Colin - Hedge: a greater safety net for the entreprenurial age

Hedge

Nicolas Colin began his career in the French civil service and then brought his clear understanding of regulatory systems across Europe to his work as a tech entrepreneur. In 2013, he became Co-founder and Director of The Family, a pan-European investment firm supporting early-stage entrepreneurs, now with a portfolio of 150+ fast-growing startups.

He sits on the board of Radio France, the French national radio broadcasting corporation, and teaches university courses on corporate strategy and public policy at Sciences Po in Paris. He has previously served as a member of the board of the French personal data protection authority.

Nicolas is a thought-provoking voice in the conversation about new institutions in the digital world. He has co-authored several works on technology, including a 2013 Report on Taxation in the Digital Economy (for which he was voted one of that years ten most influential people by the International Tax Review ). His articles regularly appear in both English and French publications, including Foreign Affairs , The Financial Times , and Le Monde . Hedge is his third book, and the first published in English.

Nicolas was born in Normandy, France and raised by musician parents, becoming an accomplished bass guitar player. He lives in London with his wife Laetitia Vitaud and their two children.

Advance Praise

Brilliant, timely and urgent! This digital native takes my theory of technological revolutions and runs with it, applying the lessons of history to the complexities of the present day. An eye-opening primer to the technological present, this book speaks to innovators and entrepreneurs, proposing bold and imaginative solutions towards the creation of a Safety Net 2.0 and a better future for all.

Carlota Perez, author of Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages

Nicolas Colin is a path-breaking French entrepreneur who emerged from the worlds most elite civil service to become a direct participant in and compelling analyst of the Digital Revolution. In Hedge , he brings together a deep reading of the history of economic development through transformational technology with his own direct experience as co-founder of a unique Paris-, London- and Berlin-based firm, The Family, dedicated to galvanizing a start-up culture first in France and now more broadly across Europe. Colins understanding that economic disruption, especially of the labor market, must be balanced and buffered by relevant innovations in social policy makes Hedge must reading for everyone on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world wakening to the impact of the Digital Revolution.

William H. Janeway, Senior Advisor, Warburg Pincus,
author of Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy

Nicolas has written a sharp and historically grounded analysis of how technology and the political economy of the West have evolved in tandem, and how we might lay groundwork for a society that has both a strong social safety net and supports entrepreneurialism and innovation going forward.

Kim-Mai Cutler, Partner, Initialized

This is an important book which poses profound questions about the social and political effects of technological change. Rather than adding to the growing backlash against tech, Colin puts forward specific and forward looking ideas about how we can strike a new balance between technological change and wider social stability and solidarity. In essence, Colin envisages nothing less than a reinvention of the welfare state to suit the modern entrepreneurial age.

Sir Nick Clegg, former UK Deputy Prime Minister

I have known Nicolas since the inception of his firm The Family, back in 2013. Ive seen their capacity to transform the European startup ecosystem from the inside. As a former civil servant in the upper levels of the French government, Nicolas knows very well that politicians arent willing or able to take the lead when it comes to technology. To save the tech industry from itself, he urges entrepreneurs of the world to build a Greater Safety Net 2.0" that can provide economic security and prosperity for all. Ive always praised Silicon Valleys unique ability to encourage contrarian thinking. Hedge should become part of its playbook, because we urgently need to come together and find ways to uplift humanity in these times of radical change.

Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and Carnegie Mellon University

Nicolas Colin has brilliantly interpreted a fundamental shift in the nature of the worker and the political economy, a shift to the Entrepreneurial Age. This must be met, he argues, by delivering a new Great Safety Net. Carefully documented yet contemporary, Hedge makes for compulsive and thought-provoking reading, which will hopefully stir you into action.

Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View

Hedge

A Greater Safety Net

for the Entrepreneurial Age

Nicolas Colin

T he Family, 9th Floor, 107 Cheapside, London, United Kingdom, EC2V 6DN, www.thefamily.co

Information on this title: hedgethebook.com

Nicolas Colin 2018

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of The Family.

First edition published 2018

The Family has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

T o Eckhard Strohschnk, who was my uncle,
and my political awakening.

To Laetitia, Batrice, and Ferdinand.

Table of Contents

Introduction

From Europe With Love

The new line is drawn between those who look back with nostalgia, trying to hold on to past practices, and those who embrace the new paradigm and propose new institutions to fit the new conditions. This blurs the previous connection between certain values and goals and the specific means of attaining them. Though the goals may remain unchanged, the adequate and viable means to pursue them change with each paradigm shift.
Carlota Perez

On February 7, 2014 , my firm, The Family, received a letter at our office in Paris. The sender was an investigating police officer, inviting me to present myself before an examining magistrate. I was about to be indicted for defamation against Nicolas Rousselet, the CEO of Groupe Rousselet (then known as Groupe G7), a family-owned conglomerate that dominates the taxi industry in the Paris area.

The plaintiff had lodged a civil claim against me as part of a criminal case. Because French law lacks the broad principles of free speech that grew out of the First Amendment in the US, this is enough to trigger an indictment. With no room for prosecutorial discretion, the meeting with the examining magistrate was the first step toward a criminal trial that would take place a few months later.

Now why would the de facto chief of the mighty Parisian taxi industry file such a suit against me, a former civil servant who had just co-founded a small firm assisting startup founders?

It was quite simple, in fact. A few weeks earlier I had published a blog post, later republished by the newspaper La Tribune , that openly questioned the soundness of Rousselets understanding of innovation. Initially, the article attracted a few thousand readers, which was somehow enough for me to appear on the mans radar.

Back then, the war between transportation startups and the local taxi industry was warming up. The French government had decided to enact a new rule: every car without a taxi medallion had to wait 15 minutes after the driver had received a booking before picking up the passenger. Obviously it was targeted at Uber and other ride-hailing startups, and it was a major blow for them. I wasnt particularly interested in the sector at that time. But the new rule was so stupid, and the discussion around it so heated, that I decided I had to learn more about the topic and form my own opinion.