Tech Deciphered

In this episode, we will deep dive into the world of productivity tools, processes, habits and hacks. We will share our principles of productivity, calendaring, favorite communication, hardware and broader productivity tools (e.g. CRM). Finally, we will share what tools we are still missing and wish we had. As an “easter egg”, we will also share how to best get in touch with us, so do listen in. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - Principles of Productivity (02:20) Section 2 - Calendaring & Tasks (13:35) Section 3 - Communication Tools (28:30) Section 4 - Broader Productivity Tools (Note taking, CRM, LinkedIn, etc) (43:51) Section 5 - Hardware (51:54) Section 6 - Tools We Wish We Had (59:03) Conclusion (1:03:10) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @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 Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors Intro (01:24) Nuno: Episode 14. In this episode, we will deep dive into the world of productivity tools, processes, habits, and hacks. We will share our principles of productivity, calendaring, favorite communication, and broader productivity tools like CRM. Finally, we will share what tools we're still missing and wish we had. We will also share some hardware and some gadgets. As an Easter egg, we will also share how to best get in touch with us. So do listen in Bertrand: Hi Nuno, I think that's so very interesting topic for today. Definitely more tactical than usual coming out of a trilogy of the next decade but I think we got a lot of interest on this topic as well, and ultimately that's one topic that can make us better hopefully near immediately. I hope at least you will find some interesting habits and ideas. Section 1 - Principles of Productivity (02:20) Nuno: And the first section today is going to be around some principles of productivity. So just sharing the high level, how do we think through productivity for ourselves? How do we organize ourselves? What do we optimize for, you know, how do we think through things? And so maybe I'll start and we'll go from there. The first thing for me is, productivity is everything, you know, the ability to optimize my time. To make the most out of my time, so that I have time for myself on a personal level, but I also have time to interact with people, have meetings, calls, time to work, time to actually do some works, do some thinking, write a memo, do a power point presentation, review actual work. All of that's really, really important. So I spend a ton of time, literally, normally, actually on my Sundays planning my week, thinking through what are the flows of my week. We'll get to calendaring in a second, but really thinking through what sort of things am I trying to get out of this? And it's very easy to get sort of stuck into tactical stuff, the day to day, do I do 30 minutes conversations or do I do one hour conversations? Do I do a coffee for this? And then I need to go for that. Under COVID, life is a bit easier because we're just back to back in zoom calls, but actually during normal life, we actually have to travel. So, you know, thinking through, do I want to go to that place that day to San Francisco, do you want to go to Menlo park? Do I want to fly to somewhere else? And how many days would I stay there? So all of that, I spent an actual amount of time just around planning. Once in a while I have moments, I can't say they're very well established, but I have moments maybe a couple of times a year where I go back to the dr...

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?

We demystify a whole lot in this episode of Tech DECIPHERED. We demystify Venture Capital and its nitty gritty decision-making processes and operating models. We demystify Private Equity vs Venture Capital and explain the differences between both. We discuss factors for Start-Up success and demystify entrepreneur “ageism”. Last but not least, we disagree ... on the Tesla Cybertruck. Navigation: The other side of the table - Entrepreneurs who become VCs (02:31) Decision-making and the operating model of Venture Capital (05:10) VCs have to make lot of decisions with incomplete information (08:23) Are VCs much less ambitious that PEs? (23:39) Key reasons why start-ups succeed (31:27) What successful second time founders do differently? (43:59) Are older entrepreneurs more successful than younger ones? (56:08) Tesla's new Cyber-truck (59:28) Resources: Andreas Goeldi, What I Didn’t Understand About VCs When I Still Was a Founder - https://bit.ly/3bbf4UU Auren Hoffman, Venture Capitalists are MUCH LESS ambitious than their private equity siblings - https://bit.ly/2V5itin Alex Ponomarev, The Five Reasons Why Startups Succeed, According to a Legendary Investor - https://bit.ly/34wQuLy Feliks Eyser, What Successful Second-Time Founders Do Differently - https://bit.ly/3b86aYn Mark Travers, For Entrepreneurs, 45 Is The New 25 - https://bit.ly/3a3ypWz MotorTrend, Tesla Cybertruck - https://bit.ly/2V6jSoY Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @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 Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors Intro (01:24) Bertrand: Welcome to Tech Deciphered Episode 8. Hi, Nuno, how are you today? Nuno: Hey, Bertrand, how are you? I'm well. Bertrand: Pretty good, thank you, Nuno. So, what are we going to discuss today? Nuno: So we're gonna discuss a couple of different areas. One, we're going to demystify VC: a couple of articles on the venture capital space and we'll agree with some of the points made, we will disagree with others, we'll again go in depth and try to demystify the discussion. Then some other articles on de-mystifying startups and founders in particular, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. And finally we'll talk about gadgets and we'll talk about cars today, which is really, really cool. Bertrand: I know you are very excited. Nuno: I am super excited. We only have one article on cars, but I think we can go on for some time. Bertrand: And which car are we going to talk about? Nuno: We are going to talk about the cyber truck, that thing that does Tesla announced. And we're going to talk about other stuff that's cooler and what's happening in the space. There was a recent announcement as well, of a couple of new electric cars, and so we'll go a little bit off piste on that one. The other side of the table - Entrepreneurs who become VCs (02:31) So, let's start with our first topic today , and we'll start with this good article, from Andreas Goeldi, titled "What I Didn't Understand About VCs When I Was Still a Founder". It's great that he's coming with his perspective having been a founder, an entrepreneur, now on the venture capital side, and being able to relate, in a way, more easily, from a founder perspective, entrepreneur perspective what it is to be a VC. And let's go point by point on this one. So the first point that he makes, I agree actually with all of his points. I think there's some nuances around some of the explanations and rationale that he's giving ...

