Tech Deciphered

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.