“Tech for good” programs

“Tech for good” programs

Supporting Non for profit should be more than a PR move. It should be driven by the will of spreading good, the same will founders have when they went on to put together a better payment platform like Stripe. In the name of honesty, don’t reduce your non for profit effort to simply look good and PR reasons. Better not do it than pretend.

We could all save a lot of time.

Women entrepreneurship: Nurture vs Nature vs Exogenous

Women entrepreneurship: Nurture vs Nature vs Exogenous

During the past 10 years, I have been fortunate to be part of several Board of Directors of start-ups and an advisor in two investment funds.

Through these different positions, I had the opportunity to meet several women entrepreneurs and CEOs. I followed them closely from ideation to round B and advised them in this process.

I noted many common traits amongst these exceptional individuals which I didn’t encounter in their male counterpart. In this article, I would like to introduce some of these traits and a few personal remarks (my pure opinion based out of personal experience).

Fintech innovations wont come from institutional banking

 Fintech innovations wont come from institutional banking

The financial industry is one of the hardest to disrupt due to factors like data security, regulation and legacy system. We have to look back 16 years to see a tech company who succeeded in that segment.
In 2000, PayPal pivoted to focus on payment processing. Since then, I haven’t see any Fintech company being able to make a dent on the industry the way PayPal did.

Augmented and Virtual Reality, a new field for hackers

 Augmented and Virtual Reality, a new field for hackers

This is a follow up of my last article on virtual reality and augmented reality

In the last article I kept aside several topics: physical, medical, psychological arm and legal framework. This time, I would like to asses them to provide a holistic analysis of the cybersecurity threat.

  • Physical security. Possibility of injury due to lack of balance or walking in a wall.

  • Medical risk. Risk of eye strains due to focusing on intense lighting from close distance.

  • Psychological arm. The risk of perception disorder in the cognitive process.

  • Legal precariousness. The gap between legal framework and technology revolution. The battle of Disruption versus Precedent. This led to unreal situation, FBI vs Apple, driverless car responsibility, drone’s regulations.

  • Hack, Theft and IP ownership. Ensure the integrity and ownership of objects, assets and transactions

Cybersecurity in the era of virtual reality

 Cybersecurity in the era of virtual reality

A lot has been said about Augmented reality and Virtual reality (VR). Its impact on certain industries (tourism, healthcare, education) is limitless.

Yet it seems that few people have discussed the cybersecurity implications of such technology.

Let’s put aside topics often discussed such as:

  • Physical security – when you loose balance and fall or walk into traffic due to the lack attention

  • Medical risk of exposure to intense lighting from close distance

  • Behavioral conduct and related security – online bulling and other targeted psychological arm

  • Legal framework not being up to date to this upcoming revolution. Must we rely on corporation’s terms and condition or should we have text of laws? How would you punish law trespassing in a virtual environment?

The education is broken – we can fix it

The education is broken – we can fix it

Couldn’t we re-organize education to discover talent within each individual? Not only based on results but on a connection to the inner force of the child. Couldn’t we add an angle of personal development for the education personnel? It doesn’t make sense to me that already troubled teenagers are pushed into following someone else’s beliefs and forced into a profession that wouldn’t be a fit. Couldn’t we take a pause at certain stages of the child’s development and take the time to understand the core values of the person before driving them towards a career of our interest?

The future of personal banking might not be with Institutional Banks

The future of personal banking might not be with Institutional Banks

At the end of 2014 one of our clients from the financial industry launched a project – the idea was to offer a unified interface to manage a user’s investment portfolio. And from that moment onward, we started discovering the amount of nonsense and outdated ways of working in the financial industry.
My client wanted to clear this non-sense and finally offer what clients have been expecting for years – a singular interface for investments of financial providers and products (Life Insurance, Bonds, Stock Market, …). Furthermore, since knowledge is power,  they wanted to educate the client to have more control on his investment strategy. I understood that this could be the silver arrow for the financial industry if we could execute it well.

Time passed and we discovered the inconsistency in this industry that generates billions per year but relies on decades old solution or fully outsourced average IT department. Aggregating information from all stakeholders became a nightmare, often talking to an entire organization to merely get a step or two ahead.