brands and media. To have more details about this have a look in our business section (business.netvibes.com) or this presentation I did for the online French media association.

How big is this market?

Lots of people are wondering if we can monetize well the web 2.0 and social media properties. With traditional ads networks in don’t think so, but I really think that widgets will.

The Widget economy is going to be huge, In 2008 it will be $40M ( I would say $15M in Europe) according emarketer and this is just the beginning . Slow down in ad spending in social media will hurt mostly traditional advertising not widgets and appvertising that bring performance based models and virality.

Expect the rise of the widget economy to happen in the second semester of 2008 and explode in 09. This is great news for netvibes and other widgets platforms. Congrats to Hooman for the Clearspring new round of financing!

27 May 2008

5 things facebook should change

As almost everyone around, I am a compulsive facebook user, mostly through my netvibes widget and on my mobile. I have passed the 2000 friends and I waiting for some interface and product improvements. Here are my top 5 features needed to make my facebook experience almost perfect: Add friend process is too complicated: I really think that facebook should ease the process even more. I still have 700 friends in my waiting list, and to be honest I don't know how to process them quickly enough. If you are in that list please do apologize. In my opinion Friendfeed did a great job to add friends and should be a good inspiration point. Agreed with LoicLemeur the new interface is already better, but not perfect. Search in messages: As more and more people use messaging system, i have some time to browse 10 pages to find few days’ old messages. This is a real concern because no search means no use for old messages. Why not list messages by authors? Complete newsfeed history: Once again I can understand the logic of having people to come back often to access their updated timeline, but Friendfeed and netvibes provide the whole newsfeed from day one. I would love to access that and browse through day one if I can. Make the newsfeed searchable like in netvibes would be a great plus. A better timeline for mobile: I love facebook mobile, but I feel frustrated as I don’t see the timeline. I am not talking about the iphone version (mine was replaced by the new blackberry) but the mobile one. A better way to list friends: I think that the new design hides a lot of crucial informations. I have to click on a friend to slide and see the information about someone. I liked better the old interface that was also smarter. For example if you don't have any one related to you, the option mutual friend did not appear. Now it opens and says you don't have any friends in commons. I think again that there's room for improvements. I know that new design is coming soon and we will see what will happens. Update, my message was spread internally at Facebook and they are already working on some of theses features, Cool ! And you what are your top 5 facebook improvements ?

23 May 2008

Hello world!

Back in the blogging world, setting up wordpress (hum, it's much better interface now) and congratulating my designers for my new template, nicely called Tariq. Just time to decide if I should blog in French or English or both, and think of something not stupid to write first (sounds like to late for that). Let's figure out how to improve that interface later.

30 Nov 1999

the alternative widget plateform is now available

Yesterday, I was at the netvibes developper meetup netvibes released their set of opensource tools to leverage the widget platform based on netvibes UWA (universal widget api). All the code is now available at netvibes.org and the world has now a simple and elegant alternative to google gadgets. if you like netvibes widgets, you will be able to run them on any platform, any device and port them on platform like the ps3, wii, ds, or nokia phones, in addition to google, vista, live.com, opera, dashboard, iphone and Yahoo. I am super happy by this announcement as we wanted for a while to open the platform and create an even more active ecosystem around our technology. Now with opensource, the size of your screen is the only limit !