Financing Businesses in the 21st Century
European Straits #42
Dear all,
My cofounder and CEO of The Family, Alice Zagury, was asked by the French government to draft a report on financing businesses in today’s economy—along with Jean-Noël Barrot, a member of Parliament (and a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management!).
Financing businesses is a topic on which people like Alice, who work with entrepreneurs on a day-to-day basis, have a lot to contribute. Indeed a cornerstone of The Family’s strategy has always been our view of how entrepreneurial ventures should be funded in the digital age. I’d sum it up in four short theses:
Launching a startup has undergone a radical commoditization, mostly due to cheaper technology. As startup capital costs fall at the earlier stages, there are more entrepreneurs willing to launch startups—and less need for angel investors.
Just as startups multiply, we’re transitioning from the predictable (Newtonian mechanics) to the unpredictable (quantum mechanics). And the best weapon to survive as an investor in an u…