Category Archives: Europe

Jan 27
Fred Destin

Uber vs. Le Taxi: The Disrupter and the Disrupted

Recently I just felt compelled to write a post about French Minister Montebourg and his ridiculous contortions to explain barriers put on innovation under what I termed “Slow Innovation”.  Adjacent to this story was a very public row around Travis …

10 Comments
Dec 12
Fred Destin

France invents “Slow Innovation”: deconstructing Montebourg at #leweb

Minister Montebourg (to his credit) took a chance at LeWeb to talk about innovation and the French policy towards innovation, together with Loic Le Meur, Fabrice Grinda and Jeff Clavier. Montebourg is trying to convey a core message:  France is …

32 Comments
May 7
Fred Destin

Shame on France : the Yahoo – DailyMotion debacle

 I was on the board of DailyMotion for many years, starting with the first round of financing in 2006 and ending with my resignation off the board in January 2013. We made many mistakes along the way but we survived …

23 Comments
May 9
Fred Destin

The Great European Venture Capital Crisis

 Over the past few quarters I have had to organize or assist in refinancings of some of the companies I work with on European soil. The exercise of drawing up target list of investors has been a depressing one, for …

1 Comment
Mar 12
Fred Destin

Seatwave, #ticketscandal and the future of live events

 A couple of weeks ago, Channel 4 ran a pretty explosive (and sensationalist) piece of programming on practices in the live event ticketing business entitled “the Great Ticket Scandal” (#ticketscandal). The program, part of the Dispatches series, was primarily fuelled …

9 Comments
May 17
Fred Destin

Late-stage comeback: Acton Capital Partners in €150M final close of new fund

Great news for European entrepreneurs of the later stage variety: Acton Capital Partners closes on a EUR 150M maiden fund, the so-called Heureka Growth Fund, presumably named after the discovery of gold in California rather than Archimedes running naked through …

Comments Off on Late-stage comeback: Acton Capital Partners in €150M final close of new fund