Private Equity
(Reuters) - A boom in French Internet startups, nurtured by an emerging class of homegrown Web-savvy investors, is providing a welcome jolt to a country often stereotyped as captive to tradition and hostile to innovation. A dozen executives and investors told Reuters last week that inter-generational coaching has been key to a budding Internet scene, clustered around the old Sentier garment district in central Paris -- now baptized Silicon Sentier. Entrepreneurs such as Xavier Niel, who created multibillion euro public company Iliad SA in telecoms, and Marc Simoncini, founder of France's biggest dating website Meetic SA, have graduated to the big league and are financing, mentoring and inspiring budding techies. Investors and executives also acknowledged the industry risked becoming a victim of its own success, as many of its best companies are snapped up by foreign competitors instead of growing independently to become France's own Google or Facebook. "Smart young people in France today no longer dream of going to work as ...
4 min read · 25 October 2011
3 min read · 25 October 2011
4 min read · 25 October 2011
1 min read · 25 October 2011
(Reuters) - David Prend is one of the most respected investors in green technology -- but even he picks some losers. Like the Department of Energy, Prend thought Solyndra, an innovative solar company, was a good bet. His venture capital firm, RockPort Capital, began investing in the company three years before the federal government gave the startup a loan guarantee. RockPort eventually put more than $63.5 million into Solyndra. As revealed in emails released by the White House, Prend, who sat on the company's board, also touted the company to President Barack Obama's staff as a stellar example of green job creation and urged the president to visit its California plant. But the Solyndra bet went bad -- for Prend, the DOE, and other investors such as Henry Kravis and Richard Branson. That's not so unusual in the field of green tech. A closer look at Prend's portfolio ...
10 min read · 24 October 2011
3 min read · 22 October 2011
2 min read · 22 October 2011
4 min read · 22 October 2011
3 min read · 21 October 2011
3 min read · 21 October 2011
