Investment Research for Technological Maturity ⛵️
Drift Signal, a newsletter written by Nicolas Colin, applies Late-Cycle Investment Theory to decode capital flows, business strategy, and power shifts as the revolution of computing and networks reaches maturity.
We've entered the structural equivalent of the 1970s—not in mood, but in dynamics. Innovation no longer protects. Institutions built for earlier eras are breaking. Geographic advantage is shifting. Most decision-makers remain positioned for a world that no longer exists.
Weekly editions cover:
Markets in transition: Why venture capital struggles as uncertainty lifts. How tokenisation might rebuild finance. Where efficiency innovations like AI extend rather than disrupt.
Power realignment: China's emergence as the first “electrostate.” America's retreat to financial dominance. Europe caught between paradigms.
Capital reallocation: From software eating the world to manufacturing eating software. From venture funding disruption to production capital building infrastructure and hard assets.
Institutional breakdown: Trade wars, capital controls, and the return of financial repression as global coordination fails.
Drawing on Carlota Perez's framework of technological revolutions and financial capital, Late-Cycle Investment Theory identifies patterns and opportunities that consensus thinking overlooks. Each edition examines specific sectors, companies, and strategies aligned with late-cycle dynamics.
Essential reading for investors, executives, and policymakers navigating the shift from innovation to strategy, from growth to discipline, from global to fragmented. Published since 2017.
The revolution that began with the microprocessor is plateauing. Understanding what comes next starts with recognising where we are.
What readers say
If tech is really spreading into everything, then people in tech need to get much more curious about how the rest of the world works. Europe has so much figured out from which we in the U.S. can learn. Reading Nicolas’ newsletter is an unfair cheat for cribbing for that understand-the-rest-of-the-world exam.
— Roy Bahat, Head, Bloomberg Beta 🇺🇸
It’s rare to find a tech thinker who thinks as eclectically as Nicolas, elegantly fusing together the latest in politics and business with deeper thoughts drawn from authors you always thought you should read, but never quite got round to. His e-mails are that nicest of things: an intellectual treat, and one that always comes with something interesting and unexpected at its heart.
— James Crabtree, author of The Billionaire Raj 🇬🇧🇸🇬
Nicolas’s insights are thought-provoking, insightful, and put what are often complex and broad ideas into context in a simple manner. One of my favourite newsletters!
— Marieke Flament, former CEO, Mettle (Royal Bank of Scotland) 🇫🇷🇬🇧
Nicolas is schizophrenic but in a good way: he has this rare ability to look at the world from two different angles at the same time. He's both an entrepreneur and policymaker, which gives his newsletter a unique perspective on tech, society, and how they interact.
— Martin Mignot, Partner, Index Ventures 🇫🇷🇬🇧🇺🇸
I love the way Nicolas has adapted Joe Studwell's How Asia Works framework to understand a revolutionary path forward for European economies. Very smart and original. Deserves a great deal of attention.
— Tim O’Reilly, Founder, O’Reilly Media 🇺🇸
Always impressed by Nicolas’s capacity to cover the depth and breadth of each topic, with well organised information and powerful insights.
— Carlota Perez, author of Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital 🇻🇪🇬🇧
About Nicolas Colin
I've spent more than 15 years watching the current paradigm shift from inside the machine—first as a senior civil servant at the French Treasury, then as an entrepreneur, and from 2013 as co-founder and director of a London-based investment firm during peak Silicon Valley optimism.
This unusual path shaped my evolving perspective. In 2013, I was captivated by software eating the world. By 2019, I questioned whether manufacturing still mattered (spoiler: it does). By 2023, I declared “the door is closing on startups.” Today, I see we've entered technological maturity—where strategy matters more than innovation, where manufacturing eats software, and where China builds tomorrow's infrastructure while the West clings to yesterday's playbook.
Living and working across Paris 🇫🇷, London 🇬🇧, and Munich 🇩🇪 revealed Europe's predicament: we abandoned manufacturing without capturing tech, leaving us stranded between paradigms. Watching China 🇨🇳 firsthand showed me where real transformation happens—not in apps, but where software embeds in atoms.
