Ep.15 Nicolas Colin - The Entrepreneurial Age: Networks and a fragmenting world

Boundaryless Conversations Podcast

In this episode, we’re speaking to Nicolas Colin, co-founder & director of The Family, a pan-European investment firm founded in 2013 and headquartered in London. Nicolas publishes an extremely valuable newsletter European Straits about entrepreneurship, finance, strategy and policy, with a European perspective. He’s also the author of three books, one of which is Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age and member of the board of directors at Radio France, and a former commissioner at CNIL (the French personal data protection authority). Nicolas also contributes to several other outlets, such as co-host at Nouveau Départ with his wife Laetitia Vitaud (in French), and as a columnist at Sifted.

In this conversation, we try to unpack why Nicolas thinks the current crisis is going to accelerate the transition to what he has recently called a more “mature entrepreneurial economy” and what he means with the Entrepreneurial Age is, a concept he uses to describe the networked computing-powered world where individuals - or users - are more important than having fixed assets on a balance sheet. We also talk about the balance between building organizations based on attracting outsiders and the need to be resilient to sudden drops in users, which some tech companies seem to get wrong.

Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our Medium publication.

To find out more about Nicolas Colin’s work:

> Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nicolas_Colin

> Newsletter: https://europeanstraits.substack.com/

> Nicolas Colin (2018). Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age: https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Greater-Safety-Net-Entrepreneurial/dp/1718917082

Other references and mentions:

> Structural Shifts podcast by Aperture, “Previewing the post-pandemic World”, with Nicolas Colin, Laetitia Vitaud and Ian Charles Stewart: https://medium.com/aperture-hub/previewing-the-post-pandemic-world-17-7be38279c2c7

> Babak Nivi coined the term “Entrepreneurial Age” (2013): https://venturehacks.com/the-entrepreneurial-age

> Carlota Perez’ work on technological revolutions: http://www.carlotaperez.org/

> Balaji Srinivasan On The Argument For Decentralization - Part 1, Pomp Podcast #295: https://youtu.be/SU6H-5kA0FA

> Fernand Braudel, on Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, in 3 volumes: https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Capitalism-15th-18th-Century-Vol/dp/0520081145:

> Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast

> Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on May 29th 2020