In this episode, we end our discussion on Leadership and Management: we delve into how to execute; explore values systems, including our own; and share our core beliefs. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: How to Execute (02:08) Section 2: Culture & Values, Our Core Beliefs (20:11) Conclusion (34:57) 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 Episode 32 of Tech DECIPHERED, our second and last episode of this series on leadership and management. In our previous episode, Episode 31, we focus on defining leadership versus management. We spend time talking about the different styles of leadership management. In this episode, Episode 32, we are going to focus on how to execute and how to create and build the right culture through the right values. Section 1 - How to Execute Nuno Goncalves Pedro How to execute, how to do this? What are the levers that you have to lead and to manage? Bertrand Schmitt I would like to share one perspective I've got, what the CEO's job? I'm talking about a company at some level of scale, obviously not five people, ten people team, but we're talking about 50 people plus type of company. What's your job at scale? I believe that you have to have on one side a deep vision, clear vision. You have to bring your team on board. You have to either keep convincing your existing team, bring new members on board, evaluate existing ones, and you have to manage the cash, because if you run out of cash, that's a big problem. In a way, there is this metaphor of being like the bus driver. You have to view outside of you, you have to let people in, sometimes, unfortunately, let people out, and you have to keep the gas. If you don't do all these three, at the very least, that's big trouble for the business. As we discussed, if you are a tech organization, specifically a tech company, you probably need to be as well a product CEO. But at the very core at minimum, you need these three vision, bringing a team, managing cash, as the key pieces of the game as a CEO. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Agreed. I would make a caveat here, which is my view on product CEOs in tech is they are the most dominant type. There are other types that work well, in particular in the B2B environment, in business-to-business. The more commercial-driven CEO, the person who has extreme experience in sales or in business development or corporate development. We've seen a few of those people doing very well in B2B. Again, by nature, tech product CEOs do relatively well. But in B2B, certainly I think we've seen great examples of amazing CEOs that, honestly, are not that technical. But they are very good at selling and they're very good at doing a bunch of other things. There's a few people that come to mind, but again, not to get any hate mail, I will not go into details. I agreed fully with your vision, Bertrand, and the metaphor is very accurate on the bus. The job of the CEO has several dimensions to it as well. Effectively, a CEO needs to manage for the long term and for the short term, and when managing for the long term, strategy comes into play. A set of integrated actions that leads to competitive advantage. Normally, you measure it in years, two to five years. It's something that is really far in the future. You have tactics. Normally, tactics is something that you think through as more the one to two year things. It might be a big initiative, a big product launch,

In this, the third and final episode on the 2020s decade, we look forward, with our scenario planning methodology, into the late 2020s and specifically discuss Next Platforms & Structural Tech, Venture Capital & Start-ups and end with an overall framing of the decade ahead of us. This concludes our 2020s “Time Travel Trilogy”, in which in episode 11, we deep-dived into what lies ahead on the Governmental/Geopolitical and Non-Governmental arenas, as well as shifts in User Paradigms around Work, Home and Mobility. In episode 12, we continued projecting forward in the decade, delving into the future of Energy & Climate Change, Healthcare, Education, Financial Services, Retail & Commerce, Leisure & Entertainment and Social & Communication. Please listen to these episodes, as well. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - Next Platforms & Structural Tech (02:30) Section 2 - Venture Capital & Start-ups (32:48) Section 3 - Overall framing of the 2020s (50:46) Conclusion (56:07) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @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 Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors Intro (01:24) Nuno: In this episode 13, on the decade of the 2020s, the decade ahead of us, we will be resuming our scenario planning exercise for a couple of other topics. We will be discussing next platforms, technology infrastructure, and the structural tech layers, VCs and startups and how that world will evolve, and we will then bring it all together in some overall framing of the 2020s and their scenarios. For further reference, please listen to our episode 11 and 12, where we talk a lot about a variety of things: the home, work and mobility use cases, we discuss various industries like healthcare, energy, climate change. So listen to our previous episodes that are concluded today in our trilogy of the 2020s. Let's start today with next platforms, the scenarios for what the world will look like in 2029, 2030, around next platforms Section 1 - Next platforms & Structural Tech (02:30) Next platforms - Deep tech Bertrand: So let's talk about deep tech and deep tech is a fantastic topic to start, episode 13 today. There are of course, a lot of topics in deep tech and we cannot cover all of them, but let's start with space. I think what has been amazing was just a few days ago, SpaceX, sent humans to the space station and it worked, they are in great shape. I believe it was nine years, since the last time astronauts have been sent to the ISS from the US, not needing a hitch from the Russians. I must say it has been amazing. The last 10 years, what SpaceX has achieved, moving from... I'm not sure they had a single rocket working 10 years ago, to sending now humans, and not just sending humans to the ISS, but sending humans through a very, very cost-effective rocket with a state-of-the-art shuttle. It's really amazing. So when you think about 10 years from now, what could be there? Could we ready be on Mars? Nuno what's Nuno: I don't know. everyone keeps saying it's the next frontier. There are certainly a lot of things that we can do in space, around low orbits, around communication, around infrastructure that helps us, for example, visualize what's happening earth, and making more powerful, our decision making processes here on earth. So there's certainly a lot of potential that I see in space. I'm not sure we're gonna start colonizing things by the end of the decade, so I'm not sure we'll have people in the moon or we will get to M...