My framework—Late-Cycle Investment Theory—emerged from these observations and draws heavily on Carlota Perez's work on technological revolutions. I share this evolving analysis in Drift Signal and recently launched Euro Stable Watch with Marieke Flament to track Europe's position in stablecoins and digital finance.
Today I oversee a portfolio of investments across three continents—a vantage point that reinforces daily how late-cycle dynamics reshape value creation. I serve on several boards where these same dynamics increasingly dominate strategic discussions. Apart from my newsletter, my writing has appeared in the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Sifted, and Politico Europe.
From Europe, I track patterns most miss: why innovation no longer protects, how institutions fragment under technological pressure, where the next revolution emerges. After 250+ editions of Drift Signal, I'm more convinced than ever that understanding where we are in the cycle changes everything.
Become a subscriber
12,400+ readers worldwide—financiers, executives, founders, policymakers, journalists, and academics—rely on Drift Signal to navigate technological maturity and decode what comes next. Here are some of the most popular editions:
🔁 Late-Cycle Investment Theory (June 2025)
🏭 Outmanufactured: How China Leapfrogged the West (April 2025)
💵 America Capital Partners: The World's Greatest Investment Platform (February 2025)
🇯🇵 Who Will Be the Japan of the AI Era? (February 2025)
⛵️ The Great Reset: From Startups to What’s Next (January 2025)
🚪 Startups: The Door Is Closing (September 2023)
🇫🇷 France, As Revealed by its Elite (July 2020)
👔 11 Notes on McKinsey (May 2020)
🏛 Can Anyone Reshape the State? (January 2020)
🤑 Capitalism and the Future of Nation States (December 2019)
More praise
Nicolas’s newsletter is a must-read for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and technology on a global basis. With his atypical background (a high-level French public servant turned entrepreneur!), he brings perspective to emerging trends and sets forth clear stances on complex matters.
— Barthélémy de Beaupuy, Managing Partner, Committed Advisors 🇫🇷🇸🇬
I find Nicolas’s newsletter very refreshing. It provides the much-needed big picture in tech and startups, tapping into the lessons from economic, technological and political history, always giving hints on what lies ahead. I like how Nicolas tackles different trending topics from the public policy angle, which is too often missing in other analyses. That’s exactly what I need in my work at the World Bank, as we support governments’ designing and implementing tech & entrepreneurship ecosystem building.
— Simon Duchatelet, Entrepreneurship Ecosystems Enabler, The World Bank Group 🇫🇷🇱🇧
There are only a few newsletters worth paying for out there. This is 💯 one of them. Nicolas’s work will give you the unfair advantage you need.
— Ben Robinson & Dan Colceriu, Co-Founders, Aperture 🇬🇧🇷🇴🇨🇭
Super impressed with Nicolas’s thinking, analysis and synthesis around some of the most critical issues and trends in technology, policy and global issues. His curation of further reading is the best I have seen. Single most important reading list on a weekly basis for me.
— Nawal Roy, Founder & CEO, Holmusk 🇮🇳🇸🇬
I consume *a lot* of information on European tech. But I look forward to each edition of Nicolas’s newsletter because he always manages to surprise me. He is able to distill complex topics into fascinating reads with ridiculous ease. I don't think I'll ever unsubscribe.
— Gonz Sanchez, Founder, Seedtable 🇦🇷🇪🇸
Often asked about the great new tech innovation out there today, I tell people for me the greatest phenomena is not about the tech itself but near universal access to it. It has unleashed talent everywhere, and is making mass problem solving and scaled enterprises come from anywhere. Nothing has or will have more impact in the global economy, innovation and societies in a positive sense. Nicolas has been at the bleeding edge of this shift across Europe and beyond, and European Straits is the must-read to a front row seat of it all.
— Christopher M. Schroeder, author of Startup Rising 🇺🇸
Nicolas connects the dots between technology, finance, society and politics in a way that stands out in the European tech ecosystem. His newsletter is elevating the quality of discourse around the key questions that matter to those operating, investing or simply interested in European tech. I don’t always agree with him, in fact sometimes I find myself on the other side of his arguments entirely. But that’s precisely the point; he is challenging the way we think about European tech and brings fresh and relevant perspectives to the table.
— Tom Wehmeier, Partner, Head of Research, Atomico 🇬🇧
