Watch the video of Hervé Lebret:

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Author of Start up: What we may still learn from Silicon Valley

-There isn’t a Google or Apple-like company in Europe. Why?

-The number of companies existing in Silicon Valley and those based in Europe is dramatically different, as well as the age of the founders. For example, Bill Gates was only 20 when the founded Microsoft in 1975. In the UK, only 2% of young entrepreneurs are less than 30. “We are 12 times slower than the US”.

-Don Valentine, an influential venture capitalist who’s been called the grandfather of Silicon Valley venture capital, says there are only two visionaries in the history of Silicon Valley: Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, and Robert Noyce, co-founder of Intel. And there are two adjectives to describe both of them: “passionate and competitive”.

-The key to start a company is “being young and crazy” (Paul Graham).

-A start up is like a baby. There are plenty of things you don’t know when you are a parent for the first time. So, “why do we say to founders to gain experience first”. “And why founders are paranoid about losing control?”

-”In industry and academia, we are not taking enough risks today”.

-The immigrants entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley come mainly from India (34%), but Europeans, who are dwarfed in numbers by China and India, outpaced China in the proportion of immigrant entrepreneurs (23% compared to 4%).

-”If you are ambitious you have to try”. Learn from Steve Jobs. Lebret mentions the co-founder of Apple at Stanford University urging graduates at commencement to “Stay hungry, stay foolish“.

Fernando L. Mompó