Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age

Should someone choose to replace their labor contract with a partnership that bills their employer in exchange for their services and thus claim the right to adjust for the difference between income and professional-related losses? After all, many expenses that are directly related to work (such as transportation, business lunches, devices such as

The Family was initially designed as an entity dedicated to nurturing ambitious entrepreneurs based in France. But when it was only two years old, my partners and I became convinced that we needed to expand internationally. The reason was that early stage investing had already become a global market, with an ever-increasing level of competition. It

Thus it didn’t matter that for much of the twentieth century, the cathedral of state didn’t work so well. Nobody, even in the mighty business world, could come up with an alternative: other models simply didn’t exist for them. The entire world of large organizations was dominated by malfunctioning and suboptimal cathedrals[390]. The state had no ch

Anyone who attempts to serve a customer at a new level of quality and scale is an entrepreneur. Anyone who does not, is not.” —Babak Nivi[134]

What was left of the Great Safety Net 1.0 even played a key role in alleviating the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis. In France, a broader safety net and higher minimum wage relative to cost of living made it possible to provide economic security to the majority of households. Even if jobs were destroyed following the crisis, those who wer

The truth is that technology will progress against all odds. But not every country will welcome it as an opportunity for further economic development. For a long time, we’ve had good reasons to be worried about Europe. But there are now reasons to question whether the US, too, will make the most of the current transition. Now it’s the entire Wester

In the Entrepreneurial Age, it takes focus and clear strategic positioning for certain countries such as the US, China, Israel[300] and Estonia[301] to prosper in an economy driven by the multitude. Meanwhile other countries are still competing in a lesser league because they remain trapped in their focus on legacy industries such as tourism and ag

Systems come with rigidity and they can thus become a mental trap that narrows your view of the world. But when you combine them with frequent reality checks, systems are a most powerful tool to interpret the world and share your interpretation with others. When you’ve crafted your own system to comprehend things such as politics, history, technolo

Another imperfection is adverse selection. If given the choice, an insurer will refuse to cover those who present individual signs of wider risk exposure. It leads to a somewhat absurd situation: insurance is provided only to those who eventually don’t need it.

Because of the widespread instability, it’s not enough for a business to be the market leader or the most profitable company. Rather the stake is to take the vast majority of the market[254], at (almost) any cost. Those who generate superior increasing returns to scale can crush competition and realize a sizable return on investment over the